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The Media's Crush on Apple
conq writes "BusinessWeek reports: "It's the first time in my memory that a product announcement by Steve Jobs has caused the AP to send an alert -- especially since this development was fully expected. And it says a lot about the intensity of media attention Apple generates. When is the last time a NewsAlert went out based on the words of Michael Dell or Bill Gates? Clearly, the AP's editors determined this news was important enough to warrant such action."
When is the last time a NewsAlert went out based on the words [...] Bill Gates?
Last week after the CES keynote, during which he didn't launch any new products at all, and instead talked about the same thing he's talked about for the last three years but still hasn't shipped, and a product that came out last year.
In contrast, Apple actually announced new product that was a signifigant shift from their previous strategy, and has a business impact beyond the doors of Apple itself.
Which company gets an unusual amount of coverage?
When is the last time a NewsAlert went out based on the words of Michael Dell or Bill Gates?
When was the last time either of those guys released an interesting, innovative product?
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-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I think the bias is warranted. I mean, how many OSes do you know that can interface with and take down an alien ship's computer using a virus?
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has cultivated a media persona that is the envy of many CEOs. He is the master of manipulating the media for his companies benefit. He is effectively the head saleman at Apple. He sets the tone for all the marketing that is done. Neither Gates nor Dell has the charisma to pull that off.
The Apple brand, while always considered hip and cool, has exploded in over all popularity due to the iPod. That is why this years Macworld has dominated the headlines. Jobs has been very careful to maintain that hip and cool vibe with respect to Apple. It has served them well in the past, and is paying off nicely now.
Apple's fascination by the media has to do with 3 things:
1. Dominance in entertainment (graphic artists, movie makers, etc). So when most journalists who interact with their geeky movie making counterparts, odds are they're going to see a Mac, no matter what they may be using. So Apple news has a direct impact on these people.
2. Steve Jobs has charisma. You look at the interviews with Bill Gates, or Ellison, or McNealy, and I'm sorry, but these guys are just not photogenic. They hardly sound interesting, and they talk about boring stuff. (More on that in a moment.) But at least Jobs - and the drama of his life, the "rags to riches" story, is at least interesting. Even with his mistakes, at least he makes them *big* and bold.
3. Most technology news is boring. Routers? Boring. Enterprise management? To the usual person, boring. New computer that lets you make movies? Well, that's kind of interesting! Music? That's something people are interested in, not "We can get 10,000 people to use a server to access a database!". My wife gets music - she could care less about using LDAP calls to Active Directory.
The rest of it - the fascination the tech industry has with Apple - is because usually their the first ones to do things in an interesting way. Not all of the ideas are really unique - like the iPod, or cameras on a computer. But they put it on with a style that few companies save Sony perhaps can match, so it feels like it's innovative - and sometimes, the way that Apple does it, it is.
As the article mentions, will this translate into bigger sales? MS dominated thanks to their IBM deal and focusing on business, while Jobs focused on the home. Gates won that part of the war. But now the war is moving into the entertainment business, where Microsoft keeps pushing their product but making slow headway while Apple is embraced by the same media who is fascinated with them.
Eh - so who knows about the future. I know I'll probably pick up a Macbook Pro sometime in the future and try it out, probably put a Windows partition or just use Cedaga for OS X whenever that arises. But I'm sure the fascination with Apple will continue as long as Jobs continues to be interesting.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's all about branding my boy! Branding! Also, it leaves room for Apple to put AMD chips or anything else they want. They still can do that with the label on, you say. Ah, Apple is Apple. That's the only brand that Jobs wants you to see. And, I think there may be a time in the future where the end consumer will not know what the CPU is. It could be anything. Who cares? You're buying an Apple and that's all that matters. Do you care what the chips are in your monitor, TV, iPod, or your router? I don't. As long as I get something that works.
Can't the slashdot editors answer this one? Why do you have half of the front page filled with apple stories?
Because Apple announced a bunch of new products and many users want to know about them and discuss them. I mean what nerd is not interested in intel macs on a site peopled by computer geeks?
That would be lovely, but they don't get a disproportionate amount of press... Just a disporportionate amount of press that people notice. There are dozens of times as many of stories about Bill Gates and Microsoft, but they say the same old boring crap all the time, so we've learned to ignore them.
