MacBook Air Sales Strong; Apple Having Issues Keeping It In Stock

 

It might not be the iPhone, but the MacBook Air is selling much stronger than many of us would have guessed. After a full month of being on the market, the MacBook Air is still a difficult commodity to obtain in some markets (not all), and Apple is still quoting a 5-7 business day minimum shipping time even for the most standard models ordered from its web site.

Meanwhile, Amazon won't be shipping orders until March 16 now, and many customers who run to a Best Buy thinking they'll find one hiding out there will be surprised: there aren't many to go around. One Best Buy source (not a retail floor worker) told me that Apple has kept them pretty thin on stock.  Now I can see why.

In and around Boston, the motto this weekend at Apple Stores was "no Air for you." Cambridgeside, North Shore, Burlington, even Natick were out of stock. An employee at the Burlington store told me that demand has been extremely high, admitting that some customers even ponied up for the far more expensive MacBook Air SSD because they stayed in stock longer. North Shore's staff was telling people they had "no idea" when more units would come in.

We heard reports from readers this weekend that the MacBook Air was also out of stock in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Doing some checking of our own, we learned these stores are getting daily refreshes of stock. An employee at the Michigan Avenue Apple Store in Chicago told me when I called, "We have one, but we can't take reservations, as it's first-come, first-served." He then warned me, "Unless you can get here soon, it will probably be gone, so I'd just call back tomorrow morning. We'll definitely have more in the next few days."

The Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan had "just got a refresh" according to a "genius" there, but they didn't expect the stock to last a day. The San Francisco stores are out of non-SSD MacBook Airs, and we heard similar tales at stores in Los Angeles. Even an employee at London's Regent Street Apple Store told us that the machines are selling out the moment they get in. In some markets, however, there's plenty to go around. Calling the Indianapolis location, we were told that they had "more than enough" to meet demand.

Just as with the iPhone launch, Apple is restocking nearly every day, particularly in major markets. So, while you might not be able to get a MacBook Air today in Boston, tomorrow is a new day.  

A recurring theme in our discussions with the folks at the Apple Store (who just love to gab, it must be a job requirement) is that the MacBook Air is a switcher device. The perception that this puppy is the leanest, meanest portable there is has road warriors starry-eyed. When we feigned amazement at the product being out of stock in multiple locations, we were told time and time again that demand for the Air is increasing as people see it in action, in person. Of course, these are paid Apple employees telling us this, and they have a sales job to do. At the same time, we've heard plenty of similar anecdotes in the past week. 

Apple, of course, remains silent on the early successes of the MacBook Air. There's speculation out there that Apple simply didn't order near enough machines from the manufacturer, and therefore the shortages aren't truly reflective of sales. That may be the case, but according to the Apple Store sales rank widget, the MacBook Air has been the top selling Mac since before the middle of February, outselling the MacBook, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro—this, despite week-long shipping delays.

From Ars Technica.

Texas: End of the Road For Hillary Clinton

It is doggoned poetic that the last stand in Hillary Clinton’s botched quest for the White House will almost certainly be next Tuesday in Texas, a state that in all its crazy quilt hugeness gave us three presidents who presided in times of war and economic distress, took away one other president in his prime and is about to set the stage for a man who could become America’s first black president.

Clinton is likely to lose Texas because there is no potentially controversial photograph of Barack Obama at this late date that could check the extraordinary momentum that he has kept building and building. Seriously folks, she has simply run out of effective talking points because she had too few to begin with in a campaign smugly predicated on the aura of experience and inevitability, while Obama will be able to outspend her for TV commercials and other advertising by a 2-1 margin.

In fact, Clinton may lose the delegate race by a wider margin than the popular vote because of what wags refer to as the “Texas Two-Step.”

This is a system that her campaign had to acknowledge it didn’t even understand until last week, much too late for it to try to change another set of rules that it found to be inconvenient. Some 126 delegates will be designated by primary vote results and 67 decided in caucus elections attended by people who enrolled for them when they voted. The remaining 35 are superdelegates.

Clinton’s campaign never gave a prairie dog’s ass about building grassroots organizations state by state as Obama has done to great effect in all 50 and this will hurt her in Texas.

The substantially larger Obama ground operations have repeatedly tripped her up as Obama has amassed 10 of his 11 straight victories by margins greater than 20 percent and by a mere 17 percent in Wisconsin, yet another state that had seemed tailor made for a candidate who was fitting herself for a tiara before the first primary vote was counted.

The Texas system will be especially cruel to Clinton because Obama is likely to pick up the lion’s share of the 67 caucus delegates. With the exception of Nevada way back on January 19, Obama’s hyper-committed supporters have killed Clinton at caucuses.

Wait! It gets worse for Clinton.

The delegate apportionment of the primary popular vote will be based on turnout in the 2004 and 2006 Democratic primaries. Turnout was highest in African-American areas of Dallas and Houston and in Austin and environs, home to the rich liberals who have turned out in droves for Obama in other states. Clinton is likely to pick up comparatively few delegates in areas heavy with the Latino voters who were going to be her firewall.

Finally, the increase in early voting in Texas has been astronomical, in some counties 600 percent higher than in 2006. Not coincidentally, these are the areas where Obama would appear to be the strongest.

With chickens coming home to roost every which way, Hillary Clinton can’t win for losing in the Lone Star State. And lose she will. She has nothing to be ashamed of. But if she doesn’t concede after Texas she may.

Republicans Try To Swiftboat Obama's Name

From Dave Winer:

The first time this year I heard Lakoff talk I asked how the Republics would attack Obama. Without hesitation he said three words: Barack Hussein Obama.

