Apple Comes Clean, Admits To Doing Market Research 221
colinneagle writes "In an interview with Fortune a few years ago, Steve Jobs explained that Apple never does market research. Rather, they simply preoccupy themselves with creating great products. On Monday, Apple's Greg Joswiak — the company's VP of Product Marketing — submitted a declaration to the Court explaining why documents relating to Apple's market research and strategy should be sealed. Every month, Apple surveys iPhone buyers and Joswiak explains what Apple is able to glean from these surveys. And as you might expect, Apple conducts similar surveys with iPad buyers. Apple wants all of these tracking studies sealed. Joswiak explains that if a competitor were to find out what drives iPhone purchases — whether it be FaceTime, battery life, or Siri — it would serve as an unfair competitive edge to rival companies. Further, competitors, as it stands today, have to guess as to which demographics are most satisfied with Apple products."
A few other interesting facts have come out of the trial so far; Apple spent $647 million advertising the iPhone in the U.S. from its launch through fiscal 2011, and they spent $457.2 million advertising the iPad from its launch up to the same point.
They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously, since he died, this new generation of Apple leaders have lost their way. They need to turn back to Steve before it's too late and realize that only through him can they find the correct path. And that path is not through market research, it's through listening to Steve's own words and letting them into your heart.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, does that mean they already do that?
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Come see the new iSnip, now with rounded corners!
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any one can baptise (Score:2)
Did you know any person how has already been baptised, can baptise another person.
There is no exclusive club or requirements besides one.
The official church has no monopoly.
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Of course they can. Just as anyone can hold a seance, or go ghost hunting. It's all bunk, so do as you please!
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listening to Steve's own words and letting them into your heart
Yeah, the idiotic bit about going thermo-nuclear against Android for copying a rounded rectangle.
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While implementing a suspiciously familiar notifications system.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes. People forget that Jobs has not been "missing" for long, and that what Apple is doing now originated during Jobs' tenure. We are witnessing his own decisions being processed.
It's similar to how a new president still operates under the old president's fiscal budget for several months (through October).
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, Tim Cook isn't that keen on patent lawsuits and most of the ones currently making headlines started under Steve Jobs and his total thermonuclear war on Android.
He could stop them at any time.
No, seriously, he could stop them at any time. If he really wasn't so keen on patent lawsuits, he could man up and have the balls to say that Jobs was a psychopath whose obsessions would have eventually destroyed the company if he were still alive, change course, and not make a laughingstock of Apple. He has the power in the company to do just that.
But he doesn't do it. And he won't do it. And he's the one making the decision not to do it. Not Jobs; Jobs is dead. Cook is the one ordering the lawyers to go ahead with all the lawsuits.
Like it or not, this is the post-Jobs era at Apple. Specifically, this is the Tim Cook era at Apple. Period.
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Um, Tim Cook isn't that keen on patent lawsuits and most of the ones currently making headlines started under Steve Jobs and his total thermonuclear war on Android.
I'd very much like to beleive that but...
If Mr Cook really feels this way, why hasn't he bought Samsung to the table. Same with Motorola, why are they still pursing product bans? He's had months to stop this yet he hasn't.
What Cook is saying and what Cook is doing are two different things entirely.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve fought Android by making a better product.
When is it going to be released?
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That means Windows is a better product than Linux, right? Same for OS X?
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Yes, Windows is better than Linux for the desktop. Sorry, that's just a fact. I tried to get my dad set up on Linux. He really liked that it was free and he could keep using the same computer that had been running XP. He gave it a shot but felt guilty about "bugging" me and just bought a new Win7 system.
When something is free and still can't compete with something that costs around $100 there's very little room to argue that it is better.
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And forget about sales for a moment (you probably meant "shipments"), what about actual usage?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/real-time-research-ios-dominates-over-android-when-it-comes-to-usage-says-chitika/ [techcrunch.com]
FTA: iOS=67.66%; Android=27.66%
I'd argue this is a lot
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Like most stats of this kind, these numbers are from an ad network -- i.e. they're measuring ad views on their network by device. This shows that their ads are displayed more often on Apple products, not "actual usage". Different ad networks are more popular on Android; that's all.
