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Why the iPhone Keynote Was A Mistake
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.'"
The author really isn't trying to make that argument. He's just saying the announcement this early in the game was a bad idea.
"He argues that extremely high expectations can only lead to disappointment for consumers and investors."
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.
just mention right away that the ipod does far less than pretty much every high end MP3 player you can buy. How many happy ipod users are there? I think as long as the iphone does what it advertises and does it with style and ease (like the ipod), it will be a great success.
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.
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.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
I agree, Steve Jobs probably did what was best under the circumstances (especially with FCC approval in mind!).
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.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
Dear god, you guys are actually making me defend Apple. And Cingular.
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.
iPhone cannibalizing iPod sales
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.
I don't think Apple feels they where going anywhere with Cisco, and that they had nothing to loose. There is some speculation that Apple thinks Cisco abandoned the trademark, and that Apple can win that point in court. Cisco needs Apple, not the other way around. Apple can name the phone device something else with little or no loss in visibility or branding power.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
who knows how to run Apple better than Steve Jobs.
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.
Exactly. The author of this article is a num-head.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
On the other hand, there are now people who are putting off buying another phone and are waiting for the iPhone. This has to be good for Apple.
Of course, the wait in the UK for this phone is excessive as ever, we're always behind the US and Japan even though mobile phone ownership here has been ahead of the US as a percentage of the population. In Europe 70% of the population use mobiles, 63% in Canada and in the US 55%.
For me, it's not that Jobs didn't focus on the iPhone. It's the fact that he DIDN'T focus on Macintosh. This is a fundamentally bigger point than hyping the device, or building expectations too high. This is more or less a copy of post I made on another site, but I think it's worth repeating.
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.
All the other "mistakes" of the keynote can be forgiven; except this one rule, and Jobs broke it.
.. 48 hours from the "FCC discovery", Apple can be in a position to announce the product itself, and ship and take orders then and there.
.. nevertheless, I personally still look forward to seeing Apple get some competition in the iPhone space ..
In the hardware world, and I say this from the perspective of the music-hardware (synthesizer) segment, where the rule has been proven again and again and again, there is a Cardinal Rule:
Never announce a product until you can actually ship it.
None of these other factors mentioned in this article would have any effect on Apple in the short, mid- and long-term, if but for the fact that there was a huge, deeply felt "Awwwww...." on the part of the audience when he announced the shipping date. That moment was when the hype balloon lost a lot of its gas.
And no, I dont think the FCC-would-announce-it-for-us is a good enough excuse to pre-emptively announce a product. A company like Apple should be ready to take orders the day the FCC approvals have been aquired
Big mistake, but courtesy of us mac fanboix, maybe not a ship sinker
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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.
The trouble, such as it was, was that nothing was ready to announce, which is to say, ship. It's all vaporware, albeit very likely to appear eventually vaporware.
Leopard wasn't ready; iPhone wasn't ready; iTV wasn't ready; no improvements to the laptops, minis, desktops... nothing. Not even an iPod variant. So what was Apple to do in the face of high customer expectations, ongoing stock and accounting scandals? Announce vaporware, that's what, and that's precisely what they did. And Apple stock went up that day, because people are gullible. Now the common folk have had a little time to stare at their completely empty hands, and they're beginning to mutter "say... where's my stuff?" Doesn't matter that they were told it wouldn't come until later. People expect a lot from Apple, especially at "announcement time", and when they get nothing... well, they tend to notice.
That announcement was worse than nothing to me and people like me; I am no fan of telephones (mostly just another way for people to interrupt you), nor do I think that touch-pads are good for dialing, nor do I think that LCD's are very useful in sunlight, nor am I impressed by the use of OSX in a venue where I can't add software, nor do I see what iTV will do for me that will be useful beyond the usual stack of DVR, satellite and other gear I already own.
I am very interested in Leopard, but of that there was no sign. So... bleagh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The author really isn't trying to make that argument. He's just saying the announcement this early in the game was a bad idea.
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.
Whine about other people's taste, complain constantly about fashion trends, and pretend like you know what's 'really cool'. Fads come and fads go, but putting others down for following them has always remained 'cool'.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
The keynote did not give competitors any lead time they would have otherwise not had. The iPhone's design, by law, was apparently practically entirely layed out and spec'd as part of process of obtaining FCC approval, and FCC approval takes over 6 months. The competitors already had all the details of its design. This is fact. One could argue that the iPhone's incredible awesomeness when witnessed in real life might have lit additional fire to the heals of competitors, but even that would be of dubious merit because it's doubtful there's ever been personal electronic device that's induced nearly the same chatter, speculation, anticipation, and general buzz ahead of time -- the competitors were on it you can count on it.
Six months is not that much time. When you look at the details of how Cisco got the trademark, how they renamed an already existing phone practically a day before the trademark was going to expire just to create the future conflict, and various other details, it's clear that there really wasn't any doubt that Apple would and will eventually get the name.
