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This iMac unveiling was a fiasco.. and its a shame
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Industrial design par excellence BUT what else is there? I am afraid that people are going to start getting a little tired of Stevie’s iHype. It’s not that the designs and feature mix are’nt compelling in themselves - its just that Apple’s frequent attempts to lay claim to wild and revolutionary innovation is starting to fall flat. In fact - rightly or wrongly a sense of desperation is starting to seep through in Apple’s marketing efforts. I’m afraid that the market will now begin to treat pre-market pronouncements about the next Apple products much less seriously. Steve Jobs hurt the platform today - you better believe that.
Sure the Mac faithful will overwhelmingly applaud (and ignore the fact that most of the ‘innovations’ shown today already exists on the PC side) but that’s why they are called faithful. The rest of the world are a little underwhelmed. It’s becoming harder to hide lack of price/performance benefits with pretty designs. Hey Stevie you better iWAKE-UP!
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‘That fact’ replied the universe ‘does not create in me a sense of obligation.’<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nico on 2002-01-08 00:05 ]</font>
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iconoclast: n. one who challenges cherished beliefs and/or objects of veneration; image-wrecker; anti-cultist
“TRUTH FREES BUT CAN OFFEND”
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Agreed. The keynote was underwhelming to begin with, and when you add in all the hype that Apple itself created, it was downright dissapointing.
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Nico, I must agree with you this time.
The iMac looks good, but if that is all that was being released, then the apple.com’s hype of the last week was egg on Apple’s corporate face.
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Even the faithful are growing a bit weary. An artist seems to have about a 2 year peak once in a while - Steve has passed it, done great good for Apple in that time, but it is time to send him back to Pixar full-time where his RDF is more useful.
I have a Cube and I think it is a true piece of art - compact, quiet, stable, and you can slide photos or other images inside the case if you want - it will be quite satisfactory for me for several years longer than they would prefer, but I would SAH like to be able to juice it up with a 1.0 G5 next spring. No, Steve has decided that the road to profitability is to make non-upgradeable hardware and feed us L&G kibble. In essence, the basic users are satisfied with what they have and the really serious users are getting fed up, leaving a huge rarified middle of toybabies who will gobble up the crumbs.
It is time for Apple to shift gears, shed the hype for realism (now that would be a refreshingly new approach in the hi-tech industry) and come up with something that will broaden and enhance its appeal. Perhaps “100% Made in USA”? No, wait, that would be too unprofitable.
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Seemed like a good idea at the time
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I, for one, am almost glad that people are disappointed with the Stevenote.
Being disappointed is all about having your actual experience come in somewhat below your expectations. Similarly, being pleasantly surprised is when your actual experience exceeds your expectations.For the past two years, every single keynote has been labeled a ‘letdown’ and a ‘disappointment’ because people were expecting all of these wonderful things (thanks to the ever present rumor sites) and then had their completely unrealistic expectations unfulfilled. Yet most of these keynotes had some pretty fantastic products released and were perfectly good keynotes, especially compared to the drivel that was going on before Steve came back in ‘97. Despite this, people have been disappointed with the Keynotes. It has gotten to the point now where nobody is ever going to be satisfied with a keynote, because the long rumored Palm-Apple-Disney merger and NanoMac with telepathic interface were not finally unveiled.
By overhyping this keynote and then having people disappointed Apple will finally kill this trend. Hopefully, if Nico is right, then people will stop expecting the impossible from Apple - regardless of how much hype there is surrounding any event. Hopefully now people will ignore the hype and go into keynotes expecting to be disappointed, and then end up being pleasantly surprised when Steve unveils a new flat screen, G4, Superdrive, sub $2000 iMac, because that awesome machine at that awesome price is way above what they expected.
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Ahnyer Keester
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On 2002-01-08 00:02, Nico wrote:
I am afraid that people are going to start getting a little tired of Stevie’s iHype.Agreed. This card can only be played once in a while and you can get away with it. Disappoint too often and people stop following.
On 2002-01-08 00:02, Nico wrote:
Steve Jobs hurt the platform today - you better believe that.Disagreed. He hurt marketing but what is hurting the platform is, real or only perceived, the GHz gap. I was really expecting speed bumps into the GHz range and they didn’t come. Real or myth, it is getting embarrassing!
On 2002-01-08 00:02, Nico wrote:
The rest of the world are a little underwhelmed. It’s becoming harder to hide lack of price/performance benefits with pretty designs. Hey Stevie you better iWAKE-UP!Admittedly, my exposure so far is limited but it has been positive. Not just “gosh that looks cool” but from a practical perspective, “man, that takes up a lot less space on a desktop!” Still, like I said, the performance “limitations” can and will impact the platform.
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TMO Observer
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True enough. The keynote was a letdown—if, and I stress if, you were expecting something that is just beyond the reach of modern technology. Take away all the rumors and all, dare I say, expectations of satelite internet and computers that will get up in the morning and start your car and make your coffee and clean the house while your gone, and I think the announcments did warrant a great deal of hype.
