On May 17, 2004, at 10:02 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:At 09:07 AM -0700 05/17/2004, Bruce Johnson wrote:Apple is NOT going to expend the R&D or support money to support people who don't support their bottom line. That's a wise business solution for any millenium: concentrate on your *actual* customers, and selling widgets to new ones.
Last year, I sold hundreds of Macs to my clients. Approx 40% were used machines, that run OS 9, because the customer's existing peripherals and software only support OS 8/9 and Windows.
And these people are *how* much of Apples customer base? These people have old hardware and old software they cannot or will not upgrade.
Well, to use one client as an example: They're not yet prepared to replace the peripherals they bought in 2001; a $2.5M capital outlay. Drivers and app support are unavailable for OS X, but available for WinXP. So they bought OS 9 systems to tide them over and are converting to XP during the next year or two.
Apple's lost sales? Figure 200 higher-end desktops, some laptops, plus another hundred home desktops (since employees usually buy the same brand for home). $700,000+.
You may want to define "customer base" as only those people that have bought computers during this (or last) fiscal year. But that's just not how the world works. Apple is a hardware company that can't continue to exist without repeat business.
True. And I never said this (or last) fiscal year. Note: the last time Apple sold a system that did not support OS X was in 1997-8. That's six years. Six years for turnover is a long time, particularly in the computer industry.
You're right - six years is a long time.
You'd think in those six years they'd do something about the peripheral support, so as to enable the folx with the older machines to upgrade.
You'd think in those six years they'd support QuickTime on their own circa 2001/2002 products, but nooooo they instead chose to support QuickTime on an OLDER version of Windoze - from 2000!
Ok. I think we've beaten this to death and as far off topic as it should go... [/frustration]
- Dan.
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