I'm not disagreeing with the premise of this article -- indeed the Macalope makes a career out of it -- but 4740 words to tell us that "Apple doesn't listen to tech pundits and look at them; maybe you shouldn't either"? Really?
Like many DED articles it starts off well and then meanders into silliness...
Apple has pretty much always operated this way, though it has often responded accordingly to customer backlash in the past. But I'm not to sure about Apple today, where it's heading. I don't have the same love for Apple as I did in the past. I would love to purchase a new Mac desktop and laptop; and I don't want to spend thousands for products that really don't interest me. And I am not alone. And, generally, I find the elegance of its operating systems declining while other vendors are raising their game. And I feel the same for Apple's other software offerings. Apple is obsessed today with closed boxes and ridiculously thin devices. And, while their build quality remains first rate, at the end of the day it is software that sells hardware. The GUI is everything, and the new coders really aren't in touch with well established principles that Apple developed years ago. This can be a recipe for disaster, IMHO. I hope not.
There is already plenty of great criticism out there and this piece could have added a lot to it. The problem is that it conveniently side steps anything but cursory criticism of the company and its products to support its long winded premise. As an editorial piece that's fine, as it is up to the author to give his opinion and then the reader to form his or her own opinion.
Things like:
"Whether intentionally or not, Apple's decision to release a larger smartphone format with iPhone 6 Plus in 2014 (above) resulted in a new business for Apple between the smartphone and tablet"
'Whether intentionally or not' really has no place here and it reads like an admission that Apple's line on big screens being unadvisable was perhaps incorrect. Of course openly accepting that misjudged line of thinking would crash head on with one of the article's key points.
Samsung took the phablet market by storm with the Note line. Others followed suit. Apple didn't, even though all the pundits - and its own users - said they needed such a phone.
We can be sure that the Plus line was intentional. Most of us have seen the slide from marketing that says 'we don't have what our customers want' (bigger screens).
Fortunately, that particular change in attitude paid off handsomely. The iPhone 7 Plus pretty much stole the show in the latest earnings. But what would have happened if Apple had not changed its idea on larger screens?
The "intentional or not" comment pertains to whether Apple fully realized that selling a larger iPhone would replace some iPad sales, albeit with a higher end device with a faster replacement cycle. It has nothing to do with Samsung selling oversized phones first.
Samsung's sales of Note-sized phones remained small, it's just that they were premium and therefore profitable. Apple responded to that small success by introducing its own larger iPhone, and the result was devastating for Samsung. The entire article is explicitly based on the idea that intelligent strategy responds to what others are doing and the shifting environment.
To be clear: in 2012, Samsung was selling low quality Pen-tile big screen Notes in small quantities and low end phones in high volumes. Apple was selling very profitable small iPhones and large iPads in high volumes, and went on to fully exploit both categories (and sell tens of millions of smaller iPad minis) while it worked on the technology to deliver a larger iOS phone (via flexible app development tools) along with the availability of high quality larger phone displays. If Samsung & Apple had access to a time machine to do things over, both would try to be Apple, not Samsung. It's find to give Samsung credit for exploring big phones though, even if it wasn't able to hold on to the market or withstand competition from Apple.
I was doubting about your intended use of 'intentionally' so took it literally in the end.
The Note line sold millions. Whether we define that as 'small' doesn't mean too much as Apple was selling 'zero' although pundits and users were looking for a large screen iPhone (or not even 'large', just bigger).
As for the screen quality, the Note was very good. Yes, a premium phone at a premium price but Samsung isn't about high end and low end. Samsung is about that and everything in between. The point of my post was the the pundits got it right while Apple refused to budge until marketing (or whatever department it was), put up that famous slide. I think it reasonable to put that one down to Apple getting it wrong even though they changed tack in the end.
On the subject of the iPad something similar happened but the other way around. Pundits (and users) wanted an option of smaller screens but Apple, on more than one occasion, argued that the original size was optimal. When they finally made the iPad Mini it was also a great addition (and much loved) addition to the lineup. A success story on every level. Can we say the pundits got it right again?
