As I was using my laptop on a recent plane trip to Washington, D.C. (no I wasn't under subpoena from Ken Starr), the person next to me leaned over to ask if it was one of the new G3 Powerbooks from Apple. After I acknowledged that they were correct, their response was: "But I thought Apple was dead, why would you want to get a new computer from a company that's not going to be around much longer?"
I don't think there is a single user that bought their Mac system since they came out in 1984 that has not heard a similar phrase at least once. Notice I said since 1984...it's been over fourteen years since the first Mac came on the market, not bad longevity from a system that "will never make it". Maybe we should go over a few facts:
Fact #1 --- Let's be honest...three things that almost every computer user takes for granted today, the mouse, the 3.5-inch floppy disk and the graphical user interface were made common and popular by Apple's development of the Macintosh.
Fact #2 --- Anyone with real computer knowledge has admitted that the Macintosh was a more stable and user friendly computer than its PC counterpart. For at least a while, Intel's own web site contained information showing that a Mac system would require less support and thus cost less in the long run than a PC.
Fact #3 --- Every computer company has had its ups and downs and many names are no longer with us as a result. We have all heard the bad news about Apple not doing well over and over. What wasn't heralded with much fanfare was Apple showing major profits for the last four quarters. Strange, no one called the other companies dead because they showed losses for all four periods.
Fact #4 --- Apple's new iMac is breaking sales records as one of the hottest selling desktop computers of all time. In the last quarter Apple sold over 200,000 iMacs, more than 40% to people who have never had a Mac before and over 20% of that to previous PC users.
Fact #5 --- Apple's new systems have been tested and benchmarked by several independent sources and found to be faster than their PC counterparts.
Fact #6 --- With the new high-speed processors, using emulator programs such as SoftWindows or Virtual PC allows the Mac user to run most PC software as fast and sometimes even faster than a native PC system.
As for a demonstration of ease of installation in a business environment, there is an open challenge to PC consultants from Technology Consulting Services, Inc., a Mac- only repair shop. TCS is betting $1,000 that a single Macintosh consultant using methods developed by TCS can setup a Mac OS network (with known functional Ethernet installed) to state-of-the-art specifications with 15 clients in 20 working hours, including reformatting the hard drives, installing and configuring the latest OS, and reinstalling the applications --- and that no Wintel consultant anywhere can match it.
"Find us any single Wintel consultant who can successfully set up a similar Windows network with 15 clients in 20 hours --- including reformatting the hard drives, installing and configuring the latest OS, and reinstalling the applications ---and we'll pay $1,000 on the spot," TCS says.
So come on all you Mac'ers out there, take off the funeral clothes that everyone else has put on us and proclaim in a loud voice: "The Mac is not dead, long live Apple!" And don't forget to watch the Superbowl to catch another of Apple's historic ads.