Well, Apple succeeded in doing the usual "orgasm" release with 10.1. The foreplay started last July with Steve showing how wicked fast 10.1 runs... just wait until September to get it. Then the announcement that you could pay $20 to get the upgrade some time in October or go to selected stores on Sept 29 to get a "free" upgrade. Lots of marketing and hype around this upgrade. At 6 AM this morning the line started forming outside the Tyson's Corner Apple store. The doors opened (orgasm time) and the first 500 customers got the upgrade which was totally depleted in 45 minutes. I arrived around 11 to see dozens of disappointed Apple zealots wanting a copy (including me). Too bad the orgasm marketing approach doesn't scale! A little bit of happiness for a small number of participants and a long recovery period.
One brave Apple Store employee was trying to field the questions and deal with the dissappointment. He admonished one customer telling him that he arrived too late to get the upgrade. I commented back that maybe Apple ran out of product too early. There were 3 lines 20 people deep for over an hour waiting to checkout. Many of these people not only had the free 10.1 handout, but a box copy of the full 10.1 product to purchase.
One customer asked if he could install 10.1 on his TiG4 PowerBook using the store copy. The employee wasn't sure if they could do that. Another customer pointed out that the store had a whole wall of Macs with SuperDrives and wanted to know if the store could burn a copy of the software for him...the answer was no.
I had been looking forward to using 10.1 this weekend. After watching all of this and reflected on how Apple needs as much help as they can get despite their inability to forecast and their crazy marketing approach. I decided to buy a full copy of 10.1. So I shelled out the $129+tax and now own 2 fully licensed copies of OS X for my 1 TiG4 PowerBook. I figure this cost is better value than what I've gotten with Micro$oft Office upgrades that cost more. Also, it helps Apple stay in business. If I divide the $129 by the number of hours I'll use 10.1 between today and the end of next week, the cost per hour is cheap entertainment. Also, some guy came up to me last Wednesday at the Tyson's Store and gave me a $20 bill to answer a few questions about the store...so I really only paid $109 for the upgrade. And the last point that swayed me to spend the money is that Apple donated $1M to the terrorist victim fund. My $129 les $20 helps replenish funds so Apple can be in a position to keep doing development work and stay a good corporate citizen.
Still, I wish they would quit their orgasm marketing and get some serious talent hired that knows how to forecast. One less "think different" ad or billboard would have paid for production of enough CDs to satisfy the demand. Better yet, let people who can bring their Airport equipped PowerBooks into the store and do the upgrades. That would be a "think different" way to do upgrades that leverages the technolgy they developed and cut down the number of folks that have to have the physical CD to do the upgrade. With the AirPort (or ethernet cable) upgrade capability in the store they could show off their OS X server capability.
