In the meantime...
Apple sues the soon-to-be-ex employees for trademark abuse...
Whilst cackling maniacally.
Apple's largest authorised reseller in France – eBizcuss – has gone bust, closing all its outlets and firing its staff. The chain had 120 employees across 15 shops in France and Belgium, according to L'Express, and ran several other businesses including services businesses KA Services and ICLG, which are also closing. Staff …
> Look after your resellers ...
Apple have never done that. <Many> years ago I was part owner and director of a small dealership - sounds grander than it was. On the question of how well Apple supports those it relies on, all I'll say is that we survived as long as we did in spite of Apple, not because of them.
It was quite clear that some dealers were treated much more equally than others. Rules we were contractually required to follow were enforced if it suited Apple to do so, and not if it suited them to turn a blind eye.
This would be a case of "Big American Firm acting Like Fat American Git" is I hadn't seen exactly the same "business model" re: independent retailers from a certain hobby company headquartered in the UK with a very popular product line. It seems that once you have a popular product fenced in with a minefield of patents, trademarks and copyright (said UK company has trademarked a wall of unlikely stuff) your next move is to try and drive your independent retailers out of business by forcing them to overstock short-lived lines while choking new product supply.
Apple have never played well with others, so what did they expect? The only viable resellers are either those that use Apple as honey pots to drive people into their stores (Usually the large retailers) or those that offer a service that apple doesn't such as people offering business packages with onsite service & install. Everyone else is just kidding themselves and guaranteed to fail.
I have wondered in the past about resellers. If you're just selling Apple products then you are putting yourself at the mercy of Apple anyway. Same with franchises - you pay to use their image. But if their image is not good in the public eye, then you're screwed.
It has always smacked of laziness for me - those who cannot market well themselves or come up with their own ideas for business are resellers for others. I'm sure Apple won't cry over this.
It ought to be a partnership. You get the benefit of the franchiser's experience and resources (advertising etc) and you build a business with your own graft on top - end result both their and your bank balances are enriched.
Now how often that happens I don't know - but Dyno-rod and McDonalds always seem to be busy.
Leeds doesn't have an Apple store because it has a reseller. I call it Apple Store Lite because its almost but not quite an Apple store. If they ever piss Apple off they're screwed. There are Apple stores 40 miles away (Sheffield and Manchester). So either I go in to Leeds city centre on a weekend, fun! (NOT!) or I have a 2 hour round trip to real Apple Stores.
I do neither. I go online and buy mail order which you need to do anyway if you've got a custom order! So I'm really not worried about stores at all.
Leeds doesn't have one because we have so many pc worlds here. Walk into one and try buy a laptop without one of their planks trying to sell you an ipad and I will truly be shocked.
Anyway, if we had an Apple store the queues would get bricked by the natives of Belle Isle/Gipton for sport.
Wouldn't it be great for a company with balls of steel to start flogging Hackintosh boxes at a fraction of that of a new Mac?
I'm sure there's already a few individuals doing so, but something really mainstream would be fantastic - possibly based in China, grey imports into the UK/USA with enough availability to be a viable option.
I'd *love* to see Apple take a bite of that.
They could call it the Raspberry or Rasp for short.
There would be no explicit mention of it being a Hackintosh. It would just be a poorly kept secret.
Rasp 520 looks suspiciously like a Mac Mini.
Rasp 1024 looks suspiciously like an iMac.
Rasp 1000 looks suspicously like a MBA.
Rasp 2000 looks suspicously like a MBP.
Rasp 3000 looks suspiciously like bargain Mac Pro.
Rasp 4000 looks suspicously like a non-bargain Mac Pro.
Some models could even fit niches unfilled by Apple and include better device support ahead of apple. Using USB3. Using new TB based motherboards. Putting in better GPUs, more memory, more storage and whatnot.
Of course they would be price competitive PCs too... (nice side effect)
Seriously? No wonder none of my French friends had ever heard of them. If that's the "biggest" Apple reseller in France, it makes you wonder how few of them there are.
When I was living in France a couple of years ago, I had a choice of one indie Apple Premium Reseller about five minutes away on the tram*, and a giant FNAC superstore just round the corner from the office where I was working. The FNAC superstores are similar to PC World / Curry's in layout: lots of electronics, including an "Apple island" setup somewhere near the more traditional PC area.
The indie didn't slavishly try to ape Apple's own stores by duplicating them down to the branding: they sold value-add items and would order in anything you wanted or needed, including some of the more esoteric items, like Cintiq tablets. I bought my first iPad from them instead of the FNAC. Unlike eBizcuss, that indie is still going strong and shows no sign of sacking anybody.
Come to think of it, my nearest Apple Reseller here in Italy is also an indie. And, again, they've succeeded precisely by not reinventing the wheel.
This is the IT industry. If you can't handle its constant change and transitions, you're in the wrong business.
* (Technically, a guided trolleybus. But it looks like a tram.)