Absolutely agree! Pre-product announcements are NOT helpful.
However, on the "pro" products side announcing at WWDC a roadmap for hardware platform guidance is necessary. Apple products used in commercial applications require longer lifespans and more backward compatibility to ensure organizations can properly budget and train. Again not product specific, rather general guidance regarding platforms and standards.
The original iPhone was also announced several months before it shipped.
One big reason not to pre-announce a new product is if doing so will kill demand for existing products.
But if the product you're introducing doesn't compete with your existing products, then the calculation is different. One good reason to pre-announce is to kill demand for competing products, if they exist. The iPhone was not the first smartphone. Pre-announcing it didn't hurt Apple's sales of existing products but may have caused people to hit the pause button on purchases of existing smartphones. Same for the Watch. Same for AirPods.
The Mac Pro is a bit of a special case, and I think Apple clearly made the right call in communicating with their professional user base (or what remains of it) to assure them that Apple is committed to that market and that new products will be coming. For professional/business customers, clear communication and predictability are more important than for consumers.
A separate issue is releasing a product later than intended. That's problematic regardless of whether it was pre-announced. Take HomePod --- regardless of whether Apple pre-announced it, the fact that they missed the 2017 Christmas season was bad. But would it have been better not to pre-announce in an environment where smart speakers are a hot product category? My family was pushing for a smart speaker for Christmas. I knew HomePod was coming, so I made them wait. But if I didn't know HomePod was coming, I might have caved to Alexa (or whatever).
Bottom line -- there can be good reasons to pre-announce a product. I really don't see this as a big problem for Apple. The bigger problems are shipping things late relative to the rest of the market (like HomePod) and seriously dropping the ball in product design/development (Mac Pro).
I see it as a problem with Apple! They don’t meet their own deadlines on products then when they finally get them out they buggiest products out there. Take months to get them working properly, if your lucky. Good luck with the new red iPhone, I’ll bet that’ll zip along.
I have been waiting like many of you. I check dutifully a couple of times a week, knowing that I will hear from some channel or other when it actually gets released.
It is too long from announcement to product though, no question about it. Hope it will arrive soon.
I'm just really annoyed that the AirPower mat is taking so gd long.
Also, the article forgot to mention Siri. Apple shoudln't have pre-announced Siri as a helpful assistant 6 years (and counting..) before it was ready.
I don’t understand why anyone is waiting for AirPower. I know many people waiting for it and yet all of them are still using Lightning to charge their iPhone X and 8 series each day.
If induction charging is a benefit then people should’ve jumped on it last year with the countless, low-cost options available.
The most common answer is they want to charge their iPhone, Watch, and AirPods case, but the AirPod case isn’t out, and I’d say about 80% are using metal looped Watch bands which probably won’t work with AirPower.
And it’s not like that $20 Qi charging pad will go to waste once you can buy the $199(?) Apple version since you can place it anywhere else in your house, work, or even car.
This is all well and good. In a perfect world, it would be really, really nice to be surprised about a product and have it announced and available within days. Sadly, there is a whole 'Apple Rumour' Industry out there that feeds on both truths and lies.
To some extent, Apple is caught between a rock and a hard place. However, reducing the time between announcment and release should be a real high priority.
Damn if you do and hell damn if you don't people are never happy no matter what.
Face it there is a strategy for all the various method Apple is using. Most notably, pre-announcing allows Apple to do things in public which they could not do otherwise. Also the things they pre-announces does not hurt them, it may hurt the competition since people may hold off on buying a competing product until they see what Apple is doing.
Not sure what “The less said about the Mac mini in the context of this discussion, the better.” means. Why say less? It may not fall into the preannouncement catagory but Apple said it was “in their future”. What does that exactly mean? 6 months future? A year future? 6 year future? I bought my Mac Mini in mid-2011, skipped the next iteration, the quad Mac Mini of 2012. Kicking myself for that. And then watched in the 2014 version, actual performance benchmarks retreat. So, may I emphasize that we’re now in the four year no update desert with no significant update in sight. Ooops, sorry. It’s in the future. The most important development so far are sites like MacRumors and AppleInsider actually, well sort of, calling out Apple.
Damn if you do and hell damn if you don't people are never happy no matter what.
Face it there is a strategy for all the various method Apple is using. Most notably, pre-announcing allows Apple to do things in public which they could not do otherwise. Also the things they pre-announces does not hurt them, it may hurt the competition since people may hold off on buying a competing product until they see what Apple is doing.
Are you saying that their "strategy" was to announce something that they knew they couldn't possibly deliver within the timeframe they stated simply to keep customers hanging on?
