There they go again, promoting clones . Because many of you have already said it in the letters you send in. Apple Falls Behind. Judging by the strangled noises emanating from the MacUser mailbag, you'd think we'd just made casserole de lapin out of the Easter Bunny. C'mon, people, get over it.
Clones are here to stay, and thank goodness.
They shore up market share while providing consumers with more choices. Reports by such chip counters as Dataquest and International Data Corp. put the Mac's slice of the American PC pie at a little over 6.5 percent in 1996, down from 11 percent in 1995. Apple shipped 30 percent fewer Macs to U.S. customers in 1996 than in 1995. Sounds pretty bleak, until you factor in the shipments of Mac OS-compatibles. In the fourth quarter of 1996 alone, more than 130,000 Mac clones were sold, bringing the total number of Mac OS systems sold in that period to 1.053 million.