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Jobs Plays It Frank
Siqnal 11 writes "Wired has a feature about Jobs meeting with resellers at the expo, and how honest he was with them. To quote the article 'Jobs gave frank and honest answers to tough questions in this time of trouble for the company and its partners, they said. "
However, the biggest problem with computers is that as "big box" items (or at least, they're conceived as such), customers think that there's hundreds of dollars of profit built into the price and suppliers seem to think that computers are sold based on competitive advantage.
We had a Dell rep come in once who offered us pen-knives and T-shirts and told us how wonderful, reliable, excellent, etc. Dell products are to which we said "sure, but we'd personally go bankrupt recommending them over other boxes that actually have a markup." The guy was stunned.
If your business model is based on volume, (in actual fact, you make more on ringing up that $40 game than you do the box it runs on) don't expect just because the guy who's selling at the store is forced to wear a suit or uniform, that he actually cares about sitting the customer down, getting him or her herbal tea, and chatting ad nauseam about the benefits of L2 cache vs L1 cache or whatever. In fact, the most successful salespeople there are totally ignorant of computers, they just go "want fast? Buy the P4!" - cause the computer is mostly sold on enthusiasm and how much the salesman smiles and nods his head - cause for him, there's a big margin, and the clueless customer doesn't know any better (otherwise he'd be putting his dual Athlon machine together himself) it's supposedly a win-win situation. I couldn't live with myself anymore, so I quit.
Apple should get out of store sales ALTOGETHER and just send salespeople into graphic design stores and elementary schools every now and then, with web presence and demo days.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
This is the best (fucking) idea I've seen in weeks. Crossover cables are one of those vestiges of a day when you needed a Ph.D. to set up a LAN - and they just make no sense in the day of auto-sensing ethernet cards. Get rid of 'em! That helps us move to the day when more stuff connects via ethernet, which makes impeccable sense.
sulli
RTFJ.
Jobs was talking about first time buyers' experiences. These superstores can't afford to hire anyone with sufficient knowledge because there's not enough money in retail to keep them. I challenge you to walk up to the first rep you see in CompUSA and ask them the difference between a Mac and a PC and post the response you get. Jobs is the CEO of a company whose products are being terribly represented in the largest retail market in the field. I'd swear too.
I think all of you are being too harsh about his language. He used "fuck" as an adjective, a verb and an adverb. I congratulate him on the wide use of his limited vocabulary.
That's how a fucking CEO handles stuff. He isn't a fucking pansy that prances around what he really wants to say. Fuck ya! Fuck!
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Not quite. This is news because being blunt and honest is nearly unheard of in the corporate world in general. (If Jobs was actually doing that.) Try to imagine Gates (or Steve Case or Ivan Seidenberg or W. C. Ford or whoever) talking without sounding like he's running the latest version of MS CorpSpeak 2000.
I'd thank God if we were. I have many times seen with my own eyes salespeople go up to people asking a question about a Mac, tell them incorrect information about its specs, and then steer them towards a PC.
I heard a guy one time tell a lady that the iMac didn't have Ethernet, and would she be interested in a PC that does?(hint: iMacs have always had 100mbit Ethernet) Also, I constantly hear salespeople tell customers that Macs have no software.
The other thing is that apparently no one in the entire store knows how to use a Mac, so they always sit there frozen or turned off. I have personally intervened probably five times where I overheard salespeople telling a customer something completely false about a Mac, and felt the need to say "actually..."
My guess is Apple retail sales would increase by at least 15% if salespeople would learn how to use a Mac, and stop criticizing them constantly.
As someone who once worked for a hell-hole Canadian version of those big box stores, let me put it to you this way -
As a salesperson, there is ZERO point to selling Macintosh.