Personally, I think they poor estimated what it would take to bring several of their products to market within the self-imposed time schedule, but that may because I'd rather believe Apple made an honest, albeit clumsy, mistake, rather than believing they've turned into the shady Microsoft of the 1990s that would keep making longterm promises they knew they could never deliver just to hinder any potential completion from carving out a small niche.
Ah, an "Apple needs to!" piece. The entitlement is great.
As a reminder, Apple announced the MP is coming next year so people can make decisions accordingly. If they hadn't, you'd be complaining about their silence.
I disagree. It’s nice to know for a change that products are finally coming instead of just wondering endlessly.
We’re not talking about a few weeks or a couple months notice. We’re talking about self-imposed timeframes that are already far away and then woefully missed. We still don’t even have a price or timeframe for AirPower. It makes Apple look incompetent.
As a brand new accessory, this is altogether inconsequential. There's no great dilemma here.. Want wireless charging today? Buy a crummy third-party. Want a better solution, wait a little longer. It's not a critical use case so it's no skin off anyone's back.
If I were to warrant a guess, I’d say the biggest motivator in pre-announcing products for Apple is to get ahead of rumours and control the message consumers see.
Apple will be pummeled over their decisions no matter what they are, so they should just do their best.
Yes as is basically the case with everything Apple does. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Its getting to the point where it doesn't matter what the topic is, someone will be upset and complain. If I were Apple I'd ignore most of what goes on outside of Apple. Stay focused and put out the best products you can possibly put out. If its a great product, people will buy it no matter when its released.
Agreed. Their historic bank account and quarterly's are all the data one needs to surmise that what they're doing is working, despite the armchairing from the pundits, haters, and clickfests.
Agreed. And with respect to the Mac Pro, what is taking so long? The target market for a Mac Pro isn’t looking for Apple to reinvent the pro desktop. Yes I know Apple isn’t going to just throw together a beige box but how hard is it design a next gen cheese grater? Isn’t the pro desktop essentially a solved problem?
Comments
However, on the "pro" products side announcing at WWDC a roadmap for hardware platform guidance is necessary. Apple products used in commercial applications require longer lifespans and more backward compatibility to ensure organizations can properly budget and train. Again not product specific, rather general guidance regarding platforms and standards.
It is too long from announcement to product though, no question about it. Hope it will arrive soon.
If induction charging is a benefit then people should’ve jumped on it last year with the countless, low-cost options available.
The most common answer is they want to charge their iPhone, Watch, and AirPods case, but the AirPod case isn’t out, and I’d say about 80% are using metal looped Watch bands which probably won’t work with AirPower.
And it’s not like that $20 Qi charging pad will go to waste once you can buy the $199(?) Apple version since you can place it anywhere else in your house, work, or even car.
Sadly, there is a whole 'Apple Rumour' Industry out there that feeds on both truths and lies.
To some extent, Apple is caught between a rock and a hard place.
However, reducing the time between announcment and release should be a real high priority.
Face it there is a strategy for all the various method Apple is using. Most notably, pre-announcing allows Apple to do things in public which they could not do otherwise. Also the things they pre-announces does not hurt them, it may hurt the competition since people may hold off on buying a competing product until they see what Apple is doing.
I bought my Mac Mini in mid-2011, skipped the next iteration, the quad Mac Mini of 2012. Kicking myself for that. And then watched in the 2014 version, actual performance benchmarks retreat. So, may I emphasize that we’re now in the four year no update desert with no significant update in sight. Ooops, sorry. It’s in the future. The most important development so far are sites like MacRumors and AppleInsider actually, well sort of, calling out Apple.
Personally, I think they poor estimated what it would take to bring several of their products to market within the self-imposed time schedule, but that may because I'd rather believe Apple made an honest, albeit clumsy, mistake, rather than believing they've turned into the shady Microsoft of the 1990s that would keep making longterm promises they knew they could never deliver just to hinder any potential completion from carving out a small niche.
As a reminder, Apple announced the MP is coming next year so people can make decisions accordingly. If they hadn't, you'd be complaining about their silence.
Same as it ever was.
If I know that a product update is coming soon, it’s better than wasting my money now on the old version.
Or, if I get a look at the specs I might decide it’s not worth waiting for...
As a brand new accessory, this is altogether inconsequential. There's no great dilemma here.. Want wireless charging today? Buy a crummy third-party. Want a better solution, wait a little longer. It's not a critical use case so it's no skin off anyone's back.
Source? Is there quantitive data on this somewhere?
Agreed. Their historic bank account and quarterly's are all the data one needs to surmise that what they're doing is working, despite the armchairing from the pundits, haters, and clickfests.
Apple *should* do a lot of things, in our opinion(s). They don't need to do jacksquat.