Sticking with the iPad for a moment, I think it's reasonable to consider the iPad at launch and the current iPads as different beasts. With that in mind I feel it is unfair to take aim at observations of the iPad being for 'consumption' (I can't remember the exact word used). IMO, at the time, those observations were pretty much spot on. Things have moved on significantly since then though and a lot more is possible now.
This article is poorly written and the second paragraph is a disaster. I would rewrite it as:
Apple gets lots of advice, but vision is not simply about coming up with ideas. The key to effective vision is seeing the full picture and all of it's potential possibilities in parallel. A competitive vision, combines this with the ability to predict the responses of competitors, in order to plan for them.
No run on sentence, no word vomit, and no pretentious tone that goes with labeling everything as "intelligence." That choice of wording was not very intelligent.
There is already plenty of great criticism out there and this piece could have added a lot to it. The problem is that it conveniently side steps anything but cursory criticism of the company and its products to support its long winded premise. As an editorial piece that's fine, as it is up to the author to give his opinion and then the reader to form his or her own opinion.
Things like:
"Whether intentionally or not, Apple's decision to release a larger smartphone format with iPhone 6 Plus in 2014 (above) resulted in a new business for Apple between the smartphone and tablet"
'Whether intentionally or not' really has no place here and it reads like an admission that Apple's line on big screens being unadvisable was perhaps incorrect. Of course openly accepting that misjudged line of thinking would crash head on with one of the article's key points.
Samsung took the phablet market by storm with the Note line. Others followed suit. Apple didn't, even though all the pundits - and its own users - said they needed such a phone.
We can be sure that the Plus line was intentional. Most of us have seen the slide from marketing that says 'we don't have what our customers want' (bigger screens).
Fortunately, that particular change in attitude paid off handsomely. The iPhone 7 Plus pretty much stole the show in the latest earnings. But what would have happened if Apple had not changed its idea on larger screens?
The "intentional or not" comment pertains to whether Apple fully realized that selling a larger iPhone would replace some iPad sales, albeit with a higher end device with a faster replacement cycle. It has nothing to do with Samsung selling oversized phones first.
Samsung's sales of Note-sized phones remained small, it's just that they were premium and therefore profitable. Apple responded to that small success by introducing its own larger iPhone, and the result was devastating for Samsung. The entire article is explicitly based on the idea that intelligent strategy responds to what others are doing and the shifting environment.
To be clear: in 2012, Samsung was selling low quality Pen-tile big screen Notes in small quantities and low end phones in high volumes. Apple was selling very profitable small iPhones and large iPads in high volumes, and went on to fully exploit both categories (and sell tens of millions of smaller iPad minis) while it worked on the technology to deliver a larger iOS phone (via flexible app development tools) along with the availability of high quality larger phone displays. If Samsung & Apple had access to a time machine to do things over, both would try to be Apple, not Samsung. It's find to give Samsung credit for exploring big phones though, even if it wasn't able to hold on to the market or withstand competition from Apple.
I have met a few Samsung Note users who love their phones and will probably flock back to the Note8. I don't know if it is because of the OLED screen or the little stylus. Samsung has a nice feature to shrink their display to 75% in the lower right corner.
Next time the author should do a little more homework on the numbers before just throwing out his preconceived conclusions. If Apple had bought YouTube for that price, I am sure the author would have said it was a brilliant acquisition. Beats may have been a good acquisition, but I would bet that YouTube will be a viewed as a better acquisition when looking back (especially since it was half the price of the Beats acquisition).
Most of this guy's writing is really great, but I don't see the need to inject politics into a tech blog:
"America has now waded so deep into this pattern of cynical anti-intellectualism that we now have a national chief executive that doesn't understand basic policy, can't spell, and can't even speak in coherent sentences. But at least we don't have any "elites" running the country!"
This is offensive, and not appropriate. Also, The writer himself often makes spelling and grammar mistakes that apparently, the Apple Insider people fail to recognize. I will make a similar statement about pushing politics here that I make about actors. Shut up and write! I don't give a damn about your political opinions. I come to Apple Insider to read about technology. I will go to Fox News, or Drudge when I'm ready to read about politics. If I want to be insulted, I will head over to MSNBC and watch Rachel Madcow.
