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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.
who knows how to run Apple better than Steve Jobs.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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?