Dell, my old employer launched the Dell XPS One. Not bad. It’s like a iMac, except add some decent speakers and a phatty Windows Media Center remote. I’m tempted to pick one of these up, since pretty much the only Dell stuff I’ve been buying in recent history are their desktop monitors. In fact, I use a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor from Dell with my Mac mini.
Which brings me to the point of this post. What has Apple done since the iMac that has been innovative for the desktop? The Mac mini was close, but small form factor PCs were around then as well. Even though Apple’s was probably the coolest. The iMac was refreshed earlier this year, but it was merely cosmetic. And now it’s been around so long, and successfully so, that the Dell, the maker of what’s mainstream, has adapted the innovative PC-in-a-Panel architecture and slapped their “cool-guy brand” on it.
Come on Apple. You’ve been quiet. Been too busy developing phones, touch-screens iPods, and switching your PC lineup to Intel? Where is a new notebook to lust after? Where is a new architecture to disrupt what we think is normal? This is what consumers expect from you, whether you like it or not. There are rumors of a tablet. Or for a ultra-mobile notebook.
Give me a good reason to figure out clever ways to have an “accident” with my current notebook, so I can get a new ride.
Has anyone seen any mention of at&t exclusive on the iPhone beyond the current iPhone model?
If you read the official press releases that announced the exclusive arrangement, no where at all does it mention a multi-model lock-up. Only a multi-year agreement… From Apple:
MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO—January 9, 2007—Apple® and Cingular announced that Cingular, the largest wireless carrier in the US, will be Apple’s exclusive US carrier partner for Apple’s revolutionary iPhone unveiled today. As part of this multi-year partnership, Apple and Cingular are working together to provide innovative new features to mobile phone users, such as iPhone’s pioneering and unique Visual Voicemail, a first on any mobile phone in the world.
“Apple chose Cingular because they are the best and most popular carrier in the US,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are thrilled to be offering our revolutionary new iPhone exclusively with Cingular, and look forward to working together with them to create some wonderful new features for our customers.”
“By partnering with Apple, we are continuing our commitment to raising the bar for customers,” said Stan Sigman, Cingular’s president and CEO. “We think the iPhone is one of the most innovative devices ever created, and we look forward to letting our customers be the first in the world to experience the future of mobile phones.”
Apple has chosen AT&T, the best and most popular carrier in the US with over 62 million subscribers, to be Apple’s exclusive carrier partner for iPhone in the United States.
With this multi-year exclusive partnership, iPhone will only be available with wireless service from AT&T. Working together ensures seamless integration between network and device.
Am I missing something? All the statements seem limited in scope, if not broad in impact.
I am not sure I need to mention the significance of this… but if true, anyone who bemoans the at&t “feature” of the iPhone may be relieved if future models — like say an HSDPA or EV-DO, true 3G version is announced next year… or a iPhone mini… or a iPhone Pro with corporate email and mechanical keyboard — are available on their current carriers.
A May 21st USA Today article reported (seemingly confirmed, but not definitively so) that Apple was barred from developing a CDMA-version of the iPhone. The article was interpreted as speculation by a number of blogs, which triggered a bunch of unintelligent fan-boy vs Apple-hater discussions, instead of any meaty confirmation.
I simply cannot believe Apple was shortsighted enough to grant at&t such a long runway. Five years in the mobile phone industry is an eternity. USA Today asserted:
Apple is barred for that time from developing a version of the iPhone for CDMA wireless networks.
What they refer to as a “version of the iPhone” is certainly way too loose language to suit Apple legal I’ve got to imagine.
What’s the real story here? I’m just asking.
Fundamentally, this blog post is driven by my feelings as a consumer in a free market. I want buyers to have choice. In particular, I hate lock-ups of hardware and specific mobile networks – this coupling has not benefited consumers in any measurable way, yet somehow the mobile phone market is under the illusion that the network really matters. The crazy network infrastructure economics – and resultant shareholder pressures on network operators has distorted the consumer experience in a bad way. The product and service offerings are a strange supply-side amalgam based little on the demand-side realities of end-user experiences.
No need for me to get too wound up. It doesn’t even affect me today. I am not anxious to ditch my BlackBerry, and I am certainly not willing to deal with at&t customer service anytime soon. The Verizon angle doesn’t phase me… I am not a CDMA customer today, in fact I am a T-Mobile customer, but perhaps what is most relevant is that I am an ex-at&t customer, and I am not going back anytime soon.
Good coverage on RIM today. In the wake of the iPhone launch hype, it is good to see folks showing some love to BlackBerry. While iPhone has buzzed the consumer consciousness regarding smartphones, BlackBerry for the better part of the last 5 years has been the only company genuinely delivering on the promise of smartphones. It’s breakthrough integration with corporate email servers, and the multiple generations of tweaking their user interface has made the BlackBerry one of the most successful portable devices, ever.