I've always found it odd that it's so often the case that the folks who want actors to 'shut up' (and apparently tech writers to 'just write') are also the same people who actually elect actors (Ronald Reagan, Arnold Scwartzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Fred Thompson, Sonny Bono, etc.), and now reality stars (!?!) into public office. I would suggest skipping the sources mentioned here for political writing (both left and right), and try looking for some better, fact-based journalism. And if you think celebrities (and tech writers) aren't qualified to express political opinions, for the love of Pete, please quit voting them into public office.
I thought the AI piece was fine, and while the jab at the current White House occupant was perhaps provocative, anti-intellectualism is indeed a problem that led to the Great Orange Train Wreck, and also contributes to much of the bizarre punditry constantly directed at Apple. The folks running Apple have a pretty well-established track record for understanding and implementing their own very successful business model. Much of the negative chatter about Apple is predicated on a fundamental disregard for how Apple has built its success, substituting nonsensical demands that the company instead do things that would depart from anything resembling Steve Jobs' legendary vision. That negative chatter comes from sources that either do not value Apple's expertise, or - interestingly - from intentional disinformation campaigns seeking to subvert the company's reputation. So yeah, the comment was provocative, but not at all random or out of place.
#1 iPad Pro : expensive no clear direction and purpose
#2 Apple Pencil : expensive no clear real world use case outside niche application
#3 iTunes App : too many function on one app
#4 Apple TV : un-intuitive UI and that remote is onother example of ID overreach
#5 Products languishing with out refreshing is a problem
@sog35 I'm amused that you you're self have on numerouse occasions complained about some of these things, I guess you feel you're the only person suitable to question Apple. My point how ever that you, like always failed to pick up before youre tirade on my post is that there's a lot of lambasting of jurnalists that I personally don't follow or care about spewing all kinds of garbage that people don't really care about and at the end of each there is something like "Apple has problems but those aren't them " and my question then in yours,Dan and Macalope's write-ups what are the actual problems then? if you are saying that Apple does have problems, to you what are they ?, I don't even get why you're bring up the fact that Apple is number one at the moment, they were number one in the past too and that didn't stop them from almost going bankrupt and no I'm not saying that things are that bad but it was this kind of arrogance that led MS to fall from grace as the article points out. IMHO Apple isn't under threat from anything that exists currently as MS and BB weren't pummeled by anything that they could see coming or had the conceptual understanding of to counter affectively, contrary to many here Apple's sucsses is mostly from people who could easily be swayed to jump ship if something close to iPhone in most things including UI,security and performance but cheaper appeared, or do you think only Apple can make it like Apple ?
All those complaints are minor.
Just like Michael Jordan missing a couple free throws after scoring 50 points and winning the title.
Pencil has no clear use for you? Don't buy it then. Its not a problem. AppleTV remote not the best? Who cares. Again Minor. Products languishing? So why did Apple just have its best QUARTER OF ALL TIME!!! Maybe languishing in your mind but Apple is stronger than ever before when you look at FACTS.
Saying that Apple today is similiar to the Apple that almost went bankrupt is ridiculous. Give me a break. Apple has $250 billion in cash and over a BILLION active users. The near bankrupt Apple is not even a fraction of what today's Apple is.
I bring up Apple is #1 because that just proves that they don't have 'real problems'. They simply don't. You don't DOMINATE the industry by having real big problems. Minor stuff? Yes.
So now you say Apple has 'real problems' because some technology 'boogie man' is going to appear and kill the iPhone? LOLLLLLLLLOOLLLOLLLOLLLL!!!! Just stop. You are living in a fantasy world. Something may topple the iPhone eventually, but it won't because of the 'real problems' you listed.
Just like Jordan people like you think that just because he's made a lot of baskets in a row he'll continue to do so, it's called the hot hand fallacy,
I could go further to dealing with you're points but this is gonna go on and on and I'm really not in the mood but suffice to warn that $250 billion doesn't make Apple invincible, if money could shield companies from paradigms shifting then Microsoft would still be #1
The hot hand fallacy refers to the expectation that random occurrences will continue to repeatedly occur outside the laws of probability. At least when he was in his prime, the probability that Michael Jordan would continue to make a lot of baskets in a row was very, very high. His success was based on skill, not random luck.
