PREMIUM SEARCH Search by job title, geography and build a list of executive contacts
My son, the teenage skeptic. Not much is worthy of his attention these days. Imagine my surprise, then, when I caught him thumbing through a brochure on the new iMac. Clearly embarrassed, he at first tried to hide his interest. He confessed, though, that what had grabbed him wasn't so much the desk-lamp motif of the model's floating flat screen but its raw computing power. "Wow," he whispered reverently, "you get a lot of computer for the money."
A natural-born geek, Matthew owns Macs and PCs and uses both at school every day. He understands the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each much better than I ever will. My son represents just the group Apple needs to win over: young people who have yet to align themselves with one computing platform over another. So, when he proclaims the new iMac is a good deal, I know Apple has hit the bull's eye.
AN INDUSTRY SPARK? Indeed, Apple's own financial numbers tell the same story. The company recently announced that it had received a record-breaking 150,000 preorders for the new iMac, introduced last month at the Macworld expo in San Francisco. It took three months for its predecessor to rack up that many orders. Released three years ago, the first iMac not only saved Apple but also reestablished the company as the industry's innovator, spawning a slew of imitators.
As Apple gets ready to ship the latest iMac in March, I can hear the shredding of model designs across the PC industry. This little computer might just be the spark to reignite PC sales. With a body that looks like one of Bullwinkle's hooves, the iMac has the smallest footprint of any desktop computer I've ever seen.
BEST VALUE YET? What appeals to geeks like my son, however, is a winning combination of software and hardware: The top-end model features an 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processor, a SuperDrive that plays and burns CDs and DVDs, and software that stores, organizes, and edits music, video, and photography.
The real clincher is the price -- $1,799 for all the bells and whistles. For $1,299, you can get a machine with a 700 MHz processor and a CD-RW drive, and if you add on a DVD-ROM drive, the price is $1,499. All models feature Apple's iMovie, iTunes, and iPhoto software, and come with OS X, Apple's newest operating system, installed. You can find plenty of cheaper computers, but few offer a similar package at these prices. This may well be the most attractive combo Apple has ever offered.
FIGHTING BACK. You can bet the race is on to copy the iMac's design, and Apple needs to have a leg up on the copycats. That was difficult in the past. Apple's innovations were lost in the clutter of PC marketing. Macs were crammed into the far corner of big stores, sold by clerks who knew little about them. Meanwhile, PC knockoffs of the iMac garnered all the attention in prominent displays.
This time, Apple can fight back. In the past year, it has established its own rapidly expanding chain of retail stores, now numbering 27, in such places as downtown Palo Alto, Calif., Michigan Avenue in the Chicago Loop, and Tyson Corners outside of Washington, D.C. Plenty more are on the way, the company says. The stores are strategically positioned at crossroads traversed by kids and the geek faithful.
A case in point is the Palo Alto store, located within walking distance of Stanford University. I recently visited it on a Friday evening and found it abuzz with shoppers. As you might expect, most were already Mac users. But plenty of others were drawn by the store's bright lights, attractive, airy décor, and cool displays.
PLAYPENS. Store, actually, is a misnomer for these places. They're really digital playpens. Each is designed to let people fiddle to their hearts content not only with Macs but also with the digital-music players, camcorders, and personal digital assistants. You can take a picture with a digital camera and then edit it on a Mac. Have a question? A knowledgeable clerk is there in a flash. The stores are everything most big computer retailers are not -- the anti-CompUSA, if you will.
Put a new iMac in the window of one of these Apple stores, and you're sure to generate some buzz. Especially with teens, who've claimed shopping malls as their turf. If my son is any guide, the iMac's floating screen will draw them like bees to honey -- and its raw computing power will keep them buzzing.
Haddad, Atlanta-based
correspondent for BusinessWeek, is a long-time Apple Computer buff. Follow
his weekly Byte of the Apple column, only
on BusinessWeek Online Edited by B. Kite
Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.
Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed.
Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video.
To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here.
Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Printer-Friendly Version
