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Dvorak to Apple - Stop The iPhone
eldavojohn writes "John Dvorak is advising Apple to cease all efforts on the iPhone, citing the mobile handset business as a 'buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies.' With Apple's image as a 'hot company that can do no wrong' on the line, Dvorak warns that the extremely fad-prone marketplace for cell phones will quickly turn the 'hot' iPhone passe'. Unless the company has several new models in the pipeline to release after the original offering, he says, they're likely to fail. 'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"
Seriously, there's nothing to see here. Move along. Dvorak has known for decades that Apple users are protective of the Apple name and products. So he regularly goes about trying to get those users worked up. He even admits it here! Rather than giving him the satisfaction of getting you worked up again, why don't you try ignoring him for a change?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The phone has GPS. The GPS continually updates every minute and stores in cache on phone. Every so many hours, its uploaded to your home account so you can review where you were the days before. It also has a 1 touch blog. You can then record voice/text/pictures/video to your site and it will be formatted nicely. You can let family members or friends view this website. It would be a living diary for you, and would take no effort. Just 1 button and all the complex web work is done automatically. Hey and if someone wants to implement this, maybe you can hire me :)
God spoke to me.
Oh, wait. JOHN Dvorak? Nevermind.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
1) Say something braindead and contrarian about Apple
2) Get it posted on slashdot to flame contreversy
3) Get eyeballs on published work
4) Profit
Without John, how would I know what's not going to happen in the future?
Also consider dropping OSX. We're all using OS/2 now.
And I thought the iPhone was gonna be a flop... but now that John Dvorak says so, I *must* be wrong.
The man is a giant windbag of nerd conspiracy theories and technical misunderstanding. Why do the slashdot eds. slurp up all of his moonshot predictions?
My bicyles
Who else would post a Dvorak troll to the front page? What a waste.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Unless Slashot is adopting the Dvorak page-hit-generation-model by posting intentionally inflammatory references to intentionally inflammatory articles.
Article by John Dvorak
(-99,000) Troll
cat
It's a good thing Dvorak is an intelligent, experienced businessman who has himself run a highly successful, multi-billion dollar company similar to Apple, and not just some blabbering wash-up with a column.
Apple has never been afraid to enter a competitive market... in fact I think they purposely identify markets where innovation seems to have slowed and bring a product that shows the competition where they failed.
I am confident that the iPhone will be a success. Apple has been VERY good at seeing it's niche and developing the ideal product to fill that void. Once they have filled the niche, they are even better at attracting users who don't NEED the product by showing them a clean, functional, and enjoyable user experience that isn't offered by the competitors.
I am slowly becoming an Apple fanboy, and I hate to admit that. But when I compare their competitors products, I can rarely find a single one that so thoroughly meets it's customers expectations. Sure there are better music players than the iPod, better computers than the Mac, better STB's than the AppleTV, better media management apps than iTunes, and so on... but find one company that produces these products in such a way that they work as well together.
My family has recently become a Mac family, and I will get and iPhone for my wife and I because my experiences with other smart phones have all been mediocre at best, and I imagine that the iPhone will "just work" with my Mac. I could make anything work, given enough time, but the griping my wife will do when it doesn't "just work" isn't worth the cost savings. So I'll happily over pay for the iPhone.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I can't understand why Apple haven't hired him yet. I mean, does there exist anyone that can beat his predictions, except perhaps Nostradamus?
Had the major companies listened to everything Dvorak says, they would have been rich by now!
"Just pack it full of features" is a very easy and lazy way to define products. Add too much detail and you gunk up the UI. It is way harder and more important to figure out what to leave out to make it easier to use and "cleaner" for the target user base. There are huge numbers of features that could have been added to ipod, but some of its appeal comes from relative simplicity.
iPhone does not need huge numbers of features to be successful. So long as it does the functions that the target audience expects, it should do well.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why, John! I didn't know you posted on Slashdot!
Suddenly it all makes sense. All the trolls, the bad arguments, the poor attempts at putting Apple down. It was you the whole time, wasn't it? Oh John, you're such a kidder!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The cell phone market is filled with phones that are difficult to use, unstable, and generally crap.
I have a Motorola Q and it SUCKS. Sure, it hooks up to exchange, and it is nice and small, but battery life sucks, voice recognition sucks, and it crashes more than Eddie Griffin driving an Enzo.
I can't tell you how many times I've looked at phone interfaces from LG, Samsung, Motorola and Nokia and thought the designers were all on crack.
Apple NEEDS to show the world how to make a phone. God help us if they don't.
-ted
The two markets you mentioned (non CD based music players and personal computers) were both infant niche markets when Apple stepped in. I doubt they will fall on their faces but the cell market is a fairly mature industry. Time will tell. I for one will not be getting one asmy Motorola Q has 70% of the functionaity and I can't justify dropping $600+ to bridge the gap.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Ya know, like how the iPod was going to destroy the prestine image of Apple back in 2001? What a fucking idiot this guy always seems to be. Sure the iPhone isn't going to break any records out of the gate, but its something to grow on. It's the way things have to work: the first adopters are always going to be techies, who want the most features possible... this subsidizes the marketing of lower-end models which target the mainstream consumer. It's a good business strategy when trying to bring out a new type of gadget.
The Zune failed because it tried to copy something that was already on the market, but started with the high end. The opposite would have been better, here, they should have started with really low-end models and worked their way up, because Microsoft wasn't really aiming to establish a new kind of device. The iPhone, on the other hand, is really pushing to try and bring a fairly unique kind of device into the mainstream market place, so they have to start at the top.
There's a reason Dvorak never gets hired for consulting work, he has no idea what goes into a good business strategy. I don't know why we even post his fluff on here any more. I say slashdot just ignore him from now on, and he'll eventually go away.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
According to this blog, Azerbaijan is actually a good place to get an iPod, compared to the surrounding countries.
The thing that the article ignores is that Apple is not entering in the generic cell phone market, they are entering into the smartphone market (or the newly defined "feature phone" market). And as a owner of a Palm-based phone and someone who has used the WindowsMobile phones, I can tell you that that market is still in its infancy. The vendors have no idea how to make a good product right now, and the bar for entry into the market is can you do it at all, not how well. I really hope that Apple can change that and raise the bar so that it will be how good a product you can make.