West, it's pretty clear you've never been in the public relations business, because you don't have the least understanding of the true meaning of the word "hype." Almost all product promotion is hype - the grinding drudgery of convincing people that here is something new and glamorous in the total absence of meaningful product attributes to back it up. How about it if you had to convince recreation seekers that they should buy a Kawasaki watercraft instead of a Sea-Doo because the Kawasaki throws a cute little rooster tail of water behind it. Obviously, that makes the Kawasaki sexier. Yeah. Sure. Another one: You should buy a new Buick because it has an audio system with a 40 gig hard drive.
Then along comes a product with new attributes that consumers and journalists actually perceive as meaningful - the iPad for instance. That's worth writing about. That's not hype.
Until you spend years out of your life extolling the virtues of your client's "revolutionary" concrete sewer pipe or reverse planetary gear truck axles, you'll never understand the true meaning of hype. Hype is the process of perfuming pigs. The iPad is anything but a pig.
iPad and the New Five-Fingered Exercise [View article]
Digital publications face a far more perilous environment than the old print paradigm, partly because there are fewer barriers to market entry and fewer quality differentiators. High costs of raw materials, production make-ready, printing and physical distribution are all but eliminated. It's harder to maintain product and quality differentiation. The door is open to semiliterate amateurs who have flooded the Internet with content that's barely worth viewing. Yet there are other nonprofessionals and freelancers who produce quality work that rivals the best that traditional magazines and newspapers have to offer. In the face of disappearing circulation and profits, many established publications have gutted their editorial talent, in essence destroying their quality and the fundamental reason people look to them for information. The real challenges are to build a widely recognized image for providing original, quality content and to convince consumers that the product is worth paying for over the long term. The best magazine and newspaper leadership will go beyond maintaining strict editorial quality standards. It needs to constantly patrol the content universe and bring into its fold the high quality content producers who've built their Internet stature independently. Bring the best talent under your roof; don't try to compete with it.
Many Content Owners Can't Afford to Make Their Videos Available on the iPad [View article]
Gee, Dan, looks like you've attracted zero sympathy for a predicament that resulted in large part from your own making and persists through your own inaction. Does it run in the family - was your great-grandfather in the buggy whip business? Better cancel the pity party.
John, you and "mna" put your fingers on it. It's more than hardware, more than software - it's the entire user experience. If you're willing to pay a few bucks extra for it, it will save your bacon and make your usage a lot more secure. MobileMe lets you quickly, automatically and reliably sync calendars, contacts, etc. between PCs, Macs, iPhones and iPod touches - no hassle; it just does it. Buy One-to-One for a year and you get practically unlimited hands-on tutorials on just about any subject - several times the value of buying just three "how-to" books. The Time Machine backup app (with Apple's Time Capsule or any of several competing external storage packages from the big hard drive makers) is like having smoke detectors in your house; get it and save yourself future tragedy. The Genius Bar is out of this world for quick solutions and warranty repairs, and AppleCare extended coverage is an investment that WILL pay off if you're a heavy user.
Example: A laptop hard drive typically lasts me a year and a half. Doesn't matter if it's a PC or a Mac - I've had 'em die in Sonys and last month in a 16-month-old unibody MacBook (four months past the one-year Mac hardware warranty). A hard drive is a hard drive; they die. But I was totally backed up with Time Machine on a Time Capsule. AppleCare PROMPTLY walked me through diagnostics on the phone and we realized the drive was toast. Took the unit in to an Apple Store Genius Bar appointment that day. They called up the case number, swapped the hard drive and returned the machine to me the next day. After Time Machine restored my files overnight, I was back in business the next morning.
Whether it's a Mac, an iPhone or an iPad, you have to ask yourself: What kind of ease and peace of mind is the Apple experience worth to you?
It's about the distribution channel - not the device on which you view the content. When your TV can obtain content other than by over the air or through a cable, you gain choice and competition for your dollar increases. It's about the money you're paying someone to put the content you want on that 52-incher - or your computer or iPad or whatever.
The Contract-Free iPhone: First Sign That a New iPhone Is Nearing [View article]
Since the iPad is not a phone (imagine holding one to your ear!), it's better compared to an iPod touch on steroids. New app capabilities (iWork, iPhoto, etc.) plus wireless Internet connectivity. A wireless carrier couldn't charge enough for data access (i.e. AT&T's $15/$30 monthly plans) to justify a subsidy to Apple.
Palm: Zero Price Target May Open Special Buy Opportunity [View article]
Imaginative post! I don't buy all of it but lots of your ideas are intriguing. It certainly would be an aggressive chess move on the field of smartphone competition, and would raise hell among the other players all out of proportion to its cost. As for the beleaguered Palm tech people, think of having fallen into a bucket of stable sweepings and coming out smelling like a rose.
Where Mobile Phone Prices Are Heading [View article]
Well, duh - of COURSE that's the average price AT&T has been paying for iPhones. Read the link to the Trefis chart and notes! Trefis is talking about the unit revenues within the smartphone marketplace, and Trefis is on target when it observes that the increasing variety of smartphones being offered will create downward price pressure overall.
The difference among market entrants, as you point out, is that Apple claims mindshare. With consumers continuing to perceive the iPhone experience as superior because of its rich ecosystem (iTunes, apps, MobileMe, etc.), iPhones should be able to maintain a generally higher price structure than competitors. As Apple has demonstrated with iPods and Macs, it introduces new models with enhanced features and capabilities while simultaneously reducing prices modestly. Example: I bought our second iMac in December, a 27-inch unit with double the RAM and three times larger hard drive for less than a 20-inch iMac purchased the year before.