The article is spot on about M&A. I still remember an article that appeared nearly four years ago in Fortune. In that article, the author claimed that if Musk or Zuckerberg were CEO of Apple, they would be much more acquisitive with Apple's cash and would not be afraid of using Apple's stock to finance acquisitions. If Fortune considered itself a reputable finance publication, that statement alone should have sent that article to the trash heap. In that same article, the author claimed Apple should buy Tesla and the reason he cited was that Apple would be able to show the market that it was "back in business."
Basic M&A tells us that a public company using its shares as currency to finance deals is telegraphing to shareholders that management thinks the stock is overvalued. If the main reason for doing a deal is to get brownie points in the media or an ego trip for the CEO, that deal is probably one of the worst in history. You can expect that deal to find its way into a case study that will then get dissected to pieces in business school classrooms all over the country. I realize that with tech companies, some of the old rules don't apply any longer but I would still think that no one would sell an asset today for $1 if they though they could sell it for $2 tomorrow.
I'm not sure as to what criticisms Apple is deserving of in this context, as comparatively, it has no equal in terms of quality, stability, customer satisfaction, environmental conscience, etc. There are some criticism such not updating models every year, but Apple is not merely focussed on profits, but is constrained by technological developments, such as by Intel. The criticisms I have are all fairly small and certainly don't leave me thinking negatively of any of its products, or business acumen, they way I certainly do about Apple's ostensible competitors.
"America has now waded so deep into this pattern of cynical anti-intellectualism that we now have a national chief executive that doesn't understand basic policy, can't spell, and can't even speak in coherent sentences. But at least we don't have any "elites" running the country!"
And this is where I stopped reading.
If there is one thing that 40 years of life has taught me, it is that liberals can not resist two things:
1. Telling you they're liberals. 2. Slandering everybody who isn't.
This paragraph had no place in this article. This is why I rarely come to this website anymore.
One spirit pundits seemed to have missed is a certain honesty in Apple consumers. Starting from Steve Jobs request "Don't Steal Music", we've been willing to pay content creators for their work. This keeps content creators in an environment where they make money rather than one with more units, but no funding. My brother is happy with bootleg copies of movies, and thinks me foolish for paying for them. Heck, I've paid for two replacement cassette copies of the Top Gun soundtrack when I wore out the previous copy.
Alternate headline: Why Apple is Great and Should Never be Questioned.
Come off it. You're just upset because he had an entire section for why the Beats acquisition was, in fact, a great decision. It was. You were wrong.
Apple knows what it's doing and I for one love to see editorial content recognizing this and devaluing the usually-wrong opinion of pundits and armchair executives. I know this is upsetting to concern trolls, haters, and hand-wringers, but oh well, this is an Apple site.
Maybe was a good decision, but they overpaid for Beats. It's taken Apple this long to start making Beats products with Apple DNA and having better quality. Apple still has to replace those crappy wired Powerbeats since they break so easily along with rehashes of the same old tech with added weights to feign value and quality. Apple bought Beats for the streaming service and Lovine and they overpaid for them.
They payed big bucks to basically cobble together Apple Music and decided not to do anymore spending on R&D on displays or wifi technology. The sad part is they used to be at the forefront of both and they let it slip thru their fingers. They've gone consumer all the way and have ignored the Pro markets. If they're not careful they will find out how fickle the consumer will be over the professional customer.
Great article, Daniel! This could have been taken from a military manual on how to prepare an appreciation (US: estimate) of the situation: "A key hallmark of intelligence is the ability to visualize parallel, potential scenarios, then determine the best alternative to pursue--while constantly reexamining how the environment and other players might change that playing field and require the calculation of a new decision matrix." Also, "Seeing the future in the now, by understanding the past" is so very Zen, I love it. How about a book: "Zen and the Art of Apple"? Anyway, keep up the intelligent writing, some of us are able to appreciate it.
Alternate headline: Why Apple is Great and Should Never be Questioned.
Come off it. You're just upset because he had an entire section for why the Beats acquisition was, in fact, a great decision. It was. You were wrong.
