Apple's iMac goes on sale in Ireland tomorrow and demand looks set to outstrip supply by a considerable margin. One retailer said last Friday that the release had generated more consumer interest and advance orders than any other new computer in the last decade. The iMac is to retail at 1030, plus 21 per cent VAT. Apple is having trouble keeping up with demand for the ever-so-sleek iMac in the US and is racing to restock shops, which have reported record-breaking sales. In what can only be described as "Mac Madness", online buyers are hitting auction sites and Macintosh specialty sites looking for iMac bargains, T-shirts and other memorabilia - and all this is before a bite has been taken out of Apple's $100 million advertising budget. Meanwhile, a survey compiled by a major US computer retailer has shown that nearly 15 per cent of iMac buyers are first timers while another 13 per cent are replacing Windows PCs
Bounty Offered: The Business Software Alliance, which represents major software developers, has announced a reward campaign against software piracy in Ireland. Up to 2,500 will be paid to anyone providing information on illegal business copying of software which enables the BSA to take successful legal action. According to the latest estimates, the software piracy rate in Ireland stands at 65 per cent, 26 points higher than the European average and is generating losses of 33.5 million in the Irish IT sector.
Deposition Behind Locked Gates: A federal appeals court last week sided with Microsoft by allowing the pretrial depositions of Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives to begin in private. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overruled an earlier decision by US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. "The balance of harm favours [Microsoft]," the court decided. The long-awaited trial has also been rescheduled to begin on September 23rd - two weeks and a day later than originally planned.
Flexicom To Float: Flexicom, the Dublin-based international payment card software company, has announced its intention to obtain a dual listing on the Developing Companies Market in Dublin and the Alternative Investment Market in London by the end of the year. The company is seeking to raise between 5 million and 7 million - two-thirds of it for international expansion . Flexicom says its software is used at over 12,000 points of sale in 11 countries.
Solutions For The New Millennium: Euro 2000, an exhibition and seminar programme to address Y2K and Euro currency issues, will take place in the RDS on November 28th and 29th. In addition to examining the challenges of the Y2K bug, the exhibition, with over 40 exhibitors, will offer information on EMU upgrades to accounting, management and banking systems.
All Gunne's Blazing: Cisco has supplied TEIS with the hardware for a major voice over frame relay installation for Gunne Property Consultants. The network uses the new Cisco 3810 multi-service concentrator to connect six remote sites to the company's head office in Ballsbridge. Also, Cisco last Friday agreed to acquire American Internet for $56 million in stock. The latter's products enable the deployment and support of Internet devices such as set-top boxes and cable modems.
Indifference Is Biggest Obstacle: There's a widely held belief among senior Irish executives that e-commerce is only about the Internet, according to a new report, "E-commerce - Today's technology news, tomorrow's business reality?", which was launched by Dublin-based strategy consultants, Prospectus, last Wednesday. The study finds that management indifference - not security or bandwidth issues - is the main barrier to e-commerce growth and warns that Irish companies will fall behind international competitors if they judge e-commerce on the basis of direct sales alone, rather than recognising it as having the potential to dramatically reduce costs, improve customer service and internal communications and streamline the supply chain. Further information is available from Prospectus at 01 2603122
Generator Powers Up: Macromedia last week announced the release of Generator, a software package designed to create automated and personalised Web site graphics. The new software is a server tool which uses templates developed in Flash 3 to generate Web graphics dynamically using "live" data. Generator products include Developer's Studio for creating graphic templates and Generator Graphics Server which serves the real-time Web graphics.
Excited Families: Excite has unveiled a new communities service aimed at helping small businesses and extended families communicate over the Net. The new service was designed to combine popular Internet services like chat rooms, message boards and email, to allow small groups visit a single site to chat, post photos, calendars, telephone directories and suchlike. Unlike personalised home pages, which allow individuals communicate with many visitors, the Excite Communities was set up so that all members of a designated group may participate.
In Brief... ICL is providing services to Lombard and Ulster Banking to ensure that the bank's core IT system is "Euro prepared". . . Lan Communications has become the first organisation in Ireland to secure TeamStation Professional reseller accreditation for the Intel Business Video Conferencing portfolio. . . Network Associates has announced that it finalised its acquisition of Dr Solomon's Group...