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It's either one of the reasons you mentioned, or someone jumped the gun with posting this promo.

Indian giver.

This is bad publicity for Apple.

"This is bad publicity for Apple?"

How?

A web developer with a good idea that the corporate suits blindly ignore.

WTF?

macnut222

finger it out.

This was poorly thought out by Apple, no matter what the cause.

It makes it look like Apple isn't well organized to the public when something like this occurs, and it this instance, their right.

I have a feeling someone is about to get "Steved"








"Steved" = Fired

"This is bad publicity for Apple?"

macnut is right. What? There was no publicity for the promotion. No publicity of its launch, no publicity for the unexpected end to the promotion.

No publicity whatsoever.

No, I think it was a sign of things to come. A new program that was yet to start and some webdesigner dropped the file into the wrong directory.

We may yet see the test drive.

This is a little disappointing. Although the Mac Mini is a great buy without the 30 day money back guarantee, I told 3 borderline "switchers" about the promo yesterday and that it would be a good time for them to give the best OS a try.

Now it makes me look stupid - as well as Apple. There is good publicity and bad publicity - this would be the bad type.

Boo to you Steve, or your Marketing folk.

Oh well...

Either this appeared like Mac Mini sales were weak, a glitch occured somehow, or this wasn't meant to be seen just yet and accidentially posted.

Maybe the response was indeed overwhelming. :D

Or we all have been tricked!

this is kinda like that "Win What You Want" contest that we canadians were supposed to have but then got pulled, without disclosing the reason. (supposedly it was a case of right hand not knowing what left hand was doing type situation)

No one that anyone will ever know or has known will get Steved. the offending person will just take a very long vacation to somewhere in the middle of nowhere and never return.

If this were Dell or HP, or Creative, imagine how stupid we'd say they were...

maybe they wanted to annouce it on Sept 7th...who knows

Supposed to start in 60 days instead of ending then? For the holiday season?

Pulling this was probably a good idea. Maybe someone finally remembered the "Test Drive a Mac" campaign from the early 90's. I worked for an Apple reseller back then and what ended up happening was a lot of returned Macs that couldn't be sold as new.

not the first time -- back in 84 Scully launched a 'test drive a macintosh' campaign, in that case, a 24-hour trial. it was a mess for a variety of reasons and i suspect this program was canned because of bad memories in general. the situation in 84 was very different, with mac shortages and heavy reliance on resellers, but i'm sure the bad taste lingers.

apple's risks with this type of program today seem pretty low to me -- few would return and the cost of returned machines could mostly be recouped through the "reconditioned" sales channel. but then again, they already have the best marketing program in place for the Mini -- a low price point to begin with.

Maybe they found a loophole in the terms and needed to revise.

I'm guessing the promo was supposed to be launched NEXT year with the Intel based Mac mini.

I ordered a mini yesterday because of the test drive program, and the folks at telesales (1-800-MY-APPLE) said they'd been fully briefed about the program, so it's not a web-designer-jumped-the-gun mistake.

When I talked to them today, they were also unaware of why the program had been cancelled. They'd received an urgent email saying "Urgent Change: Test Drive Campaign Cancelled," but not saying why.

I'm told they even had banners up in some of the stores.

So I can't tell whether this was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or the right hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Oh well, my mini's on the Fedex truck, so unless they send out ninjas to hijack the trucks back to Elk Grove, I'm OK.

Maybe this was also supposed to roll out on Sept. 7th?

A good idea, but a bit of a waste of resources. My dad used to be able to keep up with the latest tech by exploiting offers like this one. He had a new computer every 6 months, for like three years, and all he needed was some start up cash. It went bust when he forgot on one cycle.

ron wrote:

"macnut222

finger it out."

How many fingers does he need to use ron?

MDN and all you other totally blind idiot macaddicts that pounded their chests thinking this was such a great, brilliant idea.
This macmini 30-day giveaway was totally dumb. All it showed is the macmini is a flop - they have to give it away to get people to try it.
What other company offers its products this way? - none.

And now that Stevego cancelled the program it shows that there is trouble in Apple management. Too much iPod at Apple not enough attention to its computers. The new Mactel is taking too long and will arrive late.

MDN - shame on you - you never question a thing Apple offers, you just bend over smile as it shoves up something new you can blindly praise.

If Microsoft had done this you would have spent weeks and months pounding away at how stupid they are.

"I'm told they even had banners up in some of the stores."

Now that is doubtful seeing as how it clearly said the offer was an "exclusive online only offer" on the web page before it was pulled. It's obvious that everyone is simply speculating here and we'll probably never know the truth of what happened...

EV1, actually the retail store employees push online sales from the stores. They get credit for 2 sales instead of one, because Apple saves $$ when they can direct-ship instead of moving and replenishing store inventory. They just walk a customer to any mac in the store and help them place the online order.

Somebody's losing their job at Apple. Probably in marketing. How dare that person come up with a good marketing idea. That just doesn't fit Apple's philosophy. Good riddance to you. Take your ideas somewhere that actually believes in marketing!

