Quote:
Originally Posted by rtdunham
Your posts are among the most thought-provoking and informed on the forum. Thanks.
Cool. That's when I'm not stuffing around being silly and stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rtdunham
I'd like to see your take on this thought:
In part, apple's greatness is measured with the introduction of groundbreaking new products. In recent years, i'd say the landmark products have been the iMac and the iPod. The changes to both those products, i think everyone would agree, have been great but incremental or evolutionary.
So what are the new products? I think that's what everyone waits for each Expo, and each Special Event: for steve & co to give us something new, not just nanos with a different composition case and color, not just longer battery life, etc--as i say, those are great improvements, but not really new tools or toys, just improvements to tools or toys apple had already given us.
I'd grant iTV status as a new tool or toy. So well done, apple. I'm looking forward to using it. I think it'll become a part of my daily life, like the iPod family.
But what else might we expect or hope for from apple?
What NEW products would you like to see? For me, it's an apple phone OR a well-crafted (read "apple-like) phone from someone else with easy integration with iCal and Address Book. Give me an apple-like Treo in a small Pod-form. Others might think a big-screen video iPod would constitute a new product. Some have sought a DVR device. Or maybe apple will surprise us with something none of us anticipated.
sunilraman, what's your take? and others here?
Yes. We've seen a progressive evolution from say the original iMac pre-2000 through to the Intel transition completed just recently. The thing is that our expectations have been jumbled around a bit, from the dissapointment of the PowerPC Ghz debacle through to the surprise of the iTunes Store.
It's hard to see things as "groundbreaking" piece-by-piece IMO because Apple has in and of itself, at this stage, 2006-2010, a
groundbreaking vision.
This is mostly I feel because of the iPod: dominant marketshare and momentum has put Apple in a great position to execute on a more ambitious than imagined groundbreaking vision. The Intel transition would NOT be possible if iPods weren't the big thing. Look at it this way - you have one product line that generates a lot of revenue (admittedly lower % if you look at profit compared to profits from Mac sales), is a foothold both to the consumer electronics sphere and the personal computing sphere (iMac, switchers, etc.).
It's a matter of confidence, and this confidence is growing. Maybe in the past, Apple had to pull out some stellar stuff every now and then to keep themselves on the map and to command mindshare, almost guerilla-style (think about ThinkDifferent).
What we are looking at the next five years is a transition to a more sustainable model of executing gradually on THE groundbreaking vision. If you look at Steve's announcements, he may seem a little jaded, but it's more of pacing himself, to carry him through to 2010 while grooming a successor over the next 5-10 years. His tone has also changed, he speaks of "we think that's really great..." and "isn't that nice, we worked quite hard to get that just right..." --- the RDF is definitely still there but rather than a quick ecstatic hit of Kool Aid that fades once you walk outside Moscone Convention Center, the RDF is now a warm glow in your heart, like a nicotine patch... 8)
Notice also at WWDC August 2006 Steve handed-off some parts of the keynote to some of his minions. He's only in the past done this rarely, usually only Phil Schiller, or Phil when Steve had cancer, or a major partner eg. Sony dude (that got sacked a few months later) and Disney dude and Intel dude. One of the guys at WWDC August 2006, sorry to say, I think it was Bertrand, certainly did not look "TV-friendly" by any stretch of the imagination. Overall, my question here is whether Steve Jobs is moving to a more sustainable business model by releasing slowly his iron fist on Apple - for the good of iSteve and the good of Apple. I think he is...
That said, a regular company on a roll just needs to keep churning out the stuff along their momentum and along their vision which seems to be doing well - say ATI and nVidia with producing better, cooler, faster, sexier GPUs.
Apple though, along the lines of executing on their longer-term strategy, will still have to have a "wow" factor at every announcement. Some people will get jaded after a while. But there is still a lot of innovation, and there still will be, it is "in Apple's DNA" as Steve? himself? said. Suffice to say that it's target audience will be suitably "wowed" as it goes along.
"For me, it's an apple phone OR a well-crafted (read "apple-like) phone from someone else with easy integration with iCal and Address Book. Give me an apple-like Treo in a small Pod-form. Others might think a big-screen video iPod would constitute a new product. Some have sought a DVR device. Or maybe apple will surprise us with something none of us anticipated"
I cannot agree more. iPhone, "true" iPod video, Mac mini-DVR, iTV, Apple-like Treo with OSX Lite, are all possibilities at Macworld SF 2007. There's certainly a lot of surprise in the air that's hard to nail down. The start of January 2007 will be an intoxicating rumourfest.
The thing to keep in mind that each "hit" of announcements won't be as "slam-bam" to an elite audience, it will be a wider, deeper, inhalation. (yes a lot of drug references in my post but nonetheless...
) We'll look back at 2007, and we WILL say, very likely, holy crap, they topped 2006...!
Inevitably though some of us (Placebo and Onlooker I'm looking at you) will also say, at the end of 2007, f*k Apple, where's my nVidia 8800GTX!!!111one!!!?!!! It should be stock in the Mac mini by now...!!!?!!1!one!!!