From his confidence I gathered that this was like asking if the 49ers would use a passing offense when Joe Montana was the quarterback. Or that the Oakland A's with Canseco and McGwire would depend on home run hitting. There's a certain logic to the Republic machine; Lakoff understands it.

In 2004, when they ran the Swift Boat ads, claiming that John Kerry, a war hero, lacked integrity and courage and was disloyal (ads run on behalf of a draft dodger and recovering drug addict), the candidate and his campaign said they hated the ads, too, and the loophole in campaign finance laws that allowed them should be closed. But they did nothing to stop the ads or counteract them (they could have run opposing ads, for example, saying they want a campaign on real character issues, not lies). Of course they didn't do that because the Swift Boat ads were central to their strategy for winning.

2004 should have been a referendum on the war in Iraq, instead the focus was on the campaign itself. The swiftboat ads were run over and over, for free, on all the networks. They are so easily manipulated. You think this wasn't in a Republic Party plan from Day 1? If you said no, you need to go back to the school of hard knocks for a refresher course.

So now we have the H-bomb, Obama's middle name, and the Republics are starting early. Sure the candidate disavows it, even though the words were introduced at his campaign rally. No one interrupted the speaker. McCain waited to apologize until after the event was over and the audience had left (they might boo him, why take a chance). Karl Rove, meeting with Republic strategists cautions against using Obama's middle name. The national Republic Party slaps the wrist of the Tennesee Republic Party for using Obama's middle name in a press release. This is an exact replay of 2004.

Michelle Obama calls this the "obvious, ultimate fear bomb."

Josh Marshall says it's "channel conflict."

Like 2004, the Republics must be betting that the Democrats won't respond, because, as in 2004, their candidate is more vulnerable to this kind of mischief than Obama is. One could point out that there is a child from a Muslim country, Bangladesh, living in the McCain house, his adopted daughter. It's true isn't it? Obama himself would say he abhors this kind of politics, and no doubt he does. The child is Asian, but she's pretty dark-skinned. I wonder what that means? It's just a question. Can't we ask questions?

What I don't get is people who support Obama, old enough to remember swiftboating, and still willing to wait to "see what happens." There's no waiting. They're using exactly the same play that worked so well in 2004.

It is early, but it is almost too late to stop the escalation.

And it seems the power to stop the escalation belongs to McCain and him alone.

Look, he's the new leader of the Republic Party. Apologies don't cut it. Is that how he's going to deal with foreign leaders? Is he going to apologize at the first sign of trouble, or does he have the courage and will to solve the problem. Either he's the Republican's leader or he's a wimp. There's no in between. He is responsible for what his party does. No amount of double-talk will absolve him from that.

The correct answer, which he did not give, is threefold:

1. Apologize first to Obama and his family, at a personal level, for allowing his podium to be used to imply that he's anything but a patriotic and loyal son of America. You want some extra credit, say you're proud that he has a chance to be president, that it says to the world that the United States is diverse, and we practice our stated philosophy of being open and Democratic. (There's nothing wrong with this. Do what the Dems have been doing, say no matter what the US is going to get an excellent leader this time around. It's time for Americans to unite as the Dems have united.)

2. Apologize to the American electorate, liberal and conservative, on behalf of some very nasty people who call themselves Republics, but don't come close to reflecting the values of the party of Lincoln. They are free to vote for whoever they want, but your campaign, which is an American campaign, will stick to the very real differences between the candidates, not lies or implicit lies, for example, that Obama is a Muslim (he's Christian).

3. The hardest part, but the one that really matters -- take control of your party and commit to us that it won't happen again. Again, if you want extra credit, bring Obama on stage with you, and Hillary Clinton, and all three of you say that this isn't the America you want, and that swiftboating will not be part of this election.

It's rare that history presents one such an opportunity as the one being presented to McCain. He could be a rat and dishonest and might just win the election, but this way of winning is not winning at all. In the end he'll hate himself for what he has become. I believe that McCain is a good enough human being to understand this. He's at a crossroads now, and which way he goes has a lot to do with which way the country goes.

PS: A frequently asked question -- why do you call McCain's party "The Republic Party?" It's my small way to remind members of his party that the correct name of their leading opposition is the Democratic Party. That so many Republicans trash the name of their opponent, esp ones like McCain who claim to be honorable people, says that well, they have no honor. I noticed that McCain started doing it shortly after he became the presumptive nominee. I think Democrats and their supporters (like myself) have to get used to balancing this out, even though it may be embarrassing to appear so illiterate.

Original article. 

Cool Game For Touch-screen Tablet PCs

Microsoft Lowered Vista Requirements To Help Intel Sell Incompatible Chipsets

So now that the "Vista Capable" lawsuit is a full-blown class action, the judge has unsealed all 158 pages of emails between Microsoft execs trying to sort out what went wrong with the sticker program. While bits and pieces have been blacked out, what remains is still fairly incredible -- although Intel's 915 chipset was initially rejected as compatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that "In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded" and "We are caving to Intel. We worked the last 18 months to drive the UI experience and we are giving this up." On top of that, it seems that the company was getting direct feedback from retailers that the stickers were confusing, with Wal-Mart appealing directly to HP to pull Vista Capable stickers from low end machines, and an MS exec saying that "I was in Best Buy listening to people and can tell you this did not come clear to customers. We set ourselves up." That's pretty damning, if you ask me -- and the complete emails, linked below, are full of similar bombshells. Looks like this case may have some serious legs after all.

Read - Seattle Post-Intelligencer coverage of the case
Read - PDF of all the emails

Lawrence Lessig: How Creativity Is Being Strangled By The Law (TED Conference)

The West Wing & Barack Obama Merge

Sarcasm