August 27, 2002: Gateway Targets the iMac
Gateway is a minor player in the computing arena now, but at one time the company was a force to be reckoned with. Before the ill-fated Gateway brick and mortar stores many PC purchasers were greeted with the once familiar "It's sunny and 73 in South Dakota," when buying a PC.
Business for the one-time behemoth were getting rough. Unable to successfully compete with other companies, Gateway opted to go for an iMac derivative campaign with an iMac look-a-like computer. The Gateway Profile was an all-in-one machine with an LCD integrated monitor.
Thinking that they could steal Mac users with specs, Gateway advertised the machine as faster and able to "run thousands more software titles than the Mac." Gateway launched the Mac attack ads on August 27, 2002.
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Slashdot
StumbleUpon
Comments
Chris
Show us a pic. Show us how God-forsaken fugly it was.
To call it an iMac look-alike is being generous. Subsequent designs I’ve seen aren’t too bad, but the original one and the newest one are simply awful.
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/8/0,1311,sz=1&i=80310,00.jpg
Yeh,
I agree with Chris, I’d love to see the beast! Didn’t know Gateway tried to pull a fast one at all!
Cheers,
Toner
My goodness, that is some of the homeliest design work I’ve ever seen. Here are some more pictures:
http://support.gateway.com/s/MISC/CustIDSerial/Gateway_Learningsu32.shtml
http://images.google.com/images?source=ig&hl=en&rlz;=&q=Gateway+Profile&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=J0CXSvKcIaKe8QaIgbGzDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&biw=1020
And what’s up with the comment dates?