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Like most stats of this kind, these numbers are from an ad network -- i.e. they're measuring ad views on their network by device. This shows that their ads are displayed more often on Apple products, not "actual usage". Different ad networks are more popular on Android; that's all.
You explanation makes an assumption that somehow Chitika ads are seen more often per iOS device. AFAIK, Chitika ads are just general web ads. There's no reason I know of for why it would be seen preferentially on iOS over Android.
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You do realize that Google testified before Congress that 2/3rds of its own mobile revenue comes from iOS devices?
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I'm not sure that's correct.
Android devices are outselling iOS devices. But you have to remember that the vast majority of Android devices being sold are phones--and Android phones are outselling iPhones 2-1, easily. But when you add in iPads and iPod touches--which are also iOS devices--the difference becomes much smaller, even when you add in Android-based tablets and media players.
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Yeah that is the first thing I check when shopping for new hardware, which one gets had the most profit into the pockets of the manufacturer.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah that is the first thing I check when shopping for new hardware, which one gets had the most profit into the pockets of the manufacturer.
Exactly.
Why are Apple customers so proud of the fact that they overpay for their products?
Would we all see cheaper cell service if carriers pockets weren't being emptied into Apple's coffers? [cnn.com] How about iPhone users start giving back to the their fellow citizens by switching to Android, instead of inflicting the cost of these overpriced device on the rest of the cell phone users. Every iPhone sold is a money out of my pocket, by way of higher carrier bills [latimes.com].
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On Verizon a good Android is $15 / mo, while a standard iPhone (same price roughly) is $17 / mo. Verizon makes it back easily in iPhone customers greater willingness to buy accessories (huge margins). Then on top of that more minutes, more texting, lower default rates on plans... Verizon is thrilled with their iPhone customers, they hate Apple because they are a threat to Verizon's long term relationship with those customers.
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Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly.
My last block of Apple stock is going to be sold in the run up to the iPhone 5 release. I will be out of that issue prior to the actual announcement. Its been a good run, more than doubled my investment in a couple years, but now its time to go, ahead of the disappointment sure to arrive when iPhone 5 is nothing but an incremental improvement.
Buy the rumor. Sell the news.
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I'd hold onto if a few more years if I were you. Windows 8 is going to be such a disaster, Apple stands to do well. Sell before Windows 9 comes out. That one might be good like 7.
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PC users don't buy a high-priced computer incompatible with their current software just because the next version of Windows sucks, we either stick with the current version of Windows or migrate to Linux (as I did). People that buy an Apple product would have already been planning to do so, and at most might use this as an excuse to go through with it.
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I've had several friends migrate to Macs laptops during the Vista fiasco when they were ready for new hardware. And these were folks who have also used Linux before, so I'm guessing your wrong on what all the PC users do.
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I'm guessing you didn't read the GPs last sentence.
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I'm guessing you don't personally know my friends, where were not looking to buy Macs beforehand.
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Exactly my plan, because when the detailed specs are ANNOUNCED the rumor becomes news.
I suspect it will be a marginal improvement at best.
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly my plan, because when the detailed specs are ANNOUNCED the rumor becomes news. I suspect it will be a marginal improvement at best.
The 4S was a marginal improvement. It sold more than all previous generations of iPhones combined.
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Yeh I bought one, but it is very disappointing, very poor battery life and tied to the horrible itunes, as soon as the contract expires its Samsung for me,
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Tim Cook has been instrumental for years.
There are a couple major things that are Tim Cook.
In terms of products I'd say the rMBP. Extremely complex manufacturing, more so than any other PC class computer ever. And all this for a lower volume device.
In terms of positioning I'd say moving downmarket to the regional carriers and Asia with the 3G for $0. That's something Jobs wouldn't have done.
