Flashback

Disclaimer: This article has been originally Posted on MyMac back in 2/2/2007 (Some information might be out of date).

This article may piss-off a lot of people, and it may generate a lot of hate mail. Send it to my email (look at the about page).

But before things get messy, let me give you a quick background about myself. I am an independent corporate advisor, who has had the pleasure of working with multi-national companies, start-ups, and governments around the world. Mostly in dealing and handling contracts and projects that has cost, in some cases, over a billion US dollars. But what really matters here is that I am a passionate Mac-user.

The sad fact is that Apple has no true presence in the Middle-East market. I have yapped about this numerous times before, especially when I talked about the iPhone and its Tsunami effect in a previous article. Apple’s official dealer, ABM, is hiding behind the walls of the two MacStores they’ve set up since they got the exclusive dealership.

I had to do a lot of digging to find out that ABM (Arab Business Machines) is a subsidiary of a giant holding company called MDS group. It’s ABM that has rights to sell Apple products not only in the Mid-East, but in other countries like Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania, and Turkey, and many other locations scattered around Europe, Asia, Africa, and of course here in the Middle-East.

Population in this part of the Middle-East is over 172,310,000. that’s over 170 million people, and how many countries is the dealer covering or should be covering right now? They are the Apple dealer in the Mid-East covering Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Yemen. That’s eleven countries for one sole dealer. if you look at the dealers website (search for “Middle-East” on Apple.com, because it’s hard to find) you will find a listing of resellers’ stores that can be easily found on their site but difficult to locate on the ground, claiming they sell Apple products only. Unfortunately this is nothing more then a facade to convince Apple Inc. that ABM is doing a great job by spread Macs. The only official store I saw was placed remotely over a thousand miles away from where I live, in another city, in another country altogether.

So let me tell you what happened to me personally when I went to the “official” MacStore in Dubai, UAE and how I was treated. Please keep in mind that I love Macs so I was very tolerant, although disgusted by the way I was treated. Then imagine what a potential switcher would think.

I walked into the MacStore in Ibn Battuta Mall, which if you look at any Dubai map will find that it’s located at the furthest point from the city’s center. I took a look at all the products they displayed in that tiny store and decided to buy a Mighty Mouse. Peering at the price tag I discover that it was selling for US $70 (AED 260). Isn’t that product suppose to retail for US $49?

I then walked to the so called “Apple genius” to ask him about an issue I had. The guy didn’t know anything, he seemed lost in a single tasking universe, and told me that on Windows XP you can do it by clicking on this and that (he even confessed that he uses Windows, he “gazed” at Macs during his working hours only) Minutes passed by while he squeezed his DOS cluttered brain too hard that his face turned red against my murky yellow smile, his colleague called on him, then I heard the colleague say.

“What are you doing? You’re wasting your time, just ignore him!”

“Ignore ME?!!” I thought? I am a customer. I went to that rude salesperson to ask him about my issue, he said “Listen, get online and look it up on Apple’s website” which clearly sounded like “Buzz off!” to my ears.

Now I don’t know how Apple’ geniuses deal with their customers around the world or at least in the US, but this is how it’s done in Dubai’s orphan MacStore that I’ve been to.

What about Apple’s market place? To be very frank, if it wasn’t for Mac users and fans there would never be any market for Apple products. When I switched I felt like I was the only Mac-user around this part of the world. But then started to get emails from Mac users from all around the region because of the articles of mine published on MyMac.com. It was only then that I got to know that these guys are the ones keeping Apple and the Mac culture alive.

You may ask, how can anyone get a Mac over here? I will tell you how I got mine and when I checked I found out that a lot of new switchers did the same. We pulled out our Windows PCs, surf to Amazon.com (since Apple doesn’t sell to international customers), placed an order, then ship it to an address in the US. That address could either be a relative’s address or a company that you would pay loads of money to receive products on your behalf, then reships them over to you, So you end up paying the full retail price, plus taxes (although you’re going to ship internationally) and then pay the shipping company or relative to send it over to you. When it reaches this side of the globe, you pay customs fees between 5% to 100% depending on where you live for that shiny new computer. Sound pleasant doesn’t it? Well this is how we do it. I got 3 Macs and 5 iPods this way, holding my breath while the Macs (or iPods) are in transit that nothing bad happens to the box while it’s on the way. After I get it in my hands, I kiss Apple’s one year warranty goodbye. If it is defected or was miss-handled on its way I’ll have to live with it.

Apple’s official ambassador in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, decided to take it upon his shoulders to open up an Apple reseller store. The guy invested a lot of money in this venture. He gets Macs from the US the same way individuals do, and sells them with a small fraction over the US retail price for a markup, plus offering his customers a one year warranty just like Apple’s. Why? Because he is a Mac user, and he wants everyone to become Mac users. Buying Macs from his store is cheaper then going through all the hassle and mischief of ordering it from Amazon or any other online retailer.

