Slashdot Mirror
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. "
"Rats. I am most displeased with the repair job depot maintenance did on this jeep." translates cleanly in NCO jargon to
"Fuck! The fucking fuckers fucked the fucking fuck up!"
Eric Fucking Remy
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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
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.
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