Announcing things way ahead of time is a proven effective strategy for introducing new products. It creates so much anticipation that people are practically nuts for it once it comes out. Look at what people did to get their hands on PS2s and PS3s -- two actually pretty mediocre products -- certainly no things so wonderful as to be commensurate with the insane appetite consumers had for them once they were finally able to get their hands on.
Moreover, by announcing 6 months ahead of time, a lot of people are going to be able to say "hold on, maybe I shouldn't sign another two year contract with whoever other provider, or buy the latest "Chocolate" or other Korean knockoff of some $800 Nokia. Maybe I can bear not having the latest phone out there for about 6 more months if it means I will be able to get this iPhone thing which will be leaps and bounds better."
Getting FCC approval isn't hard. You send in a bunch of documents from your trusted RF lab and they rubber stamp them and put the ones not marked confidential on their web site. To even make a call on the stage, it would have had to pass all the hard tests already. 6 Months for the FCC approval doesn't look like the truth. I'm guessing its a long estimate to throw off other big phone manufactures. I expect to see the phone inside a few months.
And if I'm wrong, at least I still get modded +5 Insightful
'The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones.'
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.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You fail to consider the large quantity of people who are NOT on Cingular, yet have a contract that will end in the next 6 months. By announcing the iPhone, you attract those people to Cingular, or at the very least, they will stay month-to-month with another provider until the iPhone release.
The iPod market, as we've been hearing for the past months, is saturated. iPods are everywhere. There's more competition from other manufacturers. How much longer do you expect Apple to sit and sell the current batch of iPods? The cell phone and DAP markets have been merging for the past 2 years. Do you really think Apple is going to sit back and ignore that market? Apple isn't going to give up on the DAP market, but they can't ignore the PDA/MP3/cell phone market either.
The functionality of the iPhone might be less than the current batch of PDA's, but what functionality is most important? Is Apple going after the business market? Are they expected to go after Blackberry? Or Palm? I have a Treo 700W. I can play MP3's and video. I have a 2gig SD card. If I had the opportunity to switch without penalty, I'd do it.
Frankly, Apple will do well with the iPhone. I'm normally an early adopter. In this case, I'll be tied to Verizon for another year, and even then, my employer may not be excited about supporting an iPhone. Which leads me to my last point... the iPhone isn't going to penetrate biz markets much... but it will cause people to WANT to change... and that will alter the way the PDA/Phone market develops over the next few years. The Blackberry's around work do not play MP3's. They don't play video. Some of them browse the internet. But the functionality is limited to mostly email. If it came down to a Blackberry or an iPhone, I'd take an iPhone. If it came to an iPhone and a Treo 700W, 700P, or 750P, I'd take the Treo.
Oh my god, you are a funny man. If you have EVER worked in a retail environment then you'd realize half of your comment was a waste of bytes. Consumers, as a general rule *DO NOT DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING*!
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)
6. Customers can educate themselves about product expectations
"Plan accordingly" and "Educate themselves" are the last thing the average Joe Sixpack does in this society. The sheer number of idiots I deal with on a daily basis asking questions like, "Xbox games work on the PlayStation, right?" proves to me that planning and education are far down the list of consumer priorities. "Get eyebrows waxed" has higher priority to todays consumer!
"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"
I disagree. There's been so much buzz about the iPhone that only a few people have been asking about Macs and Leopard, and why Jobs didn't even so much as mention them. I must admit that I was pretty dazzled by the iPhone's interface, and it took me a couple days to start sorting out the implications.
I'm convinced that Leopard's new interface will support multi-touch technology (MTI). Am I the only person who believes that Apple has already thought of vastly more expansive uses for MTI than a mere smartphone display? Hello? Mac Tablet anyone? The iPhone interface is merely the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. Take a look at the video demo at the Multi-Touch Interaction Research group's site and imagine some or most of these capabilities, or even greater capabilities, in Leopard. Interestingly, there's a note on the site that says they saw the keynote, and that they have some more exciting stuff coming up soon.
Jobs said nothing about new Macs, new displays, or OS X 10.5 for one reason: he believes that what he has up his sleeve will make Vista look like ancient technology to Joe Consumer, and he's deliberately waiting for Microsoft to launch their expensive media blitz introducing Vista before dropping a Leopard-spotted nuke on them. His aim is to embarrass Microsoft. And I believe that Microsoft came to that conclusion while the keynote was going on, but they still have no choice but to kick Vista out the door.
Joe Consumer has already seen the iPhone's interface, courtesy the mainstream media. He'll be primed for multi-touch interface on a personal computer, and I foresee PC salespeople having an interesting time in the aftermath of Leopard's introduction: "Yeah, that's a pretty cheap machine, but how come I can't just drag things around with my finger like the guy at the Apple Store showed me?"