I tried to find a good excuse for the Mid-East dealer not to be interested in spreading the brand, so I asked Apple’s ambassador about how well his store is doing when it comes to sales. He told me that they sell Macs faster then they get them. “There is a lot of demand! If you don’t reserve a Mac before we place a new order, you won’t be lucky enough to get one.” Said Ayman Ghazzawi, Apple’s ambassador in Jeddah. So there is a demand, and obviously a huge one.

What about Mac support? Now give me a minute to laugh about that and I’ll be back…

There is no real support for Macs here. The only place I would trust would be the ambassador’s store I mentioned, because he is the only one who hired certified Apple help desk specialists.

So why is the official dealer, Arab Business Machines, doing this? Because to them Apple isn’t a big market and they don’t want to invest enough to help spread the brand and gain market shares. They are also not Mac users. I heard a believable rumor that goes; their sales-reps don’t use Macs. The company uses PCs in their offices. Not Macs! I would never buy a Mac if you’re a sales-rep talking to me from behind a PC screen.

Let me give you a quick and simple corporate strategy lesson here. When you want to spread a powerful brand yet new to a market, you shouldn’t look for a big company that will list you as “one of” on their brand collection list they brag about. You should look for someone who’s mid-size or small yet has the passion to do it, to fight for it. Or at least a big company that understands this concept and is willing to designate a full division to achieve this goal. I don’t think this is Apple’s fault. I believe they’ve been mislead. It’s unfortunate that Arab Business Machines doesn’t have any passion to sell Macs. Small resellers have more passion then they do.

If Apple is thinking of getting a new dealer, which I think they should, they have to make sure that the new dealer will contact Mac groups and get their help and support. They are the ones who are spreading Macs around the region, not the current dealer. And they are the same people who I heard saying that they will buy the iPhone in June when it ships in the US whether it has a locked or unlocked SIM.

I wrote this because all of the bitterness I feel when I see how Apple is doing in this part of the world. They are missing out on a big market that offers a lot of opportunities, that Microsoft has blown-away because of their inflated prices. I only know of one person who can make such miracles, Steve Jobs. He did it before numerous times and he can do it again, but I think his Mid-East dealers aren’t giving him a clear and honest perspective on how the true picture looks like around here.

Now if you think I said it all you’re mistaken, this is just the beginning. I’m barely flexing my brain cells, and I will not stop till I make a difference in this region. There’s much, much more to come.

Copyright © 2007 Mazen Al-Angary, All rights reserved.

Disclaimer: This article has been originally Posted on MyMac back in 27/6/2006 (Some information might be out of date).

WARNING: The following article could be caused by internet connection deprival, that the author was forced to experienced lately, or it could be caused by the fact that the author has to check 9 email accounts daily. The author does not claim he can see the future, and that he is merely guessing.

I have recently been offline for over five days!

To a technosexual (chic geek) like myself, that is a very long time offline. I managed to survive by checking my essential 4 email accounts through my Treo 650, in case I got any urgent emails I had to reply to. I usually check 9 different email accounts daily on my computer if you’re wondering. But the main reason why I was offline for so long was because I was taking a small step towards a faster internet connection. I have installed a new wireless DSL line, and now I am surfing the web at higher speeds.

Now I won’t begin to compare DSL to a true Broadband connection, but it’s okay for now. Who am I kidding, we don’t have broadband in Saudi Arabia anyway.

All this internet deprival has caused me to stay online for hours since I got my new connection up and running. I even used both my laptops at the same time, like an octopus who has discovered the availability of internet connection on the ocean bed, downloading tons of data, as if there were no tomorrow.

Thirst is a good example you can relate all this to, if you remember a time where you have been so thirsty, by the time you got a cool drink, you kept on drinking till your belly pops out. This is how Data thirst feels like to me.

I think the next step of technology will take won’t be rolling out a new PC, jam-packed with what have you features; I think the next big thing will be software you download or install to your brain memory, and I personally prefer external storage. So your brain won’t get infected with a computer virus, the world has enough biological viruses that would last us for another millennia.

Think about it for a minute, it makes perfect sense. Big Brother wants it to happen sooner then later. A clear sign would be the under-skin injected RFID chip.

I can imagine the ads for this new technology:

“Capture and create your own videos from the locations you visited, add high-resolution eye captured pictures, crisp recorded sounds, add live vocal comments, integrate all your senses to create a new digital life and share your experience.”

“Send it and share with your loved ones over advance short range telepathy (next Bluetooth-like technology), or even upload it directly to your dot Mac account, or even dot Net if you get it to work”

“Blog or podcast directly to thousands, all over the world”

“Download college textbooks directly to your brain’ memory banks, and learn in seconds”.

