Apple strong arming retailers to carry more product lines is not new nor different that most major manufacturers. As with General Motors, ie, you want sell Hummer3 you must a dealer license and contract for a complete GM "car and suv" line. Look at MIcrosoft contract dealings with OEMs and retailers.

What Apple did wrong was its over the top - extreme handling of retailers and licensees of Apple Stores when things were going wrong or just having tough times. Apple management failed to understand standard operation principles concerning contracts, that the fine print is there for "extreme measures" when needed, not as a daily tool to manhandling your retailers to boost volume. Apple has improve in this area, I think.

You think, sorry, perhaps not in scale but in dirty dealings.

The dealers contracts weren't as simple as "You gotta sell $1M per month or you loose your dealship" oh no!

You had to take $1M of Apple inventory per month but don't worry we'll extend a line of credit to cover that.
Fine until that Apple inventory exceed your line of credit, the one that's underwritten by the family home. So Apple calls in the receivers and they liquidate the dealers. Well they might be doing OK, Apple gets back their inventory, the funds go back to the dealers.
Ha, around $12M of inventory goes to the dealers, much of it superceded stock, Apple buys it back at auction for around $3M, the dealers are left with a $9M shortfall.
So Apple save $9M in writedown on superceded stock and their dealers loose their shirts, their families loose their homes. Those dealers were Apple's front line troops and they were sold out.

And now we have a new bunch of dealers and Apple is playing new tricks. Oh yes, they can sell iPods. But they can't sell the prepaid cards for iTunes downloads, go figure. I could buy one in almost any convenience store but an Apple dealer, nope.

Bob.

I worked for Apple back in the 80's. I was a "Senior Sales Executive," a person who was responsible for sales to a number of Fortune 1000 corporations in Southern California. After a few years I was given responsibility for sales to the major universities in the southern half of California, including places like UCLA, USC, Caltech, and so forth. One of my duties was to make sure the local Apple dealers were happy, especially when we were selling through college bookstores at prices that they couldn't touch. It was like walking a tightrope.

Apple had to be very careful not to screw dealers as a result of dumping Apple hardware into colleges, since they still needed the dealers for handling non-student sales and support. Dealers, in turn, were in business with Apple because they believed they could make money with the product line. If they sensed a lousy deal, they would sell something else. We (Apple) were very concerned for the health of our dealerbase, since it was very important in establishing and maintaining a positive reputation with the public.

I doubt things are much different today. Today, of course, PCs have evolved to be pretty much identical to Macs in terms of usability and have surpassed Macs in some areas due simply to their superior flexibility. But Apple also has the iPod cult thing going for them. Once again, Apple needs dealers to sell and support their products. Dealers will carry Apple only if they see in the aggregate that they will make money. It's a kind of dance where each side wants to maximize their advantage but not so much as to drive the other partner away.

As an aside, I am not that much of an Apple fan today. Back in the 80's it was obvious that the WYSIWYG promise of Apple blew away the arcane DOS environment of the PC. That advantage is totally gone now. Instead, you have the "Think Different" mentality. Join Us simply becasue we're not Them. Be an individual. That won't take you very far before you realize that once you join you are no longer an individual--you've just joined a different "Them" group.

I personally have not bought into the iPod environment because I perceive it to be closed and inflexible. My daughter loves her Creative Muvo. It's the size of a pack of gum, uses a AAA (replacable!) cell, has a screen, and picks up FM. Putting files on it is the essence of simplicity--it shows up as a storage device on the desktop, and you drag folders into it. Cost $50. Still, you can sense her frustration sometimes as she complains that everyone else has an iPod, so she feels left out of the Magic Circle. Her logical side likes the Muvo. Her emotional side wants to buy into the groupthink.

" Today, of course, PCs have evolved to be pretty much identical to Macs in terms of usability and have surpassed Macs in some areas due simply to their superior flexibility. "

IMO and my 11 years of uing PCs to procude, engineer and record audio, PC's have always had an advantange over Macs. The main being CHOICE. As in choice of software applications and unrestricted flexibility within the OS, being that if i want to have 7 audio editingi programs installed.. i can .. with a mac, i could never do that.
Also on my pc, i use to run cubase, Logic pro audio (up to 4.5 until apple bought them out, and cakewalk.. all 3 industry standard Sequencers on one machine... sure the mac could do it.. but could i upgrade my systems as i needed to? Back then u couldnt.. it was a preset PC with no flexibility for growth .
In addiiton, the "brainwashing" of educaitonal instituations was absoluteyl appaling and now we have student who beleive that there is one one real NLE on teh planet. Think about it.. what NLEs and other video app options do i have for PC? I can run avid, vegas, liquid, edius, PremPro, Autodesk Fire/smoke... then there is the copious amounts of compositing apps out there. not to mention a myriad of other tools which are NOT available for mac.. Now how many NLE's are available on mac?

Since day DOT that i first whipped out my old Yam DX7 KB, the mac, despite its "stability" could never keep up. THen again, i NEVER had issues with stability, so IMO to say that Windows has caught up.. well.. in my experience, i'd have to disagree..

as for Apples dealings with their dealers, as well as 3rd party retailers.. well like i said, i wont let anyone i know go anywhere near Apple. What Farrs has mentioned here has happened to numerous people who thought they would be expanding their business. in turn they fel on their faces and fell into the marketing hype of "look how much weve changed NOW... " but the products reamined on shelves... not in consumer homes..

In addition, many more poeple are becoming wise to the fact that the ipod is not the be all and end all of MP3 players, and people want more from their devices, despite its "cult" popularity, those who KNOW what they want, are lookign for items which outperform the ipod itself.. and u dont have to look too far to find em...

have her buy the all new creative , vision M in 60gb.. juicy!
linky poo