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Why the iPhone Keynote Was A Mistake
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 21, 2007 06:44 PM
from the should-have-worn-a-hat dept.
from the should-have-worn-a-hat dept.
jcatcw writes "Mike Elgan at Computerworld lists six reasons why it was a mistake to make the iPhone keynote at Macworld. He argues that extremely high expectations can only lead to disappointment for consumers and investors. The focus on the phone during the keynote also took away from the Apple TV announcement, put iPod sales at risk, gave competitors a head start, and (perhaps worst of all) ruined the company's talks with Cisco over the iPhone name. From the article: 'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones. The problem Apple now faces because of Jobs' premature detail-oriented announcement is that of dashed expectations. When customers expect more and don't get it, they become dissatisfied.'"
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6 months! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:6 months! (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Cingular gets to gauge consumer interest
2. Customers can plan accordingly with respects to their phone agreements (big point)
3. Customers can plan accordingly with respects to their savings (medium point)
4. They answer HIGH expectations around a new iPod release (big criticism)
5. Accessory makers have 6 months to plan (avoiding the criticised "shock" effect)
6. Customers can educate themselves about product expectations
--And the list goes on. Wait until the phone comes out before prenouncing "what went wrong", especially if there's no indication that anything isn't going according to plan. 6 months is a long time. We're still in month 1. There'll be plenty of time to second guess this month 3-4 months from now.
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Re:6 months! (Score:5, Insightful)
And if I'm wrong, at least I still get modded +5 Insightful
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FCC leaks (Score:5, Informative)
Judging from all the rumours about the Zune the future iPods that have been helped along by FCC documents, I think they made the right call.
Re:FCC leaks (Score:5, Funny)
If I was a big apple I'd submit a few dozen fake products for approval just to throw people off. When the documents about the Apple Bananaphone and the Apple ipod/condom become public, people will start taking these rumours with a bigger pinch of salt.
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Re:FCC leaks (Score:5, Funny)
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So Why Do Anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
In that case they shouldn't ever announce any cool products ever again. Seriously, what kind of logic is that? Apple makes cool things so people put unrealistic expectations on them. People do the same thing with Google, but Google still releases new services. The new stuff might not match the hype but Google and Apple can't change how much people obsess about them.
Re:So Why Do Anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is a public corporation and as such is supposed to put their shareholders first. Jobs announced an actual penetration target for the iPhone that some Wall Street analysts and investors are likely to take as gospel. The stock now has a lot of expectations baked into it. If Apple doesn't succeed wildly with the iPhone, the stock is likely to be punished severely as a result. The target is very aggressive based on pricepoint, lack of features, and Cingulair only distribution.
That's why it's not a good idea to set up such an aggressive target. In terms of Wall Street, they're better off under promising, and over delivering. Time will tell, but I think the article makes a lot of interesting, well thought out, and potentially valid points.
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Negotiating Position (Score:5, Interesting)
It could be the 3G network - Cringely's written a bit about Cingular insisting on selling its own music store items over 3G, which is why Apple is on EDGE only. Maybe the iPhone trademark... he made a point of boasting about patents (read: patent suit). Maybe something else - I haven't finished watching the whole keynote yet.
Unappreciated gem from the Keynote - Jobs made the audience a point of showing them pictures of penguins on the iPhone. I don't think anything Jobs does these days is uncalculated. Oh, and Mach/xnu is slow...just sayin'.
might as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
i dont think apple is really going after the IT crowd with this, they are the only ones who will complain because it doesnt have feature X, rather than focusing on how well it performs the things it can do.
Why do they always predict doom for the iPod? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the moment the iPod was announced it seems that a commentary on Apple isn't complete without some suggestion that the iPod is in terrible danger. Eventually, maybe it'll get supplanted by some other cool little gizmo, but for now it ain't in danger guys. If he's referring to the idea that people will stop buying iPods waiting for the iPhone, I doubt that would be all that big of a sales hit....the iPhone will, for a while at least, be more far more expensive than an iPod, for far less capacity. I won't be trading in my 30GB iPod any time soon.....unless it's for an 80GB.
will do far less than most existing smart phones.. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the key features I wanted. make something that doesn't do all of those things I don't want but does the things I do want well. Phones have been developing crazy unusable features like mad for years.
Do less but do what you do well.
Carriers (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow.
Guys, there are only two GSM carriers in the states -- Cingular and T-Mobile. You might have heard of T-Mobile, they have this rather popular device called the Sidekick that only works (really works, anyway) on their network.
Lame? You bet.
I wish I would have 10 cents for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he completely missed the biggest issue (Score:5, Insightful)
The launch of Vista is literally days away. What does this mean?
1. Average Joe is going to start thinking about whether he needs to upgrade.
2. If he decides to upgrade to Vista, he may consider buying new hardware.
Apple should be adding a third point to this:
3. Since he's upgrading, and considering a new hardware purchase, why not tempt him to look at some of the alternatives out there?
The Vista upgrade release is a fundamental, time-lined opportunity for Apple to win converts. With Bootcamp they can even offer that upgrade with the comfort of knowing that you can still run Windows if you need to. Macintosh should have been absolutely FRONT AND CENTER of the keynote.
If a consumer upgrades buys new non-Mac hardware, that's it. Apple has lost them for *at least* another couple of years until they decide to go through the process again.
Jobs missed a golden opportunity at this keynote. Given the momentum and the increased buzz around Apple, their slowly increasing market share, more developers on board, Bootcamp etc. he could have finally presented Apple as a serious and viable alternative to Microsoft. For everyone. But instead he decided to go with a f**king phone, which doesn't even launch until the summer in the US, end of the year in Europe and 2008 in Asia.
Re:I think he completely missed the biggest issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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This word, "despite"... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a smug way of saying "I don't get it.".
The "many media-oriented virtues" blow every other smartphone out of the water on that front. Plenty of phones will play music, videos, photos -- but they universally do a poor job of it, either because the feature was just tacked on to be a bullet point on a feature list, or because it's designed as a cash cow for the wireless provider (Verizon's V Cast, etc.). Maybe they come with only 64MB of storage, or don't let you load your own content over Bluetooth, or only support tiny 3GPP video, or don't support playlists at all, or have that fuck-you 2.5mm headphone jack--I've seen all of these faults. The iPhone, on the other hand, does everything that the world's best-selling media player does, and more. Brushing all of that aside in a sentence is probably the dumbest thing I've read in weeks.
Re:still (Score:5, Informative)
The trouble is that Apple apparently had no choice, because it needs FCC approval which would have made the device public anyway.
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Re:still (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the FCC argument is dubious, to be honest.
Apple needed to have their device approved by the FCC, who'd have made some details of the device public. However, Apple could have had a third party (for example, their manufacturer - Apple doesn't generally make their own products) enter the product, and from the point of view of people watching the FCC lists, all they'd have seen would have been a stylish touchscreen camera phone with EDGE and 802.11, coming from Hon Hai, a company not immediately associated with Apple. Even if people put the pieces together and assumed Apple was involved, the FCC would have published no details of the software, which arguably is the most important aspect of the iPhone concept, and the part Apple needed to keep secret.
Here's what I think. I think Steve Jobs got very excited about a product, far more so than he normally does, and felt MacWorld was the opportunity to reveal it. It's that simple. I think Jobs, in common with much of the media, has overblown the importance of the Apple communicator. It's an original machine, but then original phones come out every year. It's not innovative, in that it will not introduce a technology to a mass audience (the definition of innovative, which is not a synonym for inventive), it's too expensive for that, but it may end up influencing many devices to come. But ultimately, it's a very large phone that, nonetheless, has many nice features but none that the majority of people will see as worth the price tag and Cingular handcuffs, and it'll be relegated to the designer product niche.
Meanwhile someone will popularize the genuine advantages. They'll not produce a product that's as desirable, but it'll be "good enough" and much cheaper and more accessable, just as Microsoft/Commodore/Atari and Palm did to Macintosh and Newton respectively.
But I'm getting off the subject. The point is that Jobs became convinced that this was an important product. That's why it was presented at MacWorld. Not because of the FCC, not because of a lack of other products, but Jobs being overwhelmed with excitement.
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Re:still (Score:5, Insightful)
Something Apple has been held to task for here before - the company is notoriously secretive and known for not sharing future product details, much to the displeasure of IT professionals. Yet now, preannouncing is a mistake.
Poor Apple. Can't have it both ways, and gets criticized no matter whether they announce ahead of time or on the day something ships.
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Re:still (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know what weird parallel universe you inhabit where grad students are worshiped... but as a grad student, I desperately want to go there.
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Re:It will affect competitors as well (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the article's author forgot the old saw: There's no such thing as bad publicity! This is especially true for Apple, the perennial underdog, and a new entrant into the computerized cellular telephone market.
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Re:Good Point (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't make much sense to me. First the author says it's going to be hard to sell many iPhones and uses the facts that RIM only sold 5.5M blackberrys last year and the iPhone will be Cingular only. Then he says that people aren't going to buy ipods in order to wait for the iPhone. I'm not sure how he can have it both ways there.
Now, if he wants to make a case that people may hold off on a new ipod to see if the ipod line may get the touchscreen interface I might buy into that line of reasoning.
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Re:Good Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, this article smacks of "how can I dump on Jobs to get page views?"
I've a friend who is a definite Mac geek and will be paying an early termination fee on his Verizon cell plan just to get an iPhone. That didn't stop him from buying two 80 GB video iPods last week (for him and his wife).
Since the iPhone has 8 GB max, I don't see that people who want to store their whole music collection (let alone video) are going to hold up a purchase, even if they plan on buying an iPhone in 6 months.
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Re:As Jobs Said... (Score:5, Informative)
Just about any Fortune 1000 firm in the US, for starters. Why?
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