You didn't see BusinessWeek bitching after the AP issued all sorts of brown nosing crap about Bill last week after CES. In fact, it seems that they didn't even notice all those stories, they just stated in this article that they don't even remember them...
the vast majority of the computer-using population doesn't care about Apple, much less actually owns one.
The revenue from 14 million iPods last quarter is giving the revenue from Microsoft's gaming division the finger right now. Care to rethink that statement?
...His expertise is reliability and customer support ... thank you for praising Dell, please wait while your praise is rerouted to New Delhi...
To err is human, to really foul up requires a computer
Michael Dell has little to do with innovation.
I beg to differ. Perhaps little innovation in PC development, but in supply-chain management? The man's a god.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Because MacWorld is going on right now? If major announcements about new products and corporate strategies get made at LinuxWorld, there are a high amount of Linux-related articles. Go figure...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Dell announces new systems built using AMD processors. Declares that customers should have a choice of the best systems available at the best prices available with full Dell support.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Because Google hasn't done so much as fart (though you'd see it on the front page if they did) since Friday.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Not only does Steve Jobs have a dynamic personality, but he KNOWS he does and can promote himself and his company accordingly. On top of that, Apple is the true innovator in the industry -- they produce must-have products, and those products almost unfailingly work extremely well.
By comparison, Bill's personality doesn't have the dynamic, charismatic element that Steve has. Bill certainly has the intellect, the will, and the drive, but he just comes across differently than Steve in a public setting.
It's like comparing Scorcese to Bruckheimer. Critics love Scorcese more and everyone will agree that Scorcese makes a superior product, but Bruckheimer is the one with the blockbuster hits.
Rightly or wrongly, most people see the future in Apple products. Microsoft's slogan is (was?) "Where do you want to go today?" and for a lot of people that's "wherever Apple takes us". Apple's the company that *tries* things. And, the Cube notwithstanding, they have been pretty much on the mark. I'm not saying they invent everything, mp3 players were around before the iPod, but they were the ones who made its appeal universal. OSX is clearly standing on the shoulders of giants, but Apple was able to take it just that bit further that I could give my folks a Mac and walk away without worrying about whether they'd be able to use it.
Compare this to Dell, whose mantra is "as cheap as possible" or Microsoft, whose mantra changes from day to day.
To be fair, both Dell and Microsoft have problems that Apple would probably love to have (massive volume). But since Apple doesn't have said problems, they're more free to do whatever they want, and what they want is to sell more of their own stuff which looks farther afield from the rest of the industry.
We're not talking about Apple consumer electronics, we're talking about Apple computers.
Really? I thought we were just talking about press coverage of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? Both Vista and Xbox got a boatload of coverage last week as reporters hung on Bill Gates' every word, and Vista doesn't even exist yet.
Go to business school, you'll get an earful of Micheal Dell because all of his innovations are in the production process, Just in Time manufacturing, mass customization, no inventory, started from a college dorm room. His invention has been on the business process side, which is a little less obvious to the public (And Bill Gates main invention was the formalization of the license).
His expertise is reliability and customer support.
I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of rejection of that hypothesis, and they're right :) They do a good enough job, especially compared to the white box guys, but they are hardly industry leaders. The fact they aren't focused on reliability means they get new technology out the door faster than those who do, which is OK because most of the IT industry has embraced the RAID (Redundant Array of Independant Devices) concept for high availability instead of the much harder AYEOB, All Your Eggs in One Basket, method.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Quite right.
Linus floats one inch above the ground.
Steve appears to float one inch above the ground, but that's an illusion caused by the RDF.
Bill stays at ground level, but the ground shrinks one inch away to avoid touching him.
Any more silly questions?
...that the 4th apple story in the last 24 hours is entitled The Media's Crush on Apple. =P
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Does "the media" entail /. ? Just wondering... because I just saw 5 Apple-related stories on the front page.
Other than being technologically interesting (but no more so than going from the 68XXX to the PowerPC) what's new?
Quite honestly, I think that just the new power connector alone was worth the press. It certainly was worth the press if you consider how much press the detachable cables from the original Xbox controllers got a few years back. What's the last thing Dell has added to a notebook computer that wasn't a 'Me Too' feature? IBM and Apple are the only innovators in the notebook market space, and they deserve the press more than Dell or Microsoft.
because I am not much of an apple fanboy, and saying this makes me feel dirty -- however, they usually seem to deliver pretty well lately on the hype they are generating. Micro$oft has a tendancy of the "cry wolf" syndrome or vaporware, or delivering less than what was hyped. Apple seems to be able do live up to the hype.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Are you saying this Dell Inspiron is priced too high? Because it looks somewhat comprable to the specs of the MacBook, except that it includes much less software ( nothing at all like iLife, for example ), no Bluetooth, and that $1999 price doesn't give you a DVD-R drive even. I mean, you can quibble about the details, Apple's ATI X1600 vs Dell's Invidia 7800, etc, but... they look like comprable offerings at... the *exact* same price!
Did I check that right? I can order either a Dell top-of-the-line notebook, or an Apple top-of-the-line notebook, and they cost EXACTLY the same amount ? Damn, now what do I do?!?
Now that is just plain loopy.
It isn't the processor that gives Microsoft ninety-five percent of the market. It is a twenty-five year presence on the home and office desktop. It is the $600 Dell home-delivered with DVD burner snd flat-panel monitor that competes with a headless MacMini.
FTA:
"Here's another good question: Why is Apple turning down Intel's marketing subsidies that go to other PC manufacturers such as Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and others? There are no "Intel Inside" logos on the new Macs, save for marks on the outer packaging for which Apple isn't being paid. A slick, new TV ad will promote the new Apple-Intel collaboration. But if Apple is leaving money on the table, wouldn't shareholders want some pointed questions asked about that?"
Here's a good answer: Because Apple is one of few companies that cares enough about the appearance and packaging of its computers that it doesn't want to make them look like stock cars by covering them with the logos of third-party parts manufacturers. And because Apple itself is a more prestigious brand than Intel, and they wouldn't have anything to gain by slapping "Intel Inside" on everything. And, oh yeah, because Intel ITSELF is phasing out the "Intel Inside" logo on the new Yonahs, if I remember correctly.
Seriously, who is the guy writing this article? This question in particular seems pretty darned obvious, at least to me.
The Bill Gates story was an article. AP generated dozens of them from CES alone.
The Apple piece in question was an alert: a one-sentence "breaking news happening now!" thing that AP passes on to its subscribers. For example, if a UFO lands in Detroit, there will be an immediate alert, followed later by a detailed story.
Just so you know.
Michael Dell has little to do with innovation. He's a brilliant businessman but I do not think his job function entitles him to media attention like Gates or Jobs.
Hold your horses there big boy. Sounds like your implying that Bill Gates innovates like Steve Jobs. Let me tell you something. Bill Gates packages software like Micheal Dell packages computers. There's no more software innovation happening at Microsoft than their is hardware innovation happening at Dell. Microsoft's business is taking what other people have innovated and marketing it like they're the ones who innovated. I watched a video of some MS guys talking about RSS in Vista a few months ago and I felt like I was watching a 2 year old discovering his toes. You can do alot of cool stuff with RSS today but watch how MS puts a spin on it when Vista is released. It'll be all MS and the average consumer will watch in awe and say "Gee, those MS guys are smart cookies".
ayottesoftware.com
Interestingly, Apple is very close to surpassing Dell in market value. Right now it's Apple: $72,301,066,720, Dell: $72,912,111,560. Apple keeps going up, while Dell has been down recently. Imagine the press coverage over Apple surpassing Dell in market value.
"Sufferin' succotash."
"... the vast majority of the computer-using population doesn't care about Apple..."
Hardly. Former Apple CEO Gil Amelio wrote a book chronicling his experiences in the Bad Old Days of Apple. One important part that stuck with me is when he asked the editor of a major national newspaper (I believe it was the NYT) why they always ran stories about Apple as major, headline news.
His answer? He had conclusive data that every time an Apple headline ran, sales for that issue spiked by 5%.
I don't think the media has that much of a crush on Apple. For a whole decade, they proclaimed them dead repeatedly. When OS X Tiger came out last April, nearly all the mainstream reviews kept referring to this weird "Windows Longhorn" thing as though it existed for comparison. They were actually comparing a shipping product to a future release that wasn't due out for another two years. It was really odd.
Last week, Bill Gates was Time Man of the Year, his CES coverage was in the news, and XBox 360 is all over the place, even MTV.
The media has done a few stories about Windows viruses lately thanks to WMF, but still refers to OS X as having "fewer viruses" instead of correctly pointing out that OS X has, since its inception, had ZERO spyware or viruses. Absolutely none.
Mostly, the difference with Apple's press coverage is that people actually pay attention to them, because their products kick ass. Nobody will remember Bill Gates' speech at CES '06. But the keynote where Apple actually released Macs that used INTEL x86 CHIPS?! Everyone will remember the MacBook Pro's introduction.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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Why is nobody talking about Acer Travelmate 8200
For the last umpteen years I could buy an intel machine and run Linux or Windows or Solaris or a BSD. I could also buy a PPC laptop that ran OSX or Linux or BSD. What I wanted was a Laptop of either variety with reasonable speed that could run Linux and Windows and OS X. As of February I may be able to buy such a laptop. This is different and is news. I'll read an article about this. I don't care about articles about other random laptops unless they can run OS X.
First, Apple put a PC notebook in a Powerbook/iMac enclosure. Acer can do it, Dell can do it, HP can do it.
Pretty much. They also created a bluetooth remote control and incorporated a camera, in the laptop.
Second. Apple has had an x86 compiled version of OSX since they first coined the name OSX.
Well, that and they created an EFI implementation, the first in a laptop I know of. Oh, and they tested things and got them working smoothly on 32 and 64 bit PPC at the same time as 32 bit intel. Oh, and they got all of their core applications working on the same. Oh and they announced they will have all their pro applications upgraded by march.
Yet the media and many geeks are gobbling up this tripe hook, line and sinker. They foolishly believe Apple are hardware guru's for wrapping an existing powerbook enclosure around an Intel mobile platform.
You've missed the point entirely. News is not just when someone does something very well, it is when someone does something that changes things. Anybody can pull a trigger, but When John Wilkes Booth did it the news reported it constantly. Everyone knew Apple could release for the intel platform, but it is still news that they have done so.
Only Apple, with its slight marketshare and EVERYTHING to loose[sic] needs to overhype their product announcements, making it seem like every little thing they do is a technological marvel.
Do compare what Apple has released lately to what MS has released. The press reports on what there is to report on. Apple releases new things. They report. MS releases nothing, they try to make up something and end up publishing articles that don't have any news in them.
Steve Jobs in his last keynote speech was hyping about Widgets for goodness sakes. Widgets! What impact has widgets has[sic] in the computer world, zero!
Actually, I use Widgets regularly. Every day, I press a button and see the weather, doppler radar, traffic reports. Many days I use the quick yellow pages, google map widget, or the simple timer to send me an alert in time to meet people for lunch. They impact my life, much more so than some random laptop I have no interest in buying.
The problem is that the media buys into this hype without sitting back and gaining perspective and realizing that Acer has a PC notebook with the EXACT SAME COMPONENTS as the Macbook and nobody is marveling over it.
Yeah, but they aren't cool. They don't run OS X, just crappy old WinXP. They don't have a cool remote. They don't let you do new things. You just don't get it. Apple moving to intel is the news. It changes the industry dynamic and will change the way a lot of us work. I might be able to finally be down to one workstation. Who cares if there is a Windows box with the same specs, it isn't challenging MS's stranglehold on the market and it isn't going to fix the industry so that we can have competition and reasonable progress again. It does not carry with it the hope for an end to these computing dark ages. If Einstein had a brother who looked just like him, but would work for cheaper, would it make news?
Who were just *bleeping* lucky that they were a little company when they started, because the Xerox of 1978 couldn't have figured out that selling water to a thirsty man is good business.
The sheer amount of stuff Xerox invented, then pissed away, is staggering.
The inventor of the laser printer nearly got fired for even suggesting the idea. He was kicked out of the company's prestigious NY R&D facilities, exiled to Palo Alto with all those damned hippies at PARC, and given virtually no support.
In the end they let HP go on to dominate the printer industry.
They gave away the GUI to Apple for a song (all the stock Xerox got in return for the GUI was sold a month or so before Apple's stock price doubled.)
Bob Metcalfe invented ethernet there, they let him have the invention, and so begat 3Com.
They damned near gave away the copier business to various other competitors though sheer incompetence.
It's stunning Xerox is still around as a company.