As many here have pointed out, Macs don't do anything that PC's can't do (much less if you count games and enterprise apps); iPods do less than many other available DAP's; the iPhone won't offer any capabilities unavailable on other, existing smartphones. The difference in all three cases is how Apple pulls the interface together in ways that appeal and make sense to average users i.e., non-Slashdot readers. I believe that Jobs has high hopes that Leopard will present an interface that will finally, clearly, distinguish Macs from PC's in the minds of the average consumer, in the same way that their respective interfaces distinguish the iPod and iPhone from competing devices. I believe that Jobs honestly feels that 2007 is the year of destiny for the Macintosh.
that said, the [Apple]TV really got the short stick this round. That was supposed to get the spotlight and Steve dropped the ball. They didn't show us anything about it we didn't already know, so all the fan hype has been very negative. And we can't even BUY it yet!!
> The iPhone, despite its many media-oriented virtues and its sweet design, will do far less than most existing smart phones
...
... you will be schooled in its quality if you haven't been already. So you don't have to run a Java app to play MineSweeper ... you can play it off the Web. You don't have to run some proprietary software to download ring tones ... you just download them from the Web. Lots of the stuff that is on smart phones today is completely negated if you add the real Web.
... you're supposed to run it out of your pocket. Same for everything Google, ultimately. The reason so much of Google's stuff is in beta is that Google sees the whole Internet as being in beta. The iPhone probably represents some significant point in Google's business plans ... they've been waiting for it. The iPhone is the real "Pocket Web" in the same way that the iPod was the first real "Pocket Music".
...
Two words: "Pocket-W3" and "iPod-connector".
First, "Pocket-W3"
The iPhone does a lot more than any other smart phone because the iPhone has the actual World Wide Web in it. When you point it at amazon.com or any other site on the Web, there are no compromises. WebKit is world class desktop browsing, not smart phone class browsing. Your iPhone has complete (COMPLETE!) support for HTML 4.01, CSS 2.1, JavaScript 1.8, DOM Level 1, PNG 1.0, JPEG 1.0 and also there will probably be some MPEG-4 in there, as much as has been created yet (MPEG-4 is the standardization of QuickTime). It has the best typography you will see on a screen anywhere other than Mac OS X. (Typography is kind of an old science to completely forgo just because of digital, wouldn't you say? Shouldn't the Web have typography? Shit.) Also this is the third major version of WebKit (Panther, Tiger, Leopard) and it is open source
The reason the Google CEO was there joking about merging with Apple is that this is the device that Google wants people to have to correspond to their massive "cloud" servers. You aren't supposed to run Google Maps on a PC
Second, "iPod-connector"
The iPhone does a lot more than any other smart phone because it has an iPod dock connector which enables you to use something like 3000+ accessories just by plugging them in, or easily synchronize with iTunes to get music or movies or other data. There is no software to install, or drivers to install. You just plug stuff in and it works. iTunes manages the device in the same way as with iPods and other devices.
There will probably be over 100 iPhone-specific accessories by the June. They're designing and building them right now, wherever fine iPod accessories are made. If some kind of "missing" thing is identified, there will be a number of solutions that you can plug on in no time.
Finally, do not underestimate the value of the thing actually being oriented towards making calls as its number one app. The contacts list, the ability to conference with a single button push, even the ringer turning down music playback when you have a call, are all reasons why people will buy this just to use as a phone and everything else really will be extra. Although being able to go to the actual Web while on a call is a great calling-feature in its own right.
".. the average Joe Sixpack .."
Which, BTW, is NOT the target market. Not to mention the fact that Joe Sixpack also tends not to be an early adopter.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You might want to take a look at the current crop of Blackberrys. I own a Pearl and it does everything you say it can't. Effortlessly. And what you say is "limited to mostly email" can't be discounted. It's quite important to many people, an Apple is counting on its success with its own phone as well.
On a side note, when I went to the Cingular store to buy by Pearl, there was a woman there that was talking about waiting for the iPhone. She saw my phone and started asking questions. Once she saw waht it was capable of, she bought one too. She said she still will consider buying an iPhone in June when they're released, but frankly, if the iPhone doesn't offer significantly more than the smartphones already on the market, I don't see how it'll survive. Especially at the price they're quoting for a two year contract.
The trouble, such as it was, was that nothing was ready to announce, which is to say, ship.
Remeber, Apple doesn't get to schedule Macworld around their product readiness, it's on the calendar a year ahead of time. If a product isn't ready, I'd rather them take the extra time to make it ready than to rush it out on a specific target date like so many other companies -- notorious for making shit products -- that I could name.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The functionality argument could always be made for the iPod as well. The iPod lacked features that could long be found in competing MP3 jukeboxes, and yet it was a commercial success. In fact, some of its comparative deficiencies are the same that were listed here for the iPhone. Yet consumers didn't reject it for the things it couldn't do. I think a big part of Apple's target market are people who want to have the cool gadget like an MP3 player or a smart phone, but who don't already have so much experience with them so as to expect specific features. I mean, who's the bigger market, people who already own Blackberrys, or people who have regular phones and are sick of not remembering how to set up a 3-way call, or which unlabeled button turns on speakerphone?