Intuit, Best Buy, and Hewlett-Packard, Who Needs 'Em? June 11th There is a lot of good news in the Mac world right now, a whole lot of it. Apple's stock has been steadily rising for the last seven weeks; Wall Street analysts are tripping over themselves to see who can say the most good things about Apple; iMacs are still selling like hot cakes; new software and hardware products are coming out faster than The Mac Observer or any other publication can keep up with; and the future just keeps on looking better all the time. Amidst all this happiness there have been a couple of stumbling blocks in the last few weeks however. Intuit dumped QuickBooks for the Mac, Hewlett-Packard stopped Mac scanner production, and Best Buy proved once again that we were better off without them in the first place. My question to you is "Who needs ‘em?" And who needs Bill V. Campbell too?. Mr. Campbell holds a seat on Apple's Board of Directors as well as being the Chairman and former CEO of Intuit, the same company that canceled QuickBooks for the Mac. You might remember that Intuit also killed Quicken for the Mac a little over a year ago. Mr. Campbell was an Apple Board member at that time too. A few weeks later, Apple and Intuit announced that when Mr. Campbell was shown what Apple had planned (the iMac), he was so dazzled that Intuit was reversing its policy on Quicken. Quicken 98 was to come out shortly thereafter. At that time it was marveled how a Board member could possibly be unaware and not already seen what Apple was planning. The answer is that he was probably not unaware. Apple bought Intuit off with a bundling deal for Quicken 98 in exchange for Intuit bringing Quicken back to the Mac. With over 1.2 million iMacs sold since then, that is 1.2 million copies of Quicken 98 sold as well. So here we are one year later, and Mr. Campbell's company is once again leaving their Mac customers behind and dropping QuickBooks. Don't forget that QuickBooks Pro was dumped by Intuit a few years before that. The best thing is that there are actually lots of businesses that run on QuickBooks for the Mac (this publication is among them), the problem is that Mac users don't upgrade as quickly or often as Windows users (Windows users have been trained to upgrade as often as possible). Being an Objectivist, I will be the first one to support Intuit's right to protect their bottom line and look for the maximum Return On Investment. That's fine and dandy as far as it goes but get Mr. Campbell the hell off Apple's Board. I personally do not see how Mr. Campbell can be looking out for the interests of Apple when his company has dropped Mac support for three key Mac products, though they did bring one of those products back. The irony of a sitting Board member at Apple's being responsible for dropping Mac support on vital products is unconscionable! Even Microsoft has done a better job of supporting the Mac than Mr. Campbell's Intuit. Perhaps Bill Gates should be offered Bill Campbell's seat? Let's not even get into the fact that the Mac platform is what got Intuit got their start! So who needs Mr. Campbell or Intuit? With Intuit's lackluster support for the Mac out of the way, there is no doubt that one of the companies making Mac accounting packages will step up to the empty plate and take the sales that Intuit doesn't want anymore. Then there is Best Buy. I have touched on this in The Mac Observer Spin for the last few weeks. How does Best Buy feel about being the only retail outfit in the entire world that can't sell an iMac when given the chance? The only folks anywhere who couldn't handle the "complexities" of Apple's wacky color schemes. In the meanwhile, Sears seems to be ready to show that they can handle it. Sears, a store not known for its technical prowess or computer-savvy sales personnel, is proving even now that they can handle the job. Check out two stories of Sears doing the job: "At Least One Sears Is Kicking Butt!" and "Another Sears Gets High Marks". Sure, there have been some negative stories from some Sears locations, but most of the reports around the web have been positive. I personally find this to be quite funny. Best Buy, the place where there are more first time computer buyers than you can shake a stick at, a big stick even, could NOT handle the iMac. That is pretty embarrassing if you ask me. Of course, Sears could also fall on their face with the iMac, but I think they will be hugely successful, especially in small town USA where Sears is remarkably strong. One thing that will help Sears work even harder at doing this right is the fact they too have been a recovering company, though for a longer period than Apple. Sears can use the traffic that the iMac hype will generate and they are already working hard to get it. Not even CompUSA has done a special commercial for the iMac, but Sears has. So I think Sears will be successful. So who needs Best Buy? Not Apple. That leaves Hewlett-Packard. This is a slightly different situation. HP left the Mac market once before when they exited the Mac printer market. They re-entered the market when Apple worked out a deal to co-market HP printers as Apple was getting out of the OEM deal they had had with Cannon for some time. They are still selling a couple of USB printers and network printers with Mac drivers which begs one to ask what is going on with Mac scanners? The company announced a couple of weeks ago that they would no longer be making Mac scanners. Why not do the same thing they are doing with their printers and make Mac USB scanner drivers for the iGeneration? Perhaps this is their version of Thinking Different? HP's departure doesn't really hit that hard however. There are several other companies making great Mac scanners (and printers). Epson, Lexmark, Cannon, Olympus, Tektronix, Microtek, and Umax among others come to mind. These companies are all doing very well catering their printing and scanning products for the Mac. So who needs HP? As nice as it would be to have their excellent scanning products available for the Mac, we can easily survive without them. There are just too many other companies who have seen the resurgence of Apple as a potential profit center for their business for HP's absence to really be felt. Who needs Intuit, Best Buy, and HP? These three companies have proven either inept or just plain unwilling to make a successful go of it in the Mac world. At a time when companies are crawling out of the woodwork to announce Mac, or iMac support, it is passing strange that these companies are leaving. With everyone else standing by ready to earn our money, I say "good riddance!" What do you say?