Perhaps Apple Computer Inc should have paid more attention to Henry Ford’s famous pronouncements about selling the Model T Ford at the cheapest possible price. You can have any color as long as it’s black, he is reputed to have told customers. The rest of the PC industry has followed his advice, only changing the color to beige. But early indications suggest that although the original Blueberry color and Grape are proving popular options for the new multi-colored iMac series, there’s a little more doubt about Strawberry, Lime and Tangerine. Resellers are currently having to buy iMacs in blocks of five of each color, and are worried that they’ll be left with unsold inventory of the unpopular ones. Although Apple isn’t admitting that some colors are less popular than others, it does say that in the future it will offer resellers the option of choosing the color of individual machines. It says it has an effective plan ready to ensure that it doesn’t get stuck with a load of unsellable tangerine iMacs itself, but won’t go into details at this stage.
