My response to the NYT.
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Mr. Lohr and Markoff,
(Disclaimer: I am a Mac user and Apple shareholder. Recently, I took a job selling the things.)
I was appalled by "The Incredible Shrinking Apple article, not so much by your criticisms (much of the same has been leveled at the company from within the Macintosh community) but by the article's title, graphics and and overiding tone -- that Apple is a dying company. Damning, damning, damning with only the faintest of praise to keep it from being a total slam job.
Apple's drop in sales in its Performa (targeted at first-time computer buyers) line has resulted precisely from "Apple is dead/dying" articles like this one. Have you no sense of the kind of resources a company must commit to combat this stuff.
Would it have been too much to include some of the following items:
1) Per Consumer Reports, Apple's Performa line remains the easiest computer to set up and use. Yet *exactly* the people who would most benefit from owning it people are the one's most frightened to buy from a dying company. I think it would be the cruelest joke to see Apple exit the consumer market.
2) All other of Apple product lines (many of which are best in class) software, servers, high end units, PDAs - have shown a *growth* in sales. Isn't a 160 mhz Newton (due out this quarter) and a 500+Mhz server (due out later this year) worth even a tiny mention?
3) The NeXT/OpenStepOS and apps gives Apple a software package that blows the doors off anything Microsoft is even *dreaming* of. And yes, it runs on Intel machines. Per an online survey (link on request) software developers have expressed strong support for the NeXT/MacOS.
4) Apple's Quicktime multi-media apps has become the cross-platform industry standard, ensuring it a niche in the fastest growing segment of the personal computer business. Too, Apple's PowerPC, particulary when coupled with third party PCI MOS boards, significantly outperform the MMX Pentium.
You know what Apple's biggest problem is? Perception. Think of corporations with bad press; Archer-Daniels Midland, Dow Chemical, Exxon, Philip Morris, etc. Have any of these company's gotten hit worse than Apple? Not even close. |