IPhone mania is great and all, and I admit it’s pretty awe inspiring. The fact that Apple pulled off such a hype campaign is a testament to their past successes in delivering great end-user experiences. But, their track record of making great connections with consumers’ emotions also sets a very high bar for themselves. Which is to say that the iPhone, however pretty, better darn well deliver a killer user experience, or it will be nothing short of a letdown. People seem to ignore the fact that Apple is not alone in this space. It’s also not yet obvious how the iPhone’s innovations will create any sustainable advantage in the smartphone market. What are the apps that people truly believe Apple has revolutionized? Here are my early judgements on the iPhone’s wannabe killer apps.
Web Browsing? Still too small of a screen, and not much better than on other smartphones. EDGE isn’t gonna knock anyone’s socks off. No Flash. Verdict: While it looks prettier than other phone browsers, is web-lite ever a killer experience?
Email? Lack of corporate email integration is an issue. Soft keyboard is an annoyance. I suspect future iPhone models will have hard qwerty keys in the future — their corporate HCI guys won’t put up with software gee-whiz for long. Verdict: Not even close to killer. Lose the touchscreen keyboard, support exchange server, then we’ll talk.
Maps? Hardly a killer app that justifies a smartphone. BlackBerry, LG, and Samsung are already ahead in terms of GPS integration, and so far, no location-based services have been implemented or deemed vital… And again, what can Apple deliver uniquely that Google/BlackBerry/MS can’t? Verdict: Not killer… not yet at least. Let’s see more here.
Integrated iPod? I just don’t buy it. My iPod is still a better device, right? I find it hard to believe that Apple thinks they can leverage their iPod platform to make a smartphone indespensible. These functions have not shown to benefit from any coupling in the past, and it isn’t apparent why they should be combined going forward. Verdict: Not killer.
My opinions… time will tell. But I don’t think a bunch of “pretty neato” features cobbled together make a homerun device. There has to be something that the iPhone does better than any other device. Early reports do not signal this has happened.
Apple has educated a whole new swath of the market in a big way. So the iPhone is goodness for the whole smartphone market, enlarging the pie, not just taking a bigger a slice.
I had the feeling this was so, and recent articles confirm that RIM-themselves are thankful. Competition breeds innovation, and RIM, let’s face it, is plenty poised to give Apple a run. They have a robust pipeline, reasonable costs, a loyal user-base (Stats say that less than 6% of iPhone buyers were previously BlackBerry users), and a focus on the enterprise user, which is where multi-purpose devices today deliver immense value.
RIM is moving forward from a position of strength, an affordable, capable platform with a bona fide killer app, and a relatively loyal captive market. Apple moves forward on reputation and software usability street-cred, which loyalists will love. But can it alone revolutionize the segment and lead to market domination?
Whispers of RIMM shares headed to $300 don’t seem that far fetched.
Interesting bits from Sony (here). The comment I find interesting is:
Sony brass did acknowledge that iPod compatibility was an important part of A/V strategy these days.
You can see it… they are all succumbing, one by one. Why fight it any longer? Right, Creative?
Sony’s recent splash into iPod accessory hell, the CPF-IP001, didn’t get rave reviews for performance when it came out… the $250 price-tag didn’t gain lots of friends either. One wonders if Sony has committed to this “important part of A/V strategy,” and if so, let’s hope they gets serious and bring their A-game to the show — and maybe draw on their roots and teach the incumbents — who are, let’s face it, audio-brand-wannabes — how to make performance audio products. I recently took umbrage with Gizmodo’s comparo, criticizing their seeding methodology, but to their credit, they’ve finally put the focus where it needs to be, finding iPod speakers that actually sound good.
I don’t care about donut shaped, velcro-leatherine-flip-covered, rotating alarm clock, water proof, C-minus-in-industrial-design-101 products.
Let’s make some speakers that flat out rock!
Don’t you think this is getting ridiculous? I do. More on this in months ahead, stay tuned…
Let me add my thoughts on where Apple believes it will be making money.
AppleInsider notes that profits are low on the Apple TV (based on iSuppli’s latest teardown results) and therefore it must be a market-share/customer-acquisition, game. While I do agree they had to price the hardware faintly (if only not to offend would-be customers), there surely is more to it than to say it’s short-term strategy is only about gaining market penetration. I would be willing to bet a Apple TV that Apple in fact has a business plan that is a shiny-happy, positive NPV. I can all but guarantee it. Whether it is realistic, I don’t know. Time will tell.
One must presume that Apple’s marketing folks factored in some incremental sales of iTunes content that is part of the unit contribution for each Apple TV sold. Afterall, iTunes is more or less a fixed cost at this point, and the Apple TV adds another point-of-sale. Whaddya think? Afterall, unless you are a dedicated iTunes user, the Apple TV is basically hamstrung, and quite undifferentiated against other DMAs.