I would disagree, however, that most of the innovations announced at the keynote already exist on the PC side. Some of them? Certainly. But most of them? Probably not.
How many PC all-in-ones are there? How many PCs ship with standard with a flat screen? What PC program can rival iPhoto for its combination of power and ease of use?
Granted, I did not let myself get swept up in the ideas of time travel on your iMac; but my only major dissapointment was that there is still no Photoshop for OS X.
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On 2002-01-08 00:02, Nico wrote:
It’s becoming harder to hide lack of price/performance benefits with pretty designs.An $1,800 consumer-targeted desktop that lets you burn DVD and would have cost over $5,000 a year ago. And it’s wrapped in a beautifully designed case. I don’t think the price/performance benefit is being too well hidden here.
(just when you think you’ve heard the last of “the Mac faithful,” another Expo rolls around and someone has to drag out that hoary chestnut once again
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DawnTreader
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I disagree that the Expo was a flop. The value of the Time covery story is worth millions in free advertising and the issue will be available in school, libraries, offices and homes for months. This was clearly the consumer show and Steve & Co. kept the focus on that end of Apple’s line.
I’ve already received one phone call from a family member who was one of the first to buy one of the new iMacs (after the Apple Store came back up) and one of my technology students, previously a Windows freak who has recently taken an interest in digital photography, stopped by my school office to view the new iMacs on my office G4 and plans to buy one. The combo DVD-R drive is what caught his interest and he’s happy it’s now available on an iMac.
The proof will be in sales and I have no doubt Apple will sell over 2 million iMacs in calendar 2002 alone.
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I was at the keynote. It was not a flop, it was a raging success. The press that I have seen has been phenomenal, and the mainstream reaction has been outstanding.
Just as with the iPod: The only people to complain are those among us who are hardcore Macheads (and Nico
), and yet we all bought one anyway (maybe not Nico). The mainstream has eaten the iPod up, and it has helped sell Macs.I have seen the new iMac. I have touched it. I have seen the hordes of people (mainstream press, mostly, as it was a sneak peek in the Apple booth yesterday) oggling it. I will be posting pictures today or tomorrow of what I expect to be an incredibly packed Apple booth with normal Mac users and the curious.
Folks, I am afraid to tell you that your cynicism is just that. The new iMac is a masterpiece, and time will bear witness to the fact that the rest of the world thinks so too.
And Nico, you were saying a few months ago that the fact that Apple hadn’t trumpeted its Apple Store numbers indicated they were a flop. Those numbers were trumpeted yesterday, and they seem to show that the Stores are NOT a flop.
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DawnTreader
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On 2002-01-08 12:43, Bryan wrote:
Folks, I am afraid to tell you that your cynicism is just that. The new iMac is a masterpiece, and time will bear witness to the fact that the rest of the world thinks so too.Agreed!!!
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I never claimed that the Apple stores are a flop I only asked questions as I am wont to do.
However one retraction - the price and feature mix of this new iMac are indeed compelling. My larger point was on the hype and the diminishing returns Apple may now glean everytime they launch a new product like this. No, I won’t buy an iMac (one Mac in the house is enough
) BUT I will recommend it to new students (along with the Apple sub-notebook which I think is excellent value) as a well integrated and sufficiently powerful machine for whatever they need to do.Bottomline though - Steve Jobs etal. are lollygagging - time for them to put some muscle into true research and development on the Mac platform. See what MS is doing in home-entertainment, gaming and tablet computing? you may dislike the Redmond beast BUT there is true innovation at work here whether you admit it or not. The irony is that MS has got much better at doing the things that Apple has apparently abandoned. Who woulda thunk that Apple would be playing catchup to MS with artsy software like iPhoto.
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A man once said to the universe ‘Sir I exist.’
‘That fact’ replied the universe ‘does not create in me a sense of obligation.’<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nico on 2002-01-08 14:03 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nico on 2002-01-08 14:04 ]</font>
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iconoclast: n. one who challenges cherished beliefs and/or objects of veneration; image-wrecker; anti-cultist
“TRUTH FREES BUT CAN OFFEND”
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Ahnyer Keester
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If I may just throw in a quote from Slashdot (no less!) that supports what I said:
CmdrTaco at SlashDot wrote:
First: The new iMac is very attractive. It’s cool, it’s neat. It will be a very popular machine. It’s got a good price/feature spectrum and it looks like a pretty decent machine for the consumer. It isn’t, in the end, a machine for the linux die-hard, but that’s okay. It’s slick, it ships with a bunch of very decent apps to manage your digital media. I want one, it’s a cool machine. I don’t know what I’d do with it (which is the problem), but it’s cool looking. It’s not particularly a good deal, I mean, you can pick up 200$ 15” tft displays at Fry’s and lets get real, the G4 (Excepting the velocity engine stuff) isn’t that fast of a chip at any available speed compared to the x86 world. But boy, this is one slick machine.Did you catch it all in that quote? Cool looks and not a bad price. He wants one even though it can’t run Linux (sheya, like THAT’S a drawback!) But catch also the MHz myth.