In terms of strategy the 1b phones initiative.
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The whole Steve Jobs is a genius god-child things was definitely part of an Apple marketing push. Go back and read the mainstream press coverage of things like the iPod or the lampshade iMac, and they make it sound like the designs appeared to Jobs like a vision while he was meditating in nature. But, as the Samsung trial materials show, Apple actually does a shit load of design iteration.
There's been rumors for years that Apple does extremely detailed market research and very much understands their 'psycho
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple had the same advantage that Palm had before them: someone willing to say 'no, this sucks' and be listened to. There's a story about the first iteration of the Palm Pilot, where the CEO saw it and decided it was too big. He got a block of balsa wood cut that was just small enough to fit in his shirt pocket and gave it to the product development team with an edict that the final version must be no bigger than that. Without someone like that, they'd have ended up with something too big to be conveniently carried. Steve Jobs had the same role at Apple: it wasn't producing great products, or products that could not be improved, it was to produce products that were definitely useful. As long as 'how Steve Jobs would use it' and 'how a normal human would use it' weren't too far apart, it worked well. Sometimes, it didn't - there were a few flops along the way - but a product designed for a specific user is far more likely to be useable in general than one designed for some set of focus-group set of requirements plus any features that engineers thought they could sneak in.
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[...]As long as 'how Steve Jobs would use it' and 'how a normal human would use it' weren't too far apart[...]
Which worked perfectly fine until normal people started holding it wrong...
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Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:4, Informative)
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yep, but that's not really news. dozens of companies have done apple related market research, news orgs, retail chains etc.
it's sort of interesting because Apple is a public company though.
However.. the research is just self serving. what does "Design" mean in context like that? friggin nothing.
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Well then why don't you compare it to a $1200 iMac?
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Let me just point out, its been almost 400 days since a Mini release. You are catching the mini at the absolutely worst point in the cycle for this comparison. Far better would have been to compare it to last year's Dells.
a few comments (Score:2)
That's a fine comparison if you really need a small computer, or a powerful one.
The thing is, I'm a non-gaming software developer. My main dev machine is a laptop with an i5 with 8GB of RAM. It does everything I need it to do, including running multiple VMs while simultaneously building code. I haven't noticed it slowing me down significantly compared to what an i7 could do.
My secondary laptop is used mostly for web browsing, typing documents, facebook, and watching downloaded HD video on the TV. It's a
Re:They've turned their backs on Steve (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's OK, Steve is dead and the hapless harping hypocrites will continue their attacks and telling themselves how gloriously wonderful and clever they are for using some other product (Windows, Linux, Droids) even if it's substandard or blatantly imitative.
Instead, here you are telling yourself how gloriously wonderful and clever you are for buying Apple products, blissfully unaware of the irony.
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They need to turn back to Steve before it's too late and realize that only through him can they find the correct path.
I just had two Jesus freaks come to my door this Morning sounding just like that.
For some reason they think that there are people in the Western World who have never heard of Jesus.
Believe it or not, there are many people in the western world who have never heard of Jesus -- and a few who haven't even heard of Steve Jobs.
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The man had /presence/. Even the end-of-life, sickly, emaciated Steve Jobs would have destroyed you with a glance and a few harsh words, leaving you and your ego little more than a quivering pile of unflavored luke warm jello.
Yeah, a few words like "you're holding it wrong".
Moron fanboy.
Hint: (Score:5, Funny)
>> Joswiak explains that if a competitor were to find out what drives iPhone purchases â" whether it be FaceTime, battery life, or Siri â" it would serve as an unfair competitive edge
Hint: It's that patented rectangular shape.
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It certainly isn't any of the things he mentioned. Most high end phones have a front facing camera and video chat functionality. Battery life on iPads with retina screens is actually pretty poor and the iPhone battery life is fairly average. Google had Voice for years and several other manufacturers have their own versions of Siri now which seem to be just as good (or bad, depending on your opinion of Siri).
