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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Linda Kaplan who wrote (17884)	9/12/1998 11:56:00 AM
From: J R KARY	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

Business Week Article: >> " THE DAY MY iMAC DIED: FROM MACVANGELISM TO DESPAIR I'm writing these words on a personal computer -- an Intel/Microsoft model. That will seem unremarkable unless you read my article in this space last week in which I lauded my new computer, an Apple iMac, as the greatest thing since food. I'm sorry, did I call it a computer? It isn't a computer if it does not, to borrow a popular phrase, compute. It isn't a computer if all it does is respond, passively, to the earth's gravitational field, or displace an amount equal to its own volume when you immerse it in water. I suppose it's my fault. Giving the machine a glowing review so soon after taking it out of the box was the technological equivalent of sitting in the only car on the Long Island Expressway at 3 a.m. and commenting, "Wow, no traffic." What usually happens next is that you have to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a tanker truck full of something caustic. Everything was going so nicely until this week. I was cruising the Web at speeds approaching ISDN, boosting my personal productivity, and having fun. When my father-in-law showed me how slowly his hot new PC plodded through America Online, I felt vindicated. Despite my distaste for doctrine of any sort, I was slipping comfortably into a new role as a Macvangelist. A friend quipped that when my wife went outdoors, people would whisper: "There goes Karen Hubler -- her husband's the one who went Mac." And then, despair. On Black Tuesday, as it's etched in my mind, the machine wouldn't boot. After trying everything in the "Emergency Handbook," I retrieved the "Apple Support Card" from the box and called the 800 number. The rep was nice but audibly nervous. In an effort to get him to relax, perhaps, the other techies were playing practical jokes on him. "Ugh, I just got a gooey cough drop," he said -- the girl in the next cubicle had chucked it at him. Such were the experts who were supposed to save my digital life. The fellow did get my machine to reboot, but not before uttering that sentence I've come to loathe after years of dealing with PC techies: It should work." He took notes and assigned me a case number -- which I regarded as a bad sign. Sure enough, I had to call back seconds later because even though the machine would boot, it wouldn't launch any program requiring a modem, making me feel that the "i" in iMac must stand for "inert." The next rep had nothing to offer but variations of "It should work," so I asked to be bumped up to level two. After a half-hour wait, a "senior technician" came on the line. He put me through a round of computer calisthenics, clicking on this and checking on that, revealing to my delicate eyes files I had hoped never to be exposed to. All to no avail. His last-ditch effort was to have me install a CD called "Software Restore." When that didn't work, he told me I'd have to bring it to a repair shop. "On behalf of everyone here at Apple, I'd like to apologize for raising your expectations too high with our 'computer for the rest of us' ad campaign, only to deal you this crushing disappointment," he should have said. But he didn't. A repair shop? You mean Apple Computer is giving up and advising me to leave my new baby in the clutches of the New York City aftermarket underworld? The last straw for me and PCs was a supposedly simple hard-drive upgrade that stretched from three hours to three weeks as new problems cropped up. Today is Sept. 11, so the iMac has only been on the market 28 days. For all I know, mine is the first to break. Indeed, Apple spokesman Russell Brady says the "iMac is a rock-solid product" and that my modem complaint is "the first I've heard about it." Has anyone out there even seen the inside of one of these things, let alone worked on one? Pssst....wanna buy an oddly colored, $1,299 paperweight/volume measurer? Eric Hubler writes on business issues from New York. News Flash Archives Copyright 1998, by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. " <<