HEY RON! (dipweed more like it)

Keep your racist comments to yourself. "Indian Giver"? how f***ing ignorant can you be? Hey, how about this: I will give you a job, give you a home for your family (this after I ran you out of your previous house), but oops, nevermind. Since I discovered your house sits on a lot rich with minerals, I will confiscate your house, relocate you to a refugee camp, give you and your family diseases, and you lose you job because you are now "homeless." But hey, we will honor your family by naming a sports team after you - the "Dipweed Ron's".

eh. nevermind. you are not worth it. go crawl back in your hole with a Windows PC.

It's a good idea from the viewpoint of getting people to try the format but if demand was ridiculously high they would have no way of ramping up production to meet the demand. There are numerous reasons why it could be a bad idea and was cancelled. Of course most of them would surely have been factored for before it was introduced. It will be interesting to see if we ever find out the reason why it was stopped.

Smart move. Love to see some Mac OS X TV ads though.

One possible reason for the cancellation could be a Mac Mini update within 30 days. Therefore everyone in this program will choose to return their mini's.

My guess is they forget to tell people they had to buy it first--
so they were obligating themselves to send out to peope to try
before they buy--that is an excellent promo. I almost took one
myself cause at that point it was either send me on or potential
law suit.

"If Microsoft had done this you would have spent weeks and months pounding away at how stupid they are"

No, but we will now spend months and weeks pounding away at how stupid YOU are.

If Apple announced a new product called iCrap - a dried turd - MDN would say it is the best thing ever, tell everyone to buy one and at the same time question Bill Gate´s manhood and say Microsoft sucks because they didn´t bring iCrap out first.

MDN take: "It would have sold Macs and created more Mac users. No wonder they pulled it so fast!"

Sheesh, MDN, you guys are total, blithering idiots.
Do you actually read what you write???

hammer - you ARE 100% certified stupid.
No go do your homework, there is a popquiz tomorrow on how to use the urinals at junior high.
Tip 1: Unzip your pants this time.

webbyswim -

You gotta relax. It's an ignorantly-used expression which *almost* always isn't meant to slander anyone (these days). It gets picked up by children (the same way "gyp" did where I come from) without their realizing what it means, and stays planted in the brain as a name-calling tool dissociated from the meanings of its component parts.

ron -

You gotta pick your words more carefully. If you *do* harbor ill will toward American natives and their descendants, then by all means go hog wild (my apologies to the hogs). If you don't (as I suspect), you should examine your choice of language. A lot of people are offended by racial epithets, no matter how far we've come in "race relations" in the world.

everyone else -

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "Apple Rulez Microsoft Droolz" enlightened debate.

Adds fuel to my belief that an Intel based Mac Mini will debut in September. Why? Apple needs to test Intel based OS X systems. People buying Mac Mini's aren't going to put a lot of software on their system, so its the perfect test platform to get the kinks worked out. OS X already runs on Intel. The iLife apps already run on Intel. A Pentium M based Mac Mini would be a great beginning. No need to wait for the new line of Intel chips. Save them for the PowerBooks and the Power Macs.

just out of curiosity... what about if someone bought a monitor with it.... they couldn't return that in 30 days for a full refund could they? i don't really remember what apple's return policy is on those. (been a long time since i bought a mac, happens when you are a broke college student).

so would you be stuck with a monitor and no computer if you didn't like the mini?

The reason Apple pulled the Mac Mini program is that Apple figured out that people were ordering the Mini not for the hardware but for the software, especially Tiger. At the end of 30 days return the machine and have a free copy of OSX 10.4 or at least 10.3

But you can buy any Mac and return it used and open for 14 days, so it really isn't that big of a deal in terms on publicity, promotions etc ...

Jeff: "Adds fuel to my belief that an Intel based Mac Mini will debut in September."

Jeff, you have gone way past your ration of apple kool-aid. Go get some fresh air.

------------
What this minimac promotion blunder adds fuel to is that the macmini should have perhaps been called "cube 2".

Kevin,

I don't believe it's that easy. This industry has always been prone to fraud. Many retailers will give you store credit for your returned purchase if the item has been opened. The retailers may even charge a restocking fee.

A promo as Apple had with the Mini draws a great deal of attention. Apple would not give purchasers a hard time about returning the mini within the guidelines of the promo.

Everyone love a free Tiger.

Hey webbyswim,

Don't you know an idiom, when you see one?

Why are people so bloody sensitive and PC.

-Gary-

Maybe they got too many orders that they chose to stop it...

Ok Earnest, apparently you think nobody is buying the mini. Why not? It can't be the price. Maybe lack of performance? And what would increase the performance? A new processor. Maybe a G5? Not likely. Steve already stated that the mini would run Intel. I'm just saying it will be sooner than people think. And I stated my reasons. In fact, I think Apple could promote it like this:

OS X now available for PC's for only $499. Comes with free Mac mini. Run it on your PC and on the mini.

macmini = old cube.

Few are buying it.
Why? Who knows? Probably overpriced and lack of performance. It was aimed at Windows owners. For 95% of Windows people they could care less about Apple products. Don´t follow Apple, don´t care about Apple computers.
Don´t want to change from what they know.

The new macintel chips aren´t coming until mid-2006 and for laptops first. It will be a long wait until desktop mactels roll out. Apple will probably have to bring out a new version of OSX to get the most out of it.

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