No marketting research? (Score:2)
Those who don't buy your products ... (Score:2)
Marketting research tells you who wants to buy your stuff.
Not entirely. More importantly, market research also tells you what people who are not buying your products want or need. Getting feedback from people who do not choose your products can be more important than feedback from your customers.
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Very true. Once someone has your product you want to retain them as a customer, in the phone market this means coming up with something worth having every couple of years so they upgrade, or at least keeping in step with the competition. It can also mean trying to lock them to your platform by making migration hard (for example if you couldn't get your phone contacts from your iphone to a droid).
The people you are interested in are the ones who would only buy your product if it had ______________. Then y
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Marketting research tells you who wants to buy your stuff.
Not entirely. More importantly, market research also tells you what people who are not buying your products want or need. Getting feedback from people who do not choose your products can be more important than feedback from your customers.
But Apple didn't do that, they only ate their own dog food.
Every month, Apple surveys iPhone buyers and Joswiak explains what Apple is able to glean from these surveys. And as you might expect, Apple conducts similar surveys with iPad buyers.
So what they learned only helps them attract that same customer again and again, which is precisely why most apple fanboys dump their perfectly good current model and rush out an replace it with the next model the instant it comes out, even if they have to pay an Early Termination Fee to do so.
Far from attracting the majority of new customers, Apple is mostly eating its young, singing to its own choir, reselling to the same crowd.
The research plan i
iApple (Score:2)
The Article is Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
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Steve meant market research for future products.
Are you his spokesperson? How do you know what he meant?
Re:The Article is Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Article is Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve had made similar comments in other forums. He seemed to be a big believer that people don't know what they want until you show it to them. If you did a market survey before the iPad came out, and asked people what they wanted in a tablet computer, very few would have articulated something that looked/operated similar to an iPad. Even after it was announced many people scoffed. But it's been a huge success.
While he sometimes said things that were not entirely clear, Steve's philosophy never seemed to be "don't ask the customer what they like or don't like about existing products". Especially knowing what they don't like is important. That's where the opportunities are. The trick is, in Steve's mind, that the customer is not the appropriate person to ask HOW to fix it. The great designers at Apple will come up with a fix. And if they do the job right, it will be something the customer would never have thought of, but will love.
How We Know The Article is Wrong (Score:3)
By having the sense to look up what he actually said, instead of relying on media soundbites. Here's what he told Business Week in 1988 [businessweek.com]:
Q: Did you do consumer research on the iMac when you were developing it?
A: No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of
Agree, but small nitpick (Score:2)
Instead, they make the phone they, themselves want to use.
What Steve himself wanted to use.
FTFY
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yes so they asked your opinion about your current product to NOT use that information for future products
ok thanks for that, sure you had a tear in your eye when you wrote it
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And I ruined that for him.
Seriously, though, I understand. I was hoping that the Great Pointless OS Wars would eventually die off, but thanks to the power of cognitive dissonance it never will. I have used all of the Big Three (Win, OS X, and various *nix flavors), and really have a hard time picking sides. I know, at the moment, Windows 7 works for me, or at least it is more convenient to my needs than the others. But at various points other operating systems have been my #1, depending on where I was i
Squeaky clean? (Score:2)
Here's the secret (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's as anticlimactic as the cough syrup in Flaming Moes... they buy it because it has an Apple logo on it. The logo itself is a status symbol.
-uso.
Re:Here's the secret (Score:5, Insightful)
The logo itself is a status symbol.
I used to think this was just an insult to apple buyers. Then the iPhone 4s came out. I'll never forget the first words that came out of my apple buying friend's mouth after seeing the design. "How will anyone be able to tell I have the new one?"
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The logo itself is a status symbol.
I used to think this was just an insult to apple buyers. Then the iPhone 4s came out. I'll never forget the first words that came out of my apple buying friend's mouth after seeing the design. "How will anyone be able to tell I have the new one?"
An anecdote changed your mind? And for this you get +5 Insightful?
Pathetic.
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Well, let's be honest. His friend is an actor. [youtube.com]
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The logo itself is a status symbol.
I used to think this was just an insult to apple buyers. Then the iPhone 4s came out. I'll never forget the first words that came out of my apple buying friend's mouth after seeing the design. "How will anyone be able to tell I have the new one?"
I like how people spin the fact that Apple doesn't change the design of its iPhone for 2 years as somehow showing that Apple fanatics care about showing that they have the latest and greatest. Apple evolves their designs slowly. Most times, you cannot tell, at a casual glance, that someone is using the latest, unless they have recently come up with a brand new design.
So your anecdote reveals more about your friend than it does about the Apple buying public.
Joswiak? (Score:2)
"Market research" is many things (Score:5, Insightful)
Using it as Apple is saying here, to survey users, is one thing. It helps gather info on actual uses, usage patterns, customer feedback.
Using it to design a product or to test a product design, is quite another, especially if, like often, it ends up justifying half-baked committee-think. Apple forte has been Steve Job's "I'm the customer, please me" stance, which is far superior to the "Make none of us dislike it too much" design-by committee version. It requires strong leadership. Apple had that, and storng value too: sexiness and easse of use.
As an Android user, I wish, I wish Google did more user surveys. There are a handful of very easy changes that would make Android rock, observably so, including in the shop right next to an iPad.
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I do hope Apple use their customers' feedback.
I was trying to contrast real feedback from real users of a real product to theoretical feedback from fake users of a fake product. I might have been to subtle about it.
To late anyway? (Score:2)
How is Apple's market research a trade secret? (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
Steve Jobs was full of shit? Next you will be telling us that he was an arrogant asshat too!
for shame...
False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the summary misses a major point. Sure there was a bit of hyperbole when Steve said that Apple never did market research. But every word that came out of that man's mouth was hyperbole. What I think Steve's point was is that Apple doesn't base their product categories on market research. They just use market research for refining products once the categories are established. They didn't base the idea to have an all-touchscreen smartphone, a high capacity hard-drive based mp3 player, or a GUI centric PC on market research. If they did, they would have found out that people were perfectly happy with their blackberry and symbian keyboard smartphones, their low capacity flash mp3 players, and their DOS based IBM PCs.
Re:False dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is remarkable good at retroactively inventing things. Like hard-drive based mp3 players, the idea for which was stolen from them e.g. in 1998 by Compaq (4.8 GB), in 2000 by Creative (Nomad, 6 GB) and in the same year by Archos (6 GB). Then Apple re-invented the entire market by bringing out a player with ... 5 GB in 2001. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_media_player [wikipedia.org]
It's understandable that so many people believe Apple came up with the idea, considering the advertising budget. Many probably didn't even realize that mp3 players existed before Apple told them about it.
Yep (Score:3)
There's a great picture along those lines: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2124177/internet-memes-he-was-the-first.jpg [dropbox.com].
For those that don't wish to look at it it has Bill Gates introducing the tablet PC in 2002 and says "no one cares", in 2010 Apple introduces the iPad and "the world pisses itself like and excited dog." In 2012 MS rolls out the surface and "People claim they stole the idea from Apple." The final frame is a picture of Patrick Stewart in ST:TNG holding a PADD with the caption "Bitches, please."
Apple
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IIRC, the original iPod was pretty fugly. But it did two things that none of the MP3 players had even thought of. 1) the touch wheel - this was a huge interface improvement over the the other guys where the state of the art was, "hold the button down for accelerating repeat button presses."
2) The touch wheel - Instead of dozens of buttons that are really too small to be machined correctly at the necessary price points, they got the number of buttons down to something like 1 DPad rocker/touchpad, 1 button,
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There is a lot of truth to that (and I say that as someone whose been a solid Apple guy since 10.1).
High quality men's clothing stores are about:
a) excellent service all the way through the process and included aftercare.
b) clothes that look better especially after first wash
c) better than average durability
d) high price, not for what you get but compared to the low end alternatives
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The poster above may think that Apple came up with the hard-drive based mp3 player, but I do not think it is a widely adopted meme. Most people I know accept that the iPod was just a really well-designed and implemented mp3 player. Much like everyone I know understands that Apple didn't invent the smartphone. In fact, almost everyone I know had a Blackberry at some time before the iPhone came out, or was at least familiar with what a Blackberry was before the iPhone came out. But the iPhone kicks ass ov
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I think it is well established and not denied by even the most rabid iFanboy that Apple doesn't doesn't come up with product concepts out of the blue. Yes, HD based mp3 players existed before the iPod. The GUI was invented by Xerox. And tablet computers existed for years before the iPad. But for some reason, none of these products sold at all statistically speaking. And I think it annoys the alpha nerds that Apple has time and time again been able to take these nascent technologies and somehow reinvent them
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That's the hallmark of innovation. Refining other peoples' products, but getting your fan base to claim you actually invented it.
These days, I think "fan base" and "mass media" are interchangeable.
Advertising numbers (Score:2)
That's pretty rediculous, $1.1 billion advertising two new products?! I always knew Apple was a marketing company but damn.
This could simply be because I haven't seen regular ad numbers before though. Does anyone know what competing products have spent on advertising? That kind of information would help make more sense of their numbers.
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That's pretty rediculous, $1.1 billion advertising two new products?!
Does anyone know what competing products have spent on advertising? That kind of information would help make more sense of their numbers.
Remember the original scifi-ish Verizon Droid campaign? [adage.com]
From that link:
$100 in 2009 money: "the largest in Verizon history" back in November 2009. Compare to Apple and ..."wow" INDEED. Another tidbit:
The target market is the tech-savvy, early adopter young male in his 20s or 30s who cares more about functionality and productivity, and tends to eschew certain lifestyle brands that attract herds of followers.
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Let me just give you some examples:
-- "The internet in your pocket." .
-- "The most advanced mobile OS. Now even more advanced."
-- "This changes everything. Again."
-- "There's an app for that. That's the iPhone. Solving life's dilemma one app at a time."
-- "If you don't have an iPhone, well, you don't have an iPhone."
From the iphone. I could hit you with slogans from almost 30 years ago like:
"It takes minutes of practice to make Macintosh do this."
"-the computer for the rest of us."
and if you are old enough
"coming clean" (Score:2, Insightful)
How does Apple presenting an argument in a court case amount to "coming clean"? If they didn't make the arguments for keeping these sealed their oh-so-amazing case studies would be out.
That's not coming clean. That's standard legal babble.
If they don't want to reveal stuff in court (Score:3, Insightful)
Summary misleading (Score:2)
Steve Jobs never said Apple doesn't do at least some market research. What he said was the products don't stem from market research and boardroom decisions. I believe Apple's marketing is targeted at how to sell the really cool-yet-secrative things they are making now that none of us know about, as opposed to market research that dictates what they should make next.
What drives iPhone purchases? (Score:2)
1. Aspiration.
Some people aspire to being considered part of certain groups and feel that the caché of carrying such devices will help this.
2. Fashion
When all the "right people" seem to have iShiny devices, they will be copied. Similarly to 1.
3. Rumour
There are rumours that insist that iDevices are more reliable, easier to use, even better value for your money.
4. Price
Some people genuinely believe that paying more for something makes it better than something that costs less, even if there are n
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An habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they never lie, but it is not soâ"and this ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody liesâ"every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deceptionâ"and purposely. Even in sermonsâ"but that is a platitude.
On the Decay of the Art of Lying [gutenberg.org], by Mark Twain.
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Yeah but they don't do it quite as much [latimes.com], on average.
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Yes.
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Undoing accidental mod
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Of course! We've written an "interesting things" filter just for you. You'll never need to see anybody's post blaspheming against Apple again. But we were stopped from releasing it because Apple already had the patent "method of displaying only nice things that make me happy" so we can't let you use it.