Apple knows what it's doing and I for one love to see editorial content recognizing this and devaluing the usually-wrong opinion of pundits and armchair executives. I know this is upsetting to concern trolls, haters, and hand-wringers, but oh well, this is an Apple site.
Maybe was a good decision, but they overpaid for Beats. It's taken Apple this long to start making Beats products with Apple DNA and having better quality. Apple still has to replace those crappy wired Powerbeats since they break so easily along with rehashes of the same old tech with added weights to feign value and quality. Apple bought Beats for the streaming service and Lovine and they overpaid for them.
They payed big bucks to basically cobble together Apple Music and decided not to do anymore spending on R&D on displays or wifi technology. The sad part is they used to be at the forefront of both and they let it slip thru their fingers. They've gone consumer all the way and have ignored the Pro markets. If they're not careful they will find out how fickle the consumer will be over the professional customer.
I agree that they overpaid. Except for celebrity status and being relatively hip, there was nothing in Beats that couldn't have been done in house for a far lower cost. For some strange reason Apple just hasn't been able to get a grip on music as a service. First it was said people didn't want to rent it, now that's changed. Then there's the problem of cloud services, another area where Apple hasn't been able to completely bolt down. They will get there in the end but the road has been unusually bumpy. When Spotify took off, it became clear that the subscription model could work so perhaps the pundits were right on that one too.
For in-house use it might make sense for iPod Hi-Fi to return under a different name with Siri integration (to compete with Google and Amazon) and be a audio streaming end point and hands-free call management system.
Before any of that can happen though, Siri needs a lot of work.
Great article, Daniel! This could have been taken from a military manual on how to prepare an appreciation (US: estimate) of the situation: "A key hallmark of intelligence is the ability to visualize parallel, potential scenarios, then determine the best alternative to pursue--while constantly reexamining how the environment and other players might change that playing field and require the calculation of a new decision matrix." Also, "Seeing the future in the now, by understanding the past" is so very Zen, I love it. How about a book: "Zen and the Art of Apple"? Anyway, keep up the intelligent writing, some of us are able to appreciate it.
Intelligence comes in many, many forms. The sentences you are referring to also equate to 'stating the obvious' and common sense. You can re-evaluate to your heart's content but there's no guarantee you will hit on the right alternative as a result. There may even be multiple alternatives, all equally good. Being 'intelligent' isn't enough. There is so much more involved and among those other things you have a factor that is difficult to gauge: luck.
When I read those paragraphs they came over as pompous to me. When things moved onto bacteria I just sighed. Being an opinion piece, I can swallow it but it wasn't the best way to engage the reader.
They've gone consumer all the way and have ignored the Pro markets. If they're not careful they will find out how fickle the consumer will be over the professional customer.
You mean like how the pro market went into a collective tizzy because FCPX wasn't exactly like FCP 7? Apple's bad move then was to immediately discontinue FCP 7 which they quietly reversed until stock ran out.
Today two movies have been cut on FCPX with more likely to come.
They've gone consumer all the way and have ignored the Pro markets. If they're not careful they will find out how fickle the consumer will be over the professional customer.
You mean like how the pro market went into a collective tizzy because FCPX wasn't exactly like FCP 7? Apple's bad move then was to immediately discontinue FCP 7 which they quietly reversed until stock ran out.
Today two movies have been cut on FCPX with more likely to come.
The pro users went into a collective tizzy because Apple released what they expected to be an upgrade as a completely new product that couldn't even open existing projects and was missing functionality.
It was not only poor planning but a wholly avoidable PR disaster.
Apple has a poor track record when it comes to communication. They should have answered ALL the questions before people even had time to formulate them and before the new product was released.
Comments
The Note line sold millions. Whether we define that as 'small' doesn't mean too much as Apple was selling 'zero' although pundits and users were looking for a large screen iPhone (or not even 'large', just bigger).
As for the screen quality, the Note was very good. Yes, a premium phone at a premium price but Samsung isn't about high end and low end. Samsung is about that and everything in between. The point of my post was the the pundits got it right while Apple refused to budge until marketing (or whatever department it was), put up that famous slide. I think it reasonable to put that one down to Apple getting it wrong even though they changed tack in the end.
