So another week passes into the realms of history. August 98 is over and will be remembered here in the UK for being nothing short of a letdown. No sun, no summer, and no decent hot days to bring those see-through blouses out! Ah well, there's some hope still that we may get a late summer in September. Still time for those see-through blouses yet!
So hey, the iMac has 'landed', or at least that's what the ads are telling us. Last Saturday the UK saw the release of a desktop computer that is the talk of the town, that is if the town is made up of the kind of people who talk about computers!
I went to an iMac opening and was the only person there! That however cannot be seen as a reliable gauge of the response over here for the translucent blue Mac. It has, according to early reports, already sold out all over the UK and if you want one here, you'll have to be patient. It'll be something like a month before you see something blue in place of your hard-earned 'green stuff.' That being the case though, I have just one question. Does Apple think their products are crap?
I ask this because they don't ever make enough models to meet demand. They have spent a small computer fortune ($100,000,000.00!) on a worldwide ad campaign and yet here they are struggling to meet the massive demand for the machines. Why is that? Did they think "this product is good, but no one will want it so let's not make that many" or did they just think that they were getting too much good press at the moment so they had to do something dumb just to keep appearances up.. or down as the case may be.
I have a friend who is not a computer user who wants to buy an iMac. However here's the deal. For £1000 she can go to two shops several miles away from where she lives to see a handful of iMacs in action. None of these iMacs are being displayed with printers, scanners, or any such devices. Apart from some dinosaur game none of these super-fast G3 iMacs are running games. Certainly not any game that would impress your all-important 13-year-old computer consultant. And then there is of course the issue of Windows. According to reports, you can run any PC emulating software on an iMac with great results although none of the local shops here are doing that.
In short, the average person on the street has to have a lot of faith in the translucent blue to part with their hard-earned money. Either that or they could wander down to their local Windows-based computer shop and give some spotty teenager their money in exchange for some huge beige monster that looks like it should be recovering broken down trucks rather than surfing the web! Plus they could take any number of the 'low end' PC's away with them that day.
For the iMac, they'll be given a sketchy date when, if they are lucky, they might just get one. Somehow I can't see Mr. and Mrs. Wewanacomputer waiting more than an hour can you? However when all is said and done this is still a great computer. Daring in design, perfect in simplicity and exciting in its arrival. Well done Apple, George Orwell would be proud of you... again!