I don't know what kind of moron Jobs is where he thinks salespeople have the time and trouble to sit there and demonstrate a product. In order to make anything over $27,000/yr you basically need to run around, ringing up anyone you see carrying a box - you don't get paid a percentage of the sales price, you get paid a small percentage of the "profit". $25 profit on a $2,000 computer is $2.50 in your back pocket, so to make min wage you have to sell two an hour. I only know one person who made a decent living at it, and he basically just went up to people and said "are you buying that" and if they said no, he'd leave and sign up the next guy, leaving customers who WANTED attention to poor stiffs like me who'd yap for an entire hour to some geriatric sod who expects $400 off his machine cause he's a good haggler, not realising that all Macs are basically sold under cost, which means NO commission, no pay, your profitability numbers go down, and you lose your job.
You see more Macs sold when they're being liquidated, cause you're paid a percentage of the selling price, not the profit, and at Christmas, where you pay a "spiff" of $75 to get someone to buy a Mac. But it's damn hard, cause people are like: "But it won't run Windows" and you suddenly realise you could just unload a PC on these people and sell two more in the time it takes to get over the sales resistance on the Mac and actually make a living.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Obsession? He just prefers them, and has some HI research to back him up on it.
Obsessive is a bunch of non-Mac users instinctively complaining about the lack of multiple buttons on every single Slashdot story that comes up dealing with Apple. Like one of Pavlov's dogs, really.
Who's obsessive now?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
It's the execs at the meeting of topic that created the environment you describe - so who better than them to bitch at?
I AM, therefore I THINK!
On one hand, your post infuriates me, because it's full of the same old MS-brand FUD I've seen a million times before, although you mixed in some Be-brand FUD as well, for spice. On the other hand, Mac OS X won't ship for another two months, so I can't blame you too much for not understanding where Apple is headed. Everything that they are doing revolves around Mac OS X. Even the Cube, which some like and some dislike, is a radically different proposition if it's running Mac OS X. A silent, 8-inch square computer with gigabit ethernet and AirPort, running a Unix-based super-GUI OS that never crashes and has Apache built-in is an attractive proposition. Reaching under the box to hit reset on Mac OS 9 is not worth $1600.
... in fact, it's called "Open Firmware". There are at least six Linux distros for Macs, as well as BSD. AND -- note this well and think about it for a minute -- the entire core of the new Mac OS is open source (it's called "Darwin"). Everything you need to boot and root the new Mac OS is out there in plain text. Surely, even if the hardware were somehow closed, a person could tell what's what by looking at the source to the Mac OS? Especially when Mac OS is based on such well-documented, open source, community projects like Mach and BSD.
... you don't need to plug them in to use them, and they don't automatically slow to half-speed when on batteries. The PowerBook G4 is the fastest notebook ever (even when running Mac OS 9), and it has the longest battery life. That is a fact. Go and compare benchmarks for desktop and "mobile" PIII's on Intel's site ... it will be hard to do, because they use different benchmarks and conventions for each to hide the fact that the mobile ones are so crappy. 15 watts and they're still crappy. The CPU in the PowerBook G4 requires only 7 watts at full speed.
... positively 1980's. The empty MHz of the 50 watt, 1.5GHz, paperback-book-sized P4 might make you feel like you have big balls, but it's not even close to twice as fast as a 10 watt, 2-inch square 733MHz PowerPC chip that now has two Altivec co-processors. Most of Apple's computers don't even have fans, and the ones that do are set to turn the fan off below a certain temperature. Apple gets tech support calls where people describe that their year-old PowerBook is making a funny noise and it turns out that the fan just went on for the first time ever. That is much, much, much more the future than the fan noise and dust bunnies of a typical PC.
.NET initiative ... Apple has WebObjects and iTools, both of which are out already and just waiting for Mac OS X to really get going. Mac OS X is two months away, and it's the first consumer Unix, the first consumer multi-user system. The average Joe will be doing remote desktops in no time, and running Java2 or other applications off the Web as well. Apps in Mac OS X are self-contained "bundles" that appear in the GUI to be just one file ... everything the app needs is right there. Copy the app to another machine to install it, or run it over the network, it's all the same.
