Considering Fred Forsyth (Apple's vice president of world wide
operations) wrote a memo January 19 essentially "writing off" $80 million
of Apple inventory (source online MacWeek) it is not so strange that they
have such sales policies with second-party vendors. The failure to sell
the lower-performance machines led to the big surplus and the decision to
allow sales by other vendors was as I recall a fairly recent addition to
Apple's marketing strategy.
The restrictions on sales from MacMall to schools which you
have encountered is not good. Obviously it angered you as it would anyone
who tries to buy school supplies from a public vendor only to be told
schools were not permitted to purchase those items. It smacks of unfair
trade practices, but then I'm no expert on commercial law. At the very
least it is poor advertising for Apple.
>
> I'm curious to know how any of you other Mac schools out there feel about
> my experience Apple's policies. My next years' budget calls for the
> purchase of 150 computers and I'm considering making 50 of them Intel-based
> with Win 95 or Win NT. If this is how Apple is going to treat its best
> market then it can't hurt to be multi-platform these days. Maybe they'll
> start getting the message.
I service 140 Mac and PC schools and I see virtually all of them buying
new computers in a ratio closer to real world numbers. In your case that
would be a purchase of 120 Wintels next year instead of the 50 you
propose.
Russell Smith
rssmith@tenet.edu rssmith7@delphi.com
Ed.Tech Consultant Newspaper and Magazine Columnist