All the while Apple relentlessly pushes its manufacturing costs down while recovering its R&D investment in the original product, thus preserving and often increasing gross margins. There is no reason Apple won't extend this pricing and cost behavior to iPhones as the marketplace continues to mature. The smaller and more recent smartphone competitors are likely to face greater market entry costs, margin pressure and uphill battles with each other for market share, as Apple continues to preserve and enhance its own profitability.
This'll come as a terrible shock to you no doubt, but iPhones can do that now. It's very easy to play music from iTunes and at the same time use such WiFi or Internet apps like Maps, Mail, Safari, or downloaded apps from the App Store. I'm doing so at this moment. Try it.
The User Illusion and Media's New Golden Age [View article]
You mean to say it's all right to criticize someone with whom you disagree, but it's "not nice" to call out gross errors in English punctuation and composition? Remember that the next time you help your youngster with homework and allow him/her to turn in a poorly written assignment. What importance do you place on excellence?
The User Illusion and Media's New Golden Age [View article]
Yours is a reasonable argument marred by sloppy writing. This article is peppered with run-on sentences, sentence fragments and poor punctuation. For what otherwise would have earned you a solid B for content, a college freshman level English composition teacher would lower your grade to C-.
Apple iPad Pricing: Keep It Simple Stupid [View article]
The article's premise that Apple follows a simplistic pricing strategy made up of minimal product options is just plain silly. Buy a Mac at a retail store and your choices will be limited, and you can expect options for those iPads sold in stores to be limited as well. Configuring products ordered online is an entirely different story. Check out the desktops and laptops at the online Apple Store and see all the choices available for hard drives, RAM, processor speed, etc.
So much speculation on most people's parts with zero experience to support it.
With respect to the iPad:
* Zero experience with its keyboard. * Zero experience with reading book type on the screen. * Zero experience with downloading, paging and other e-book related functions.
Six months from now it will be instructive to look back at today's comments, except by then no one will much give a damn. One thing is certain about all these predictions. A significant number of them will be dead wrong. Will yours be one of them?
iPad: Credo Ergo Sum [View article]
Then along comes a product with new attributes that consumers and journalists actually perceive as meaningful - the iPad for instance. That's worth writing about. That's not hype.
Until you spend years out of your life extolling the virtues of your client's "revolutionary" concrete sewer pipe or reverse planetary gear truck axles, you'll never understand the true meaning of hype. Hype is the process of perfuming pigs. The iPad is anything but a pig.
iPad and the New Five-Fingered Exercise [View article]
Many Content Owners Can't Afford to Make Their Videos Available on the iPad [View article]
How Much Higher Can Apple Go? [View article]
Example: A laptop hard drive typically lasts me a year and a half. Doesn't matter if it's a PC or a Mac - I've had 'em die in Sonys and last month in a 16-month-old unibody MacBook (four months past the one-year Mac hardware warranty). A hard drive is a hard drive; they die. But I was totally backed up with Time Machine on a Time Capsule. AppleCare PROMPTLY walked me through diagnostics on the phone and we realized the drive was toast. Took the unit in to an Apple Store Genius Bar appointment that day. They called up the case number, swapped the hard drive and returned the machine to me the next day. After Time Machine restored my files overnight, I was back in business the next morning.
Whether it's a Mac, an iPhone or an iPad, you have to ask yourself: What kind of ease and peace of mind is the Apple experience worth to you?
TV's Disappearing Status Quo [View article]
TV's Disappearing Status Quo [View article]
The Contract-Free iPhone: First Sign That a New iPhone Is Nearing [View article]
Palm: Zero Price Target May Open Special Buy Opportunity [View article]
Where Mobile Phone Prices Are Heading [View article]
The difference among market entrants, as you point out, is that Apple claims mindshare. With consumers continuing to perceive the iPhone experience as superior because of its rich ecosystem (iTunes, apps, MobileMe, etc.), iPhones should be able to maintain a generally higher price structure than competitors. As Apple has demonstrated with iPods and Macs, it introduces new models with enhanced features and capabilities while simultaneously reducing prices modestly. Example: I bought our second iMac in December, a 27-inch unit with double the RAM and three times larger hard drive for less than a 20-inch iMac purchased the year before.
All the while Apple relentlessly pushes its manufacturing costs down while recovering its R&D investment in the original product, thus preserving and often increasing gross margins. There is no reason Apple won't extend this pricing and cost behavior to iPhones as the marketplace continues to mature. The smaller and more recent smartphone competitors are likely to face greater market entry costs, margin pressure and uphill battles with each other for market share, as Apple continues to preserve and enhance its own profitability.
Could iPad Launch Be Delayed? [View article]
The User Illusion and Media's New Golden Age [View article]
The User Illusion and Media's New Golden Age [View article]
Windows Phone: Microsoft's Window of Opportunity [View article]
Apple iPad Pricing: Keep It Simple Stupid [View article]
Will the iPad Disrupt Kindle? [View article]
With respect to the iPad:
* Zero experience with its keyboard.
* Zero experience with reading book type on the screen.
* Zero experience with downloading, paging and other e-book related functions.
Six months from now it will be instructive to look back at today's comments, except by then no one will much give a damn. One thing is certain about all these predictions. A significant number of them will be dead wrong. Will yours be one of them?