I’m a design whore, there’s no denying it, I have to be, there’s no other reason anyone in their right mind would have stuck by Apple through all the years had they not have been (it most certainly wasn’t their PowerPC processing ceiling I assure you), and for me Bang & Olufsen (B&o) are the Apple of the home entertainment world. Many people will call it overpriced (which lets be honest it kinda is) and internally its technical capabilities aren’t as good as what you may be able to find for cheaper but fuck me if it isn’t the sexiest looking hi-fi gear around town.
Today B&o announced their first foray in to the burgeoning 3D TV world. The BeoVision 4-85 is an 85 inch behemoth plasma based (yes they still prefer plasma over LCD colour recreation – and rightly so) that incorporates the BeoLab 10 centre speaker and apparently 3D. Their press release doesn’t go in to great technical detail nor provide pricing (expect over A$70k) information but expect more info post its official release in Moscow tomorrow. In the mean time take a look at the BeoVision 4-85′s currently available cousin the BeoVision 4-103 (that’s 103 inches weighing 500kg folks) to get an idea of what she’ll look like.
To own a piece of B&o equipment is to adopt a child, in that buying one of their lavish devices may well cost you the same as a child does until they leave home at 18, trust me I’ve owned a CD player they make (and you’ll see in almost any Hollywood film with an office or decadent home) the BeoSound 9000 and I took out a loan! Mind you I was crazy and 21 at the time; but you do these things… don’t you?
A recent MacTalk post eagle-eyed a new round of retail job listings for the Victorian postcode 3205 otherwise known as “South Melbourne”. A store here would mark Apple’s first in-roads towards servicing the Melbourne CBD. The news was of course met with a chorused “Huzzah!” by fanboys en masse – the minor sub-plot: a debate waged over whether this meant the demise of any plans for a truly central CBD store.
Should this four digit prophecy prove true spare a thought for Apple reseller Computers Now. Their head office and showroom currently reside upon a corner of Clarendon St, South Melbourne’s main retail strip and what is most likely to be the home of the alluded Apple store. A slight kick in the balls to Comp Now who’d undoubtably see their retail bottom line take a hit with Apple parking their butts a few hundred metres down the road. Salt in the wound when you consider that the two Apple retail stores currently operating in Victoria have also parked themselves squarely on Computers Now’s doorsteps firstly at Chadstone (a store which has since closed) and Doncaster (a whole 100 metres away on the same floor of the shopping centre). Not only have Apple kicked them in the balls but I’d say they’ve fair cut them off too!
None of this would irk me too greatly should I not have, many years ago, ventured in to the realm of becoming an Apple reseller myself and gone through a very tiresome process of choosing a location that needed to be approved by Apple and the powers that be. Dealing with your local Apple Business Development Manager (BDM) my partners and I were given a very lengthy radial berth that we not impede on existing resellers and their business. The technicalities and legalities behind it all could be construed as complex but the general gist was around population density and it’s relation to supporting multiple outlets. At this time you have to remember the iMac had barely seen the light of day and Apple was hardly cash positive so their aim was to cover as much land mass as possible and not cannibalise their rather meagre sales streams. It made sense. It was business wise and between then and now Apple has been forced to recognise that all the good spots have already been taken and it would seem are just muscling the poor bastards out of their way.
Contracts and clauses have no doubt changed in the past eight or nine years, of that I’m sure, and technically Apple aren’t a “reseller” so the rules don’t apply in the first place but I still think it’s a shitty way to say thanks for standing by them while we were selling your crap Quadra 900′s for ten grand a pop once a year and eating tinned soup for dinner.
In closing I should add that I have never worked at Computers Now nor am I affiliated with them in any way. I also have no knowledge of any negotiations Apple may or may not have with the aforementioned resellers should they impose their giant foot on nearby ground. This is purely an opinion piece.