On the subject of the iPad something similar happened but the other way around. Pundits (and users) wanted an option of smaller screens but Apple, on more than one occasion, argued that the original size was optimal. When they finally made the iPad Mini it was also a great addition (and much loved) addition to the lineup. A success story on every level. Can we say the pundits got it right again?
Sticking with the iPad for a moment, I think it's reasonable to consider the iPad at launch and the current iPads as different beasts. With that in mind I feel it is unfair to take aim at observations of the iPad being for 'consumption' (I can't remember the exact word used). IMO, at the time, those observations were pretty much spot on. Things have moved on significantly since then though and a lot more is possible now.
Samsung has a nice feature to shrink their display to 75% in the lower right corner.
"That makes Skype a lot like Google's YouTube: a popular but not really commercially successful company acquired at a very high price."
Really??? Google paid $1.65 billion in 2006 for YouTube. Now according to Jefferies investment bank, "YouTube is worth between $26 billion and $40 billion", and will do an estimated $8.9 billion in ad sales in 2017. http://www.adweek.com/digital/youtube-may-be-worth-40-billion-more-twitter-159861/
Next time the author should do a little more homework on the numbers before just throwing out his preconceived conclusions. If Apple had bought YouTube for that price, I am sure the author would have said it was a brilliant acquisition. Beats may have been a good acquisition, but I would bet that YouTube will be a viewed as a better acquisition when looking back (especially since it was half the price of the Beats acquisition).
I thought the AI piece was fine, and while the jab at the current White House occupant was perhaps provocative, anti-intellectualism is indeed a problem that led to the Great Orange Train Wreck, and also contributes to much of the bizarre punditry constantly directed at Apple. The folks running Apple have a pretty well-established track record for understanding and implementing their own very successful business model. Much of the negative chatter about Apple is predicated on a fundamental disregard for how Apple has built its success, substituting nonsensical demands that the company instead do things that would depart from anything resembling Steve Jobs' legendary vision. That negative chatter comes from sources that either do not value Apple's expertise, or - interestingly - from intentional disinformation campaigns seeking to subvert the company's reputation. So yeah, the comment was provocative, but not at all random or out of place.
The hot hand fallacy refers to the expectation that random occurrences will continue to repeatedly occur outside the laws of probability. At least when he was in his prime, the probability that Michael Jordan would continue to make a lot of baskets in a row was very, very high. His success was based on skill, not random luck.
Basic M&A tells us that a public company using its shares as currency to finance deals is telegraphing to shareholders that management thinks the stock is overvalued. If the main reason for doing a deal is to get brownie points in the media or an ego trip for the CEO, that deal is probably one of the worst in history. You can expect that deal to find its way into a case study that will then get dissected to pieces in business school classrooms all over the country. I realize that with tech companies, some of the old rules don't apply any longer but I would still think that no one would sell an asset today for $1 if they though they could sell it for $2 tomorrow.
And this is where I stopped reading.
If there is one thing that 40 years of life has taught me, it is that liberals can not resist two things:
1. Telling you they're liberals.
2. Slandering everybody who isn't.
This paragraph had no place in this article. This is why I rarely come to this website anymore.
They payed big bucks to basically cobble together Apple Music and decided not to do anymore spending on R&D on displays or wifi technology. The sad part is they used to be at the forefront of both and they let it slip thru their fingers.
They've gone consumer all the way and have ignored the Pro markets. If they're not careful they will find out how fickle the consumer will be over the professional customer.
For in-house use it might make sense for iPod Hi-Fi to return under a different name with Siri integration (to compete with Google and Amazon) and be a audio streaming end point and hands-free call management system.
Before any of that can happen though, Siri needs a lot of work.
When I read those paragraphs they came over as pompous to me. When things moved onto bacteria I just sighed. Being an opinion piece, I can swallow it but it wasn't the best way to engage the reader.
Today two movies have been cut on FCPX with more likely to come.
It was not only poor planning but a wholly avoidable PR disaster.
Apple has a poor track record when it comes to communication. They should have answered ALL the questions before people even had time to formulate them and before the new product was released.
Is that such a hard thing to do?
Two paragraphs. No tizzy.