Loose Cannons: You Sue, I Sue, We all Sue!

A Few of the Cannons are sitting here, watching the Mariners-Indians game, having some beers and arguing. So what else is new?

Our Fearless Leader didn't agree we should do a Loose Cannons column on this subject. So, we challenged said Leader to a quick game of Trivial Pursuit: The Macintosh Gold Edition. Fearless lost. We get to write.

Apple Legal, not known for their kindness and understanding, have instituted proceedings against yet another company for copying the iMac. Apple filed a similar lawsuit against Future Power and Daewoo on July 1. Matter of fact, the two press releases are almost identical.

Everyone and their dog is weighing in on this and, typical of Mac sites, no one gets the big picture.

The first thing that ticks us off is how *stupid* are the folks at Future Power, Daewoo and eMachines? What brain dead VP of Idiots, when presented with this project, green-lighted it instead of firing the people who presented it to him? This thing should never have left the drunken frat party of a meeting from whence it was born.

If these companies don't fire someone by this time next week, we have to figure that the parents are as morally bankrupt as the bastard child.

Can you believe that part of their defence is, to paraphrase, "The iMac is the only shape in which you can build an all-in-one unit." C'mon! Pull your marketing head out of your ass!

Apple alone has come up with almost half a dozen different form factors. You morons couldn't think of a seventh or eighth one?

Don't you wish these guys would just tell the truth? "Hey, we think we can get away with it. We're too lazy to think up our own designs and, after a year, we figured Apple had squeezed all the press they needed to out of the iMac."

But......

Guess what? For the average consumer (the target market for all of these machines), the eOne and the ePower machines are *better* than a iMac. Check out their specs. More RAM, more software, floppy drives, more expandability, etc. And, above all else, at least $400 cheaper than an iMac. As a matter of fact, Retail Week says that Circuit City was selling the eOne this weekend for $399.00 (with some strings attached).

Now, before you start sending those nasty emails, read what we said. "For the average consumer." That means the guy who doesn't know better. The guy who doesn't know much, if anything, about computers.

Imagine you're a mechanic. You've got a wife, a mortgage, a dog, 2.2 kids and a thousand clams to spend on a computer. You walk into a computer store and some Sales Weasel asks if you need any help. "Yes I do!" (BTW, never ask for advice from the weasel you're buying stuff from!).

Even if the sales drone is the most honest guy in the world, it's tough to look at an iMac side by side with an eOne and still choose the iMac. Go ahead, explain that to the wife (one of the Cannons in Chicago just went through this). "Hi Honey! I just spent $400 more on a computer that has less software and is less expandable than the PC George next door bought!"

These machines aren't meant for you Uber-Geeks out there. Remember, the average consumer doesn't care about Mhz, or gigs or Byte benchmarks. The average consumer figures one computer is not much different from another. But one of the things important to these folks is price. If the average consumer thinks they can get a cute little iMac clone for $400 *less* than an iMac, guess who loses all that cash?

So Apple is not "defending its trademark" or worried about "diluting its image" or any other such bull.

Apple has to protect the iMac image because (here's where you can send in the hate mail) Apple is ripping off the average consumer!

Remember Apple's last few profit announcements? A lot of that profit is from the iMac. Apple has sold almost 2 million of the little suckers. if Apple wanted/needed to, they could take less profit and lower the price on the iMac to under $1000 (and, in our opinion, sell even more of them). But Apple has found that they *can* sell iMacs at $1200 and reap all that profit. People are willing to buy them at that price point. So, with no outside influences, Apple has no incentive to lower the price.

"But what about the other Sub-thousand dollar PC's? There are lots of those and Apple is doing just fine," we hear some of you argue. But, keep in mind, all those Compaq's, HP's, Acer's and Packard-Bell's are *just* beige colored. Keep in mind, the iMac, eOne, et al, are also fashion statements/less threatening because of their color schemes. Don't minimize how important the color "feature" is.

That's where the ePower and eMachines come in. if Apple doesn't defend the iMac form factor, if they allow manufacturers to create machines that look even vaguely "iMac-like," consumers won't see the difference between the machines. If there's no readily apparent difference, consumers will, 99 times out of a hundred, go for the lower priced product.

Apple would lose thousands of iMac sales and hundreds of thousands of greenbacks. They would eventually have to lower the cost of the iMac in order to fend off the attack on its price flank.

Remember, a good portion of iMac buyers are people who have never owned a computer or who formerly owned a PC. These consumers have no loyalty to Apple. But they are loyal to their pocketbooks.

And Apple knows that for 85% of consumers, once they buy a PC or a Mac, they will *not* switch back. It's absolutely crucial to Apple's future growth that they get those consumers locked into a MacOS based machine.

So, rather than fight the good fight the old capitalist way, the way Adam Smith meant for it to happen, Apple would rather fight using the legal system. And that's the "American Way" in these waning days of the 20th Century.

BTW, we got a basketfull of email about our last column. Thanks for sending them along. Too many to mention here but we'll respond to the ones we feel worthy of response.

[Editor's note]this paragraph has been deleted at the discretion of AppleLinks

Next week, we'll tell you why the new CHRP Motherboards from IBM are good for Apple.

Until then, Loose Cannons Out!

cannons@applelinks.com

July 05, 2009