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Apple Leaves Journalists Jonesing
Hodejo1 writes "Apple traditionally has big product announcements in the early spring, so around February both the mainstream press and the tech blogs began to circulate their favorite rumors (the iWatch, iTV). They also announced the date of the next Apple event, which this year was in March — except it didn't happen. 'Reliable sources' then confirmed it would be in April, then May and then — nothing. In withdrawal and with a notoriously secretive Apple offering no relief the tech journalists started to get cranky. The end result is a rash of petulant stories that insist Apple is desperate for new products, in trouble (with $150 billion dollars in the bank, I should be in such trouble) and in decline. The only ones desperate seem to be editors addicted to traffic-generating Apple announcements. Good news is on the horizon, though, as the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference starts June 10th."
This was in evidence last night, as Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to the press at the All Things D conference. Cook's statements were mostly the sort of vague, grandiose talk that gets fed to investors on an earnings call, but it's generating article after article because, hey, it's Tim Cook.
They are stuck with a bunch of odd resolutions and encouraged developers to target them all directly, resulting in debacles like the black bars when they went widescreen.
I have to kind of chuckle because, well, Android...
You didn't really read gp's post, right?
Google told the Android developers a long time ago that they should prepare their apps for a variety of resolutions and DPIs.
Apple on the other hand told their developers that they can expect fixed resolutions, and are now struggeling with the fact that they have different resolutions, different DPIs and different aspect ratios.
It does when "Buy The iDevice++" is their business model. There's a lot of 3 to 5 year old iDevices out there that are still perfectly suited to what their owners actually need, but Apple has made a metric fuckton of money by convincing people to upgrade every year even if they don't need any of the new features. At it's heart, Apple has become a marketing company that happens to also sell what they market. Without that marketing power, iDevices would have all the popularity of the Zune.
I think that you are completely and utterly wrong on how Apple views their customers. You are listening to too many rabid fanbois and reading too many awesome tech journals.
Looking at phones in particular: before the iPhone came along software upgrades, though possible, were generally a pain. This was further complicated by carrier software versions preventing manufacturer updates being applied. In general you bought a phone and the software was fixed. Apple continue to support older versions of phones with new software releases with as much feature parity as won't impact the experience. Their aim is to keep their customers happy so that when they come to replace their device they will buy it from them. The philosophy is to build the best that they can and build customer loyalty.
I've had two iPhones, a 3G and a 4S. The 4S is still good enough for pretty much whatever I want to do so I can't see me upgrading this year unless the next phone does something magical. When I come to replace I'll buy another iPhone. Why? Because it does the job I want it to.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I'm still on my iPhone 4. I have no particular need to upgrade every year. I've been buying Macs for a long time, and I always sold them when I ran out of AppleCare...I'm hardly on a 1-year upgrade cycle. Now I'm actually still using a 4-year-old iMac and an even older MacBook. (We bought a new Mac Mini to run computational experiments, but it's headless.)
In fact, most of the people I know are still using their iPhone 4. I know one person with an iPhone 5, and he came from a Windows phone.
If there's a policy or climate of consumption, it's societal, not due to Apple's marketing. The idea that you should update as often as possible isn't new to computing. Heck, it's not like it even started with computers. I've known plenty of people that leased cars just so they could get a new one every couple of years. Consumption is the curse of the current capitalist framework that we live in. That Apple exists and exploits that system somewhat shouldn't be pinned on them; they're just a symptom.
I MAY upgrade to what Apple announces this year, but I might not. I may my own determinations based on what my needs are.
Apple doesn't make vast changes to its products year on year. It adds a new feature or two and releases an upgraded OS to a lot of people for FREE. And here's the irony: Android owners are constantly ragging on Apple for this. "Oh man, nothing new out of Apple! Why should I buy their stuff?" They can't win around here. Either they're not making crazy big changes that would force you to buy a new item, or they're releasing new, upgraded products TOO DAMN OFTEN. No way to win.
Before the iPod, MP3 players were either small with low capacity or used huge fragile laptop drives. They had horrible interfaces and slow transfers.
This was Android before the iPhone.....
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2170500/googles-android-prototype-smartphone-blackberry-rip