Is Apple dying?

[Veljo]

I mean does anybody feel that they are? I saw an article that IBM are thinking of buying Apple.

I really wish that Apple would listen to their customers. I mean, they are probably the best computer company in the world, but the truth remains that they do not listen. How can they pick up on their sales? It's so simple! Keep the Apple Centres but distribute computers and Apple software in other major electrical stores worldwide: this is why they lose out so much. First computer buys don't travel to a specialised computer store but rather visit an electrical store and listen to the salesmen there and buy a PC. Yes. A PC. Having a choice between the new iMac and a new IBM for example is not a hard choice and would win big for Apple. Hmmm...what looks better? What OS looks better? Lets go for the Mac. Or if there isn't a Mac there lets go for the PC because we don't know that Macs exist because they're hiding in Apple Centres which are too far away to even travel to.

Right click and scroll button. One button mouses were good back in the ol' days, but now they're seen as a major flaw for many users of Macs at my school. They are constantly being criticised about their one button and I wish Apple would address this. Sure I've been told that Mac OS X has multi-button support, but the button line means that people have to go out and buy a Microsoft IntelliMouse just to get the buttons they want. Adding more buttons doesn't confuse people, just gives more functionality to everything and makes life a hell of a lot easier.

And no floppy drivers? Sure the iMac might come with an external drive but it's still SO DAMB STUPID!

Anybody else have anything to say?

[Alexandert]

NO FLOPPYS PLEASE!

[simX]

veljo: I'm sorry, but Apple is not dying.

I'm sorry you haven't heard that the iBook AND the TiBook have been very popular laptops. I'm sorry you haven't heard about Henrico County in Richmond, Virginia buying 23000 iBooks from Apple. I'm sorry you haven't heard about Maine buying 30000 iBooks from Apple to give to every seventh and eighth grader in the state.

I'm sorry you haven't heard that the new iMac received 150000 preorders in the first three weeks of available preordering (when the new iMacs were STILL not available). Oh, and how about Apple selling 125000 iPods? And how about Apple opening 27 successful retail stores in the U.S. so far?

Apple doesn't listen to its customers? Last time I checked, people wanted a G4 processor, a flat-panel display, and a SuperDrive in the iMac, and as far as I know, Apple gave it to them. Last I heard, people wanted combo drives in their TiBooks, and I think Apple gave it to them.

Oh, and last time I checked, Apple had about 4.3 BILLION DOLLARS stashed away in the bank.

And about that "article" about IBM considering buying Apple: it's called a "rumor". And that one shouldn't even be classified as a rumor, because it's totally unfounded. I would like to know where you read this "article".

Last but not least, about your argument about floppy drives: Apple has not had them in their computers for 4 years now, and has still been successful. Wow, haven't you heard of CD-RW drives, or e-mailing, or zip drives, or even DVD burners? Floppies are totally unreliable, and can hold MAX 1.44 MEGAbytes of space. I think it'd be SOOO practical to backup my 20 GB hard drive on those babies!

Have I made myself clear? The only reason I adopt this attitude is because I really get annoyed when people come in saying that Apple is going down the drain (something that critics have been saying for years, but has yet to happen), when Apple actually has an impressive lineup of hardware AND software. I really hate it when people seize on rumors just to add to their argument. And I really, really hate it when people are so totally misinformed about something, yet they still think they know everything.

[RacerX]

I think we need to look at this as two different subjects: is Apple having problems and your problems with Apple.

We are in a recession that has hit the computer industry harder than any other area. Companies that had stock up in the range of $80 have dropped below $10 currently (both Sun and Gateway are good examples), but Apple saw a much less dramatic change (even considering that their stock had split not long before things went south for the industry) than any other company except Microsoft. In fact watching the prices of PC makers stock over the last year, Apple has been hardly effected by the problems of the industry, and is in a better position than it was at the beginning of the recession relative to other PC companies. Also Apple has long kept very large cash reserves that no other company could deal with if they tried to take over Apple. Basically, what ever Apple alone is worth... add another $4 billion on top of that. I'm guessing that you were not around Apple during that dark time of the mid 90's, when Apple had 7 consecutive losing quarters. No other computer company has (or could have) survived that type of record, and in the last couple quarters of that period Apple was still able to buy NeXT for $430 million. If Apple was at deaths door at that time, than I would have to say it could not be further from it now.

That having been said, Apple tried leaving the job of selling Macs to PC resellers... which I call PC reseller for a reason, they could not (or would not) resell Macs. What you are asking is that people who do not believe in Macs as a platform be asked to sell Macs to people who are new to computers. That doesn't work. If a person doesn't own a Mac, how can they sell one to anyone else?

The mouse question, you are aware that the multi-button mouse predates Apple's single button design (which Apple holds the patent on). A majority of PC users (actual users, not people who are techies) never use more than one mouse button. Given that, it can not be a major flaw, because that would require a majority of users to miss that feature. Same with the scroll wheel/button which is still not on a majority of functioning PCs today. Honestly, only people who explore their systems find many of the cool features of Windows, and for the majority of PC users the environment outside of a couple applications is completely foreign to them on their own systems. Ask 10 average PC users how much memory is installed on a given Windows system, and 9 would not be able to answer. That is the reality that Microsoft knows is out there, which is the reason for why Windows XP is the way it is.

And floppies... are you kidding?

[gerbick]

Apple dying!? BAH!

they better not. I just bought more stock!

[RacerX]

Originally posted by gerbick
they better not. I just bought more stock!

Hopefully you did it a couple days ago before the stock jumped up almost $2.

[tagliatelle]

If I see the appletree in my garden yes.

[Alexandert]

Originally posted by gerbick
Apple dying!? BAH!

they better not. I just bought more stock!

Yeah! BAH!