The whole world will experience a new bubble with Start-ups offering users a place to store their data on it, instead of storing all this info on your external brain memory (or internal if you like to take the risk).

“Send mental images to your loved ones through our reliable psychic networks”

But what would be fun is to see the release of the next brain operating systems, like Windows Psychic, or Mac iThink, or even Linux Open Mind that has to run on your own brain cells.

You will hear people saying “I have just upgraded my memory to such and such”, or even “I have just finished installing a patch file for my new brain OS”.

Would the rules be the same in this new world? Would you still have to buy anti-virus? and where would you get it from? The pharmacy or the software store?

You think I am going off a deep end, and all this sounds crazy, but let’s hop on a time machine together (or our imagination for now) and travel 50 years back and tell anyone we meet on the street that people will be using small communication devices (cell phones , PDAs, or iPods) to talk, hear music, watch videos, place video calls, email, send text messages, podcast, or even blog, what do you think would they say about all this? They will be saying the same thing you’re thinking of saying right now.

Today computers, PDAs, and cell phones are extensions to our brains, we hear our selves saying “Oh I have that file you wanted, but let me get back to my computer to see where I stored it”, we can’t imagine our world without them anymore, we have became so dependent on them lately, that a day won’t pass without reverting to them and working on them.

But we will have to wait and see what the future of technology has to offer, then decide what our next digital religion will be, and by then it will truly be a digital religion because it will control our brains.

The moral of all this is: Don’t stay offline for long.

Disclaimer: This article has been originally Posted on MyMac back in 31/3/2006 (Some information might be out of date).

Sitting in a local Starbucks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, surfing the web while downloading my favorite Podcast, a young man approaches me, apologizing for the interruption.

“Do you work with Apple?” He asked.

“No, why?!” I reply.

“Well I was watching you working on this Apple notebook, I assumed that you might be working with them.” He says.

“I am a Mac fan, but I don’t work for Apple.” I said smiling.

“I am planning to switch to a Mac machine, are their computers any good? Can I use it for everything?” He asks.

I would have been a millionaire by now if I got a dime for every time someone asks me such questions.

People in the Middle-East see Apple products as a commodity, and a high-status symbol; using a Mac in cafes is such a prestigious in your face type of public statement. The only problem is that Apple has done little to support all those switchers. New users simply don’t know if they can use Macs the same way they would use a normal PC, or they believe in myths like using a Mac would get them stranded on a lonely digital island by themselves. In this part of the world we have to depend on unofficial Mac user groups, mostly created by a bunch of friends who own Macs, to spread the awareness of using Apple computers.

One of the things Apple should really consider is launching a mid-east region iTunes Music Store, as almost everyone owns an iPod around here, but they only use them to rip audio CDs. If Apple launches an iTunes store here people will find it extremely cheep to buy songs, and Apple would reach two billion songs in no time.

“iPods simply sell out as soon as we put them on display, it takes us a day or two max, to sell all of them” Said an electronic store salesman to me once I asked about the availability of an iPod Shuffle, which was sold out on the second day they released it.

In Dubai, UAE you can find Apple products sold virtually in every mall or electronic store around. There is only one lonely Apple store, owned by an official Apple franchise dealer located in Ibn Battuta Mall. You can also find Apple products sold at all Virgin stores around the city, and they even designated sections in their stores exclusively to sell Macs and iPods (I personally consider those places as Mac shrines).

Last Christmas I visited Dubai working on a travel article, and while there I thought I might as well get my fiancée a new iPod nano, since her 20GB 4th Generation iPod died on her. I searched everywhere for one, but not a single one could be found, and every time I asked a store clerk they tell me that they are sold out, and not getting any units shipped till January 2006.

“The nano is so cute, people can’t help themselves but to buy one or two as a perfect Christmas gift” said one stores salesman.

Back in Saudi Arabia, more and more people are starting their switching to Macs over PCs, and enjoy the process of doing so. “How can such a great solid operating system be out there without being noticed by the public” Said a switching friend to me once “I have wasted my time using PCs, I wish people can see this fact like I did.”

The Mac community is growing day after day in Saudi Arabia and the middle-east region. Some people get interested in Apple computers after seeing a Mac machine in action in-front of their own eyes, but most people get hooked up simply by using iPods, which proves that the halo effect does exist.

I know a lot of people who have recently switched to the Mac platform, and bought their second Mac machines to use in their homes. In most cases they would buy a Mac mini as a second system, to store their entire music library on and share it over Airport.

“Is this a full computer?” asked a friend when we laid our eyes for the first time on the Mac mini.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know why people still buy BUBs.” I said wondering.

(BUBs: Big Ugly Box).

© 2006 Mazen Al-Angary