As far as being stuck in the 1980's and a control freak, I think you have aptly described Microsoft. Here in the 21st century, we don't have to be limited to one OS and one application platform just to have compatiblity. We don't have to be limited to one word processing program to share documents. We now have this thing called the Web, and you can have any OS you like, as long as it also speaks TCP/IP. If it speaks Unix as well, then that's better still. Given that, wouldn't we work towards more diversity, rather than less? Why would we want to throw all of our eggs into the Microsoft basket? Especially now?
As far as open software and hardware, the hardware developer notes for the new 2001 pro models were released today. They use standard stuff like AGP, PCI, gigabit ethernet, USB, FireWire, standard RAM, ATA hard disks, yada, yada, yada. What is so hard about this stuff? Even the "Mac BIOS" is open
I can't believe you want Apple to drop PowerPC CPU's in favor of Intel CPU's in the same post where you accuse them of being stuck in the 1980's. First, there would be no 1" thick, 5-hour battery life PowerBook G4 if Apple used Intel CPU's. Maybe you are happy running a slow Intel notebook on wall power all the time, but I really prefer not plugging in my notebook at all. Why do you think Apple took the lead in wireless networking? Because they have been shipping notebooks with 5+ hours of battery life for years
I don't know about you, but to me, big, fan-cooled boxes with monster CPU's and serial and parallel ports seem anachronistic
As for a
Apple is in great shape for the future. It's the present that they are having trouble with, as they lead up to Mac OS X's release. How many Windows users are going to rush out and buy new Windows 2000 machines two months before Whistler comes out? How many bought Windows 3.1 machines two months before Windows 95 came out? Not too many. Apple is in that situation right now. If they had been able to release Mac OS X on time, perhaps it would be a different story and they wouldn't have their first unprofitable quarter in three or four years and we wouldn't be condemned to hear Wintel know-it-alls pronounce Apple dead again. Like Compaq never had an unprofitable quarter! Ha.
That buying a Mac at CompUSA and Sears et al. is an exercise in futility and frustration. If you go to a car dealership, they don't steer you away from the model you ask for to show you another brand and try to bullshit you while they do it.
Actually, I just recently picked up one of the new iMacs at a CompUSA. While it was frustrating, it was not for the reason you gave...
In my experience CompUSA has very few Mac people. So I was free to wander in, put an iMac box in my cart and wander up to the cash register without being bothered by a single sales person. But my problem was that I had to find the model I wanted in a huge stack of boxes with mixed colors and models.
I'm actually suprised no one approached me when I started shifting their tower of iMac boxes across the showroom floor to dig the one I wanted out!
This article at MacCentral had much better coverage. Rather than focussing on the language that Jobs used to skake his audience into paying attention, they covered what he was actually fucking saying:
That buying a Mac at CompUSA and Sears et al. is an exercise in futility and frustration. If you go to a car dealership, they don't steer you away from the model you ask for to show you another brand and try to bullshit you while they do it.
I think Apple should sell on the Web and exclusively through its Mac retailers like MacZone, MacMall.
Screw the pimply-faced, rat-assed, pig-ignorant kids who try to screw the Mac customer for the sake of an idiotic loyalty to someone who has ripped off their parents out of of billions of dollars.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
MacWeek Article: Jobs slams computer retailers
It's interesting how the story on MacWeek focuses on Jobs blasting retailers treatment of Mac customers, whereas Wired's story focused on Jobs's cussing.
