Video Apple Has a Lot In Common With The Rolling Stones (Video) 147
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Tech journalist Ron Miller (not a relative) wrote a piece titled Apple has a lot in common with The Rolling Stones, based on the song It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It). In the article, Ron writes: "Much like the Rolling Stones, Apple has to get up on stage again and again and figure out a way to blow the audience away – and it’s not always easy." In fact, Apple's latest iPhone announcement seems to have been greeted with a massive "ho hum" instead of the frenzied interest some of their earlier product announcements have created. In today's video, Ron tells us why he thinks this is, and ruminates briefly about the future of Apple and what kinds of products might help people get excited about Apple again.
My Thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
I wrote about why I thought Apple failed in their iPhone 5C/5S product announcement just yesterday. Unlike Ron Miller, I actually get into concrete reasons why I think Apple failed.
http://www.whisper-jeff.com/apples-announcement-failure/ (no ads - not fishing for ad views)
Apple has a lot more in common with Blackberry (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple makes the jumps, or Apple takes its lumps (Score:3, Interesting)
Other Parallels (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple took ideas from Xerox and others, and put them together in a commercially-successful way. Xerox did make some money from Apple's popular work via stock.
The Stones took music from black blues musicians and some pop flavor, and found commercially success. The blues musicians did make some money from the Stones' bringing their music into the mainstream.
Steve Jobs got screwed out of his own company after initial success in part by youth and immaturity.
The Stones got screwed out of their own pre-1971 copyrights by Allen Klein, and paid "the price of an education."
Apple was sliding into obscurity without Steve Jobs. Neither did as well apart.
The Stones were sliding into obscurity in the 80s when Mick Jagger went solo, leaving Keith Richards to play with his own new band. Neither was a great success solo.
Early Apple founder Ronald Wayne is largely forgotten after he sold his share and left.
The Stones founding guitarist Brian Jones is largely forgotten after he left the band and died shortly after.
"People" vs "pundits" (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously we don't have the data for the iPhone 5S and 5C yet, but based on every single previous iDevice release ever, I don't think Apple has a problem with people not being excited. People have been buying their products in ever-increasing numbers for over a decade now.
The people who are vocally un-excited are the pundits. You know, the ones who, in order to keep money coming in, have to keep writing about something amazing and new that gets people excited—or about some scandal. The ones who are quite happy to compare existing Apple products to rumoured or vaguely announced future Samsung, Google, or Microsoft products—and compare their own straw-man versions of rumoured future Apple products to current and rumoured future products from competitors—and in all cases, find Apple's products wanting, no matter how many convolutions and fabrications they have to go through to achieve that.
I'm honestly not sure whether to believe the more paranoid people who have alleged it to be deliberately orchestrated, but there has certainly been a smear campaign targeting Apple...approximately since it failed to produce the iHolodeck on schedule the day people stopped being interested in reading about the release of the iPad. If you pay any attention to it—and read it without a raging anti-Apple prejudice—it's pretty obvious that there is a huge volume of "Apple is DOOOOOOMED" articles being written with practically no evidence to back up any of the (often quite wild) claims made in them.
And yes, I realize that one of the factions on Slashdot right now does, in fact, have a raging anti-Apple prejudice, but come on, people; this is supposed to be a site for smart people. Turn on your brains a little, quit the knee-jerk reactions, and actually apply a little critical thinking when you see someone writing about how the smartphone that Apple will not even announce for months has already failed and doomed the company, or other similar such ridiculous notions.
Dan Aris