[Am-info] Best Buy drops Mac titles?

[Paul Rickard]

stevecoh@mcs.com

>So this is nothing new.  Seems kind of stupid, but I'm not sure who is
>the stupider - Apple for forcing colored iMacs down the throats of
>retailers who don't want to be bothered selling them (customer is always
>right, no?) or
>Best Buy, who whatever their decisions about Apple machines, cuts off a
>certain small but vital segment of own customer base in software.  I
>suppose iMacs are mostly sold through online channels these days? 
>That's where I bought mine.  Best Buy is the last place I'd go for such
>a purchase.

      I would estimate a good 50% or better of Apple's current sales, 
hardware anyway, are through its own Web store. Another 20 or so 
percentage points are from other Web/catalog retailers like ClubMac or 
SmallDog. Toss in about 10 more percents for Apple direct sales to 
educators and large businesses, we're talking no more than 20%-25% of 
sales from stores like Sears or JC Penny (they sell them in catalog, not 
sure about retail). Canada is investigating Apple because of this, for 
some reason. My point being this: Apple learned a long time ago not to 
count on retail sales and certainly hasn't tied its future to them.

>I suppose they're still selling Linux because there isn't a "difficult"
>hardware side to the product line, but I can't imagine that very many
>copies of Linux are bought there.

      There must be some demand for it, even stores like Office Depot and 
E|B have boxes of RedHat, Caldera and Slackware on their shelves now. And 
a few 'Linux for Dummies' type books. No applications for Linux yet, and 
certainly no Mac products, but the Linux OS itself is being sold on the 
retail level. For a profit. You could count it up to the payments 
distributors hand out to have their products placed on store shelves, but 
I don't think this was the case. Not with Slackware or Caldera anyway - 
those vendors don't have that kind of cash. But, I won't consider Windows 
dead until I see a PC running in Wal-Mart with Linux, *BSD, OS/2 (yeah 
right), or BeOS prebundled as the default operating system.


======== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign =======
--------------------------------[ Http://www.msboycott.com ]-----------