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
as everybody has been saying, what Jobs said in his meeting with resellers isn't really news for slashdot. however if you read the rest of the article, especially the 2nd page, there are some good quotes about the importance of the DVD burning capabilites of the high-end G4s. this actually is interesting news.
it hasn't really been talked about much, as burning DVDs is not something any of us would be planning on doing (unless we're pirating DVDs). but if you look past the WaReZ kiddies, you'll realize that this is actually an important technology.
from the article: "I'm starting to think this is as important as the LaserWriter was to desktop publishing.... It's revolutionary." while i hardly think it's "revolutionary," it is important.
up until now, mastering DVDs (that can play on consumer-level players) has been prohibitivly expensive. now Apple has made this available to a huge market for a measly $3500. i personally know many people at advertising agencies and training firms that would love to put their material on DVD as opposed to VHS, but have been holding off until the price comes out of the stratosphere.
considering the fact that in the past Apple has had the highest markup on their most expensive machines, i think they're going to rake in a lot of cash from this machine. this is also a great use of the Alitvec engine on the G4, and one of those (few) situations where it really does run considerably faster than a P4. at any rate, it's a good move for Apple.
- j
Let me tell you from experience that the PC market, Apple included, is almost profitless at this point. There are so many reasons not to sell computers, which is why I think that Jobs has to get into reseller's heads that selling Macs is not a losing battle.
Most of the people who sell Macs don't make a lot of money from it, regardless of the markup. People are not willing to pay for PCs with inadequate anything right now, no matter how revolutionary Apple is.
Jobs' presence was made because he wants to assert people that he is trying to do his best to get Apple back into shape. If Apple dies in the process, he wants history to remember that he gave it his best shot, even risking a PR nightmare by using profanity in front of his dealers.
He's a smart guy; those of us who have seen Apple's latest reports know that Apple is in a little bit of trouble. Steve is dealing with a changing world that is not bending to Apple the way it used to because the younger generation doesn't remember the "old" Apple and, frankly, couldn't care less. It's an uphill battle, but, if he can't do it and fails, I don't think anyone could have done it better.
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I'm a confused consumer. Imation better sue Apple...
No. Right now, Office exists for the Win32 API, and the Mac Toolbox API. The Mac Toolbox version will be replaced with the (very, very similar) Carbon API (Carbon as in carbon copy of the Mac Toolbox) version for Mac OS X.
Office on OS X was always a no-brainer. Some in the media have tried to make an issue out of it, but it's not. Microsoft make a TON of money off of Mac Office. If they killed a very profitable product, they would have to give a reason why, and if that reason was to drive people to Windows, that's not good for them, legally.
A couple of years ago, MS dropped their program of trying to convert Mac users, and since then, have created some really good software for the Mac. IE 5 for the Mac is head-and-shoulders above the Windows version. It's really good. Office 2001 is much-improved from 98 as well. The extra time they're taking on the OS X version should pay off in it being a really well-behaved OS X app that follows all the conventions.
First, I am not a particular fan of Apple or Macintosh, and have never used PPC Linux (though I'm open to the idea).
up until now, mastering DVDs (that can play on consumer-level players) has been prohibitivly expensive. now Apple has made this available to a huge market for a measly $3500. i personally know many people at advertising agencies and training firms that would love to put their material on DVD as opposed to VHS, but have been holding off until the price comes out of the stratosphere
Here you hit the nail right on the head. Copying DVDs is very uninteresting (except for my legally purchased copy of Galaxy Quest given to me for xmas, in which I'd like to incorporate the "cutting room floor scenes" into the main movie, a "FreeUser's Cut" if you will). BUT I have a lot of footage I've taken over the years which I'd like to do some NLE on and then save to DVD, with english subtitles on portions in languages most of my friends don't speak.
Then there is the recording of television broadcasts direct to hard drive via a sony media converter, which I can then edit the commercials out of, save to DVD, and put in my video library. I would never buy each and every episode of Babylon 5, but if I can simply record and burn them, four episodes to a disk, I'd much rather do that than use Hi-8 or VHS, or even miniDV (which is also susceptible to dropouts over time).
Recordable DVD is way, way overdue, and I may well run out and buy a high end G4 when it hits the street. In fact, I would have done so already, if I could have had it shipped overnight instead of in "7-10 weeks" according to applestore.com.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy