[quote author=“hoytt”][quote author=“DawnTreader”]
Please understand that most Californians are environmentalists. We really don’t want the bits and pieces of Gateway showing up in Santa Monica Bay.

Environmentalists????

This is a bit off-topic, but doesn’t southern CA have the largest car to people number in the world? And 10 lane highways? Isn’t the biggest thread to SF or LA not the next earthquake, but the Friday afternoon traffic?

The reason for this? LA today and LA in the 30’s and ealry 40’s are two vastly different places. LA came into its own in a major way due to World War II. The greater LA area has one of the largest natural ports anywhere in the US and the defense industry and the military made heavy use the area during the war because of its position on the Pacific rim, the climate and the ability to scale up quality in terms of industrial growth to support the war effort.

So, LA is among the few major metropolitan areas in the US to have its biggest build up in the automobile era.

One reason Washington, DC is such a strange place to drive is because the roads were built for the horse and buggy. In many ways the same holds true for New York and Boston.

Planners in LA basically started with almost a clean transportation slate. LA in the 30’s and 40’s had one of the best metropolitan rail systems in the country, but the rails were bought up by the tire and auto makers and dismantled in favor of the car.

Plus, consider too that LA is essentially a semi-arid desert. The need for water forced the county agencies to make a giant land grab to secure water rights. It’s one reason LA County (not the city) is one of the largest metropolitan counties in the country not only in terms of population, but also geography. Did you ever hear the saying “if you can’t bring the water to the county, bring the county to the water”? That’s LA. The LA water system is one of the modern public works wonders of the world.

Roads were needed to traverse the county. Once you have roads, you have development.  Today, any major road that is built or substantially expanded in the LA area is already obsolete in terms of meeting the needs of the population even before it opens. People just keep coming ....

That said, California has the most stringent environmental laws anywhere in the country, including requirements for automobile emissions that well exceed the national requirements. Trying bringing a car into California from another state that isn’t equipped with a “California kit”  - it’s a hassle.

The post Cold War build down combined with the stringent environmental laws forced many defense contractors to leave the state. It caused one of the worst recessions in southern California history. Little known to most people outside the area is that until the early 90’s southern California was heavily dependent on the defense industry for jobs.

In the city where I now live, the famously secret “skunks work” plants were taken down and moved almost overnight to the southeastern United States. It’s interesting to look at the spot where the plants were located. There’s no trace builidings ever existed on the land and the land itself looks like a large track of tilled farm land. This was done to remove as many contaminants as possible from the ground.

The only visible trace the defense activity existed is a monument of a fighter plane on a pole outside one of the city’s parks.

The air quality has improved dramtically over the past 15 years. I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills in the late 80’s. It had a nice view not only of downtown LA, but the Hollywood sign which sits just across the freeway. In the early years in the house there were many summer days that I could not only not see downtown LA, I couldn’t even see the big white sign across the freeway! By the time I sold the house 10 years later, the air quality had improved dramatically.

The other air quality issue for the LA area is the topography. The city and most of the county sits in a giant basin. Kind of an air trap that receives some relief from the coastal breeze which can push pollutants into outlaying areas. So even if all commercial pollutants were removed from the LA basin, there would still be some smog issues.

There are historical reports of smog even before the area’s huge commercial build up.

Gateway is trying to become more like Apple, except that they sell Wintel and not Mac. Even their site layout and the new way they portray their products resembles that of an Apple-like style. On their website the pure white backround goes behind the Profile 4 and the same font to the one that Apple uses as a standard for its posters, titles, headings, etc…

They are clearly seeing Apple as a product role-model. Next we may begin to see them come out with their own hard drive digital MP3 player, dual proccessor towers, and all in one eMac type machines. They already have taken the TiBook design. Then, they plan to market their products as the better PC alternative to a Mac, doing just the opposite of what Apple’s trying to do with the “switch” campaign. Apple better do something quick before the general public sees an iMac as “not that good”. This is going to possibly ruin the reputation the iMac has led to those who are not into computers and understand the Mac. Apple should do away with the boring switch commercials and strike back hard after their next product debut.

Gateway is more of a threat than Dell and Sony now.

I took a look through Gateway’s financials and SEC reports last night. The biggest threats to Gateway are time and money. The company is imploding before our eyes. There’s isn’t enough time or resources for Gatway to reinvent themselves in the Apple mold.

They have scant development dollars available and their consumer push is a risky and expensive roll of the dice.

Most analysts don’t think the plan will work and Gateway’s shareholders are in a tough spot. Gateway lacks the depth IMHO to execute the current plan if they need to battle HP and Dell in the enterprise market.

Apple’s response is simple: better products and more retail stores. Apple is experiencing on average a 33% increase in market share in the areas around their retail stores. Apple’s challenge in the retail game is to train their store employees to close the sale with customers.

One reason for the Switch campaign is because retail store research reveals that a “switcher” makes on average close to a half-dozen trips to an Apple retail store before converting to the Mac. The ad campaign is direct support for the stores by helping reinforce the desire to switch on the part of converts and reducing the number of trips to the stores before they purchase a Mac.

Buyers at the retail stores often buy more than a Mac and a monitor. They buy printers, iPods and software too.

Gateway is disintegrating quickly and this ad campaign is too late to save the company, no matter how much they saturate TV with the spots IMHO.

[quote author=“hoytt”]This is a bit off-topic, but doesn’t southern CA have the largest car to people number in the world?

Could be; I haven’t checked the latest statistics on that.  I believe we’re vying with Dallas/Ft. Worth for the spot.

And 10 lane highways? Isn’t the biggest thread to SF or LA not the next earthquake, but the Friday afternoon traffic?

Yeah, but that’s because we don’t have enough freeways out here (10 lanes?  It is to dream…)  There was even an article in Los Angeles magazine a few months ago, that said L.A. had the lowest ratio of freeway mileage-per-capita of all the major US cities.  In short, given the number of folks we have out here, we should have double the number of freeways over what we currently do.

L.A. definitely needs a good mass-transit system; unfortunately, previous administrators spent too much money on a subway, instead of investing in above-ground light rail.  And local municipalities (*cough*Beverly Hills*cough*) don’t want any mass-transit systems running through their territories. 

End of hijack.

It would appear BusinessWeek agrees with DawnTreader on this one…if only a week late. Maybe they read our forums?

-Dan

Just a little side note: I was at one of my company’s other stores yesterday, and guess what kind of computer they had? One of the new Gateway Profiles! So…if our crummy old Gateway breaks sometime soon…that’s what I’ll be working with at work. Of course, I don’t know if I could tell when it’s time to get a new machine…since it crashes, freezes, and gives me strange errors on a regular basis.

If only there was a way to convince them to change the 25-store network over to Macs…