Microsoft has similar tactics… if not with more lofty goals. Their Xbox is not a money maker on hardware sales alone, in fact rumor is it is quite the opposite. But they make up for it on the games/software/accessories sales. Which have very healthy gross margins baked in.
These are all networked business models. Not as simple as classical consumer electronics economics anymore.
Before I get too cocky… of course we’ll have to wait and see… I doubt early fan-boys are going to say one negative thing about their long awaited devices… but give it 6 months or so. It’ll happen.
Apple has got to be loving themselves a little something extra today. Their accessory ecosystem is finally mature enough to warrant a March-madness-themed comparison test. Isn’t that like some kinds of holy grail or something?
Claiming they are judging primarily audio quality, Gizmodo kicked off a battle royale with participants from all corners of the iPod speakerdock playing field. With brands whose reputations for audio do not precede them, such as Griffin, XtremeMac, and Kensington, competing against middle-of-the-road audio brands like Altec Lansing, Logitech, iHome, and the likes of audio brand-heavies like JBL and Bose… it should be interesting to see if Gizmodo’s gizolden ears pick us a winner, or a wiener.
I can already see how their bracketing is flawed. They didn’t seed the players properly. They should have done this by price. Instead they’ve set us up for a really weird semi-final between an XtremeMac Tango ($199) and Apple HiFi ($349). Whereas, anyone who knows anything about these products would tell you the smart money should be on a finals between the Logitech AudioStation and the Apple HiFi.
I call bull-shit on the whole thing already. Give me my money back, nerd-boys.
But I could be wrong… so I too will track the results here.
…Most things you carry with you are communications devices. You want to do some entertainment with them as well, but they’re primarily communications devices and that’s what they’re going to be.
Then he made me feel confident in the work our company is doing, because, indeed…
…It’s really great when you show somebody something and you don’t have to convince them they have a problem this solves. They know they have a problem, you can show them something, they go, oh, my God, I need this.
At Walt Mossberg’s D5 conference, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs sat down together and gave an hour and half long interview with Q&A from the live audience of well-healed techtreprenuers.
I don’t always agree with Mossberg, mainly because I don’t think I am who he is speaking to when he writes about technology, but as a critic of tech world, he does generally get it right. Creating great experiences for the mass consumer is where the money is.
No other two guys in the last 30 years of business have had as profound an effect on the technology the masses use in our daily lives than Jobs and Gates. Gates by brute force ecosystem development, and Jobs through unrelenting obsession with a few great consumer experiences. The full length video of the interview is located here, transcript here. Definitely interesting to see them sit down cordially and take subtle digs at one another. But like two guys who have more in common through some shared past successes, but also just as freakish human beings, you can see there is quite a camaraderie as well.
One particular exchange that I geeked out on was about the partitioning of R&D along the hardware/software interface via standards and partner-based ecosystems versus vertical integration. It is on both sides of this strategic fence where Microsoft and Apple have had their real success respectively. Hearing Gates and Jobs stick up for their tendencies as innovation leaders, and in direct conversational back-and-forth, was telling.
Gates:
The question is, are there markets where the innovation and variety you get is a net positive? The negative is that in the early stage, you really want to do the two together so you want to do prototyping and things like that, you know, really as one thing.
And then take the phone market. We think we’re on 140 different kinds of hardware. We think it’s beneficial to us that even if we did a few ourselves, it wouldn’t give us what we have through those partnerships.
Likewise, if you take the robotics market, very undeveloped. We have over 140 tiny-volume robots using Microsoft software. And the creativity, building toys, security things, medical things, we love the innovation and the ecosystem that’s going to grow up–who knows when, but we’re patient–around that and we’ll have a great asset with this robotic software platform.
So there are things like PC, phone, and robot where the Microsoft choice is to go for the variety.
Apple, it’s great. For them, they do what works super well for them. And there’s a few markets like Xbox 360, Zune, and this year we have two new ones, the Surface thing and this RoundTable, which is the meeting-room thing, where we’ll actually, through subcontractors, but the P&L on the risk and all that for the hardware, the design is completely a Microsoft thing.
Jobs:
Let me make a comment on Bill’s answer there, which is, it’s very interesting, in the consumer market and the enterprise market, they’re very different spaces. And in the consumer market, at least, I think one can make a pretty strong case that outside of Windows on PCs, it’s hard to see other examples of the software and hardware being decoupled working super well yet. It might in the phone space over time. It might. But it’s not clear. It’s not clear. You can see a lot more examples of the hardware/software coupling working well.
So I think this is one of the reasons we all, you know, come to work every day is because nobody knows the answers to some of these questions. And we’ll find out over the coming years and maybe both will work fine and maybe they won’t.
There is no one answer of course. It depends on the state a technology is in, and how mature an experience you are delivering product for. Gates’ trade-off recognition sums it up completely. I can only imagine the spastic, forgetful, nerd-looking Microsoft robots of the year 2100, versus the sexy, vivacious iBots from Apple with the snappy sense of humor and slick fