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I bought one in November 1998 ($1299 then, roughly $2400 today). It was an upgrade for me from an ancient Mac SE I’d had since 1990. The thing that struck me t
by epc 3y ago
I bought one in November 1998 ($1299 then, roughly $2400 today). It was an upgrade for me from an ancient Mac SE I’d had since 1990. The thing that struck me then was how easy the online purchase process was. There were very few options to pick from. It looks like I ordered it on 10/24/98 and had it by 10/28/98, which too was fast compared to other online computer purchases I’d done that year.
And…it just worked out of the box. No messing around with IRQs and other tweaks that I had to use with my work day systems. Software was limited but IIRC Microsoft had updated Office as part of the earlier deal with Apple, and between Office, the dotMac suite, and web browser you could do most routine things just fine.
Apple just totally nailed the end to end experience of buying, shipping, and using the system, which was a refreshing change from the status quo those days.
- nobleach 3y agoI was using a similarly spec'ed home-built PC at that time. It was an ugly beige box with a 15" beige monitor. I convinced my girlfriend to buy that Bondi-Blue box with only USB ports as she needed a new computer for her upcoming semester. We purchased it at the on-campus "Apple Store". It was the slickest computer buying experiences EVER. We had a Gateway 2000 store in town around that time. Trying to buy a computer there was such a nightmare. Apple really figured out the "experience" part of buying and owning a computer.
- detourdog 3y agoThe Gateway stores was the example given by every analyst on CNBC for why Apple couldn’t have a store.
- nobleach 3y agoI can kind of understand. Apple at that time period wasn't very "think different" yet. Gil Amelio still had the company in its own "beige box" era. The idea that a store would be selling a "less compatible" computer seemed insane. Turned out to be a game changer.
- isykt 3y agoThe thing is, Apple is still the leader in the online ordering process, even though the competition has had decades to catch up. Dell’s website is a mess. For years the top result on Google for the XPS Developer Edition was a page saying they didn’t make it anymore, even though I had just read a blog post about the new one. Clicking a specific configuration sometimes makes the option for a previously available configuration disappear. It’s maddening.
- Yhippa 3y agoSame for HP and Lenovo. Those sites are such a disaster and I'm surprised that nobody in their sales orgs are raising hell. There has to be lost sales due to not being able to easily find things. Those sites are incredibly slow as well.
- jwagenet 3y agoI would assume for dell, hp, and lenovo, corporate sales through other channels drive the majority of sales so consumer facing websites are left to rot.
- Clamchop 3y agoI suspect, but don't know, that there's a healthy halo of synergy between consumer products and enterprise choices, where that at all makes sense. Can go in both directions, people wanting to also have the good products they use at home in the office and vice versa. I think there are stories of companies exploiting this, Microsoft with Windows and MS Works and Office, Apple and their angling on education, Adobe cultivating future Photoshop professionals in various formal and informal ways (a relationship they've since shit all over). Seems like a missed opportunity.
- sixothree 3y agoJust figuring out what Lenovo laptops exist is an impossible task using their site. It's amazing just how unusable the site really is. But I'm guessing that's the point - make it confusing and unusable to steer people to specific choices??
- jjoonathan 3y agoI was a kid at the time and they nailed the experience for me, too. My parents were shopping in Microcenter but I was drawn to the "thunk -- wheee!" noises from the apple store, which turned out to be other kids playing Bugdom on a lime green iMac. Just look at the comments: https://youtu.be/Vmp720kBLBU?list=PLBCr5xCUF7KeUlGJRAYFwccqPJNvPeY9e&t=12 https://youtu.be/Vmp720kBLBU?list=PLBCr5xCUF7KeUlGJRAYFwccqP... My parents were confronted with a wall of special deals competing on numbers and specs... or the computer their kid was nagging them to buy. They went with the iMac.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoI don’t think the Apple store (as we know it now) existed at that point. There were resellers.
- acomjean 3y agoA lot of stores had "Apple Sections". Cambridge MA Microcenter still has an apple room. Or compUSAs (a sort of big box computer store, now defunct) had an Apple "Store within a store". https://www.cultofmac.com/452599/today-apple-history-apple-begins-retail-venture-inside-compusa/ https://www.cultofmac.com/452599/today-apple-history-apple-b...
- phone8675309 3y agoMany Best Buy stores have an Apple section to this day.
- jjoonathan 3y agoThere was a room in Microcenter that had a bunch of iMacs in it. I didn't know the commercial arrangement. I just knew that there was a fun green computer with a blue bug and you had to kick walnuts, avoid slugs, and free the ladybugs.
- giantrobot 3y agoApple was doing the store-in-a-store thing at CompUSA and MicroCenter and maybe a few other chains. The employees worked for the chain but went to special training from Apple to be able to talk up the Mac stuff. Very similar to their deal today with Best Buy. I bought my first PowerBook from such a section of CompUSA. That CompUSA was a good half hour drive from me and out of my way. I had to make a special trip to go pick it up. What was cool about these set up is Apple apparently directed the stocking so they had Mac compatible accessories and Max boxed software. While the Mac had just fewer boxed titles in total than the PC the fact few stores rarely/barely stocked what existed made the disparity seem worse than it was.
- tw04 3y agoExcept for the mouse… that horrible, horrible hockey puck. My wrist hurts just thinking about it.
- detourdog 3y agoFor adults (larger hands) it was bad news. I’m convinced I injured myself using one.
- usefulcat 3y agoAnd even if you didn't injure yourself, good luck keeping a circular mouse oriented correctly without constantly having to look down at the damn thing. To this day I'm amazed that Jobs allowed such an obvious gaffe.
- firecall 3y agoI never had an issue with it! Not the greatest mouse, but totally fine to use for me at the time. I had one at home, and my day job was using grown up Macs so I was using both. I don’t get the orientation complaints; how do people not have instant special awareness of the mouse orientation from just holding and moving it and the feel of the weight of the cable hanging out the front. My hot take is that people just don’t like something different. Like the Magic Mouse - to me the MM is the greatest mouse ever. Thankfully Apple don’t listen to YouTubers constantly bitching about it LOL
- koalacola 3y agoThe fuck is an IRQ?
- belfalas 3y agoJust wait until you learn about AUTOEXEC.BAT ;)
- pavlov 3y agoIt’s part of the holy trinity of MS-DOS hardware configuration settings: port, IRQ, DMA channel. When you installed a card like Sound Blaster so your PC games could actually play some passable music and sound effects, you’d configure these settings with physical jumpers on the card. And then you have to pass those configuration settings to the game somehow so it can send data to the device. You could leave the card to its default settings, but then it might collide with another device like a printer or whatever.
- hn8305823 3y agoIt was an essential part of 90's PC configuration hell. IRQ is short for "Interrupt Request" and each peripheral or device that needs to interrupt the CPU for time-sensitive processing needed to be assigned one. There were only 16 of them with several hard coded for certain things like RTC. Since each serial port, parallel port, floppy controller, HDD controller, video card, sound card, etc needed an IRQ assignment it was not unusual to run out of free ones and resort to overloading one or more. This was less than ideal as now multiple drivers are waking up unnecessarily for the same IRQ. Originally these were set with physical jumpers on the motherboard and expansion cards. Most things switched to being configured with software/BIOS when the industry moved to PCI bus.