So again, the style isn’t the problem. Presentation and letdown isn’t the problem, the GHz gap is the problem. If Steve keeps talking big and delivering medium it could become a problem but I don’t think it is yet.
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Vern Seward
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I wasn’t at the Keynote, but I did watch. It’s one thing to be at ground zero at deep within the infamous Jobs Distortion Field, and another to be out here looking, bathed in the afterglow of a week’s worth of hype.
I believe Bryan when he says that the press and everyone at MWSF is eating up the iMac. It’s a cool machine, no doubt, but I agreed somewhat with Nico. Not that Jobs has hurt the platform, that’s a bit too far for me. I do think the hand was grossly overplayed by Apple.
I also agree that it seems that Apple is trying to appear to innovate. It’s a fine line and it could be argued either way if the new iMac is “innovative”, but I believe that innovation is not just in how you package something, but more how to accomplish something better. The new iMac is going to be a hit, no doubt about it, but the amount of innovation shown at the keynote was far less than the amount promised. At least, in my opinion.
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"If only you could have seen what I’ve seen with your eyes." Roy, Blade Runner
Vern Seward
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Reality Cheque
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Morto wrote:
...For the past two years, every single keynote has been labeled a ‘letdown’ and a ‘disappointment’ because people were expecting all of these wonderful things (thanks to the ever present rumor sites) and then had their completely unrealistic expectations unfulfilled….I don’t think people are expecting miracles from Apple; they are expecting competitive value. Apple charges about a 30%-50% premium on thier products over similarly-speced PCs. For that, its customers should get *at least* what is available on the other platform; plus the Apple-specific bonuses they keep promoting; a better OS (even if OSX is still in development); and unique and arguably beautiful product deisign.
What we *don’t* get, however, seems to outway a lot of that: we are missing speed on par with Wintel boxes by a wide margin: the processors are slower, the system bus is slower, the RAM is slower, and the hard drives are often slower. That’s a lot to swallow.
The bottom line is that people do not have unrealistic expectations of Apple, despite the rumour site fantasies—people simply want Apple to give them, at minimum, the same features and performance as would be available from other computer makers. Quite clearly, Apple is missing that and, unfortunately, every year they are missing it by a greater margin.
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Sigmascape
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Was the Keynote and iMac presentation a flop? No, I don’t think the overall presentation was a flop, I think Apple’s reality is a flop. I am Mac user, and have been for a few years (professionally and as a consumer). I also use Windows and Linux. Why? Because I am platform-agnostic. I LOVE my old (six months) iMac. I love to hear it crank up and then hear nothing as it runs Studio Artist and Illustrator. It is just a neat machine. It is also the cheapest (for what you get in terms of hardware) that Apple makes. I can do the same work on a PC for even less money, and that makes me sad.
I have a wishlist for computers… not a fantasy list, but a realistic wishlist. Because I use x86 machines and Macs, I have my pick of the litter when it comes to machines. What is on my wishlist? Two items… one laptop and one desktop. The problem I am faced with is simple… I can get a lot more machine from PC makers than I can from Apple. No, I can’t get OS X on a Sony, but I can get standard FireWire connections. Also, if I buy a Sony Laptop or desktop from a retailer, I can get a years worth of internet from MSN or equiv. I am not going to write yet another “Macs are too expensive letter.” I am almost tired of writing about it, but something has to give. This past Sunday, I rec’d an ad running in a prominent national retailer, and I almost lost my mind with anger. Basically, the ad read: ‘Sony Laptop model XYZ. 1 Ghz Athlon, 256 MB Sdram, 20 Hard Drive, Firewire connection, 15” screen, Windows XP, etc. The price after 2 $100 rebates? $1300.00. Also, they are throwing in 1 year free MSN access, and 1 year interest free financing. The disparity in pricing for PCs and Macs is astounding, and it will hurt Apple in the one arena they appear to be courting the strongest… the consumer!!!!!!!
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Mac, and I love the competition they offer Microsoft, but something simply has to give here. Yesterday was not a shock to me… I knew what Jobs was going to do… he was going to hype models and features. He could have started something ‘different’ for Apple… he could have announced new price cuts (not just on one model of iBook that already had an instant rebate) and more value for Apple customers. What he ended up doing was showing off to the crowd and an industry that is quickly passing him by. Yeah, I really want that new iMac, but Jobs needs to sweeten the deal for me first. I am not going to allow Jobs to dictate to me what is and isn’t ‘beautiful’ in computing today. That Sony Laptop looks awfully pretty to me.
Thanks,
Mitch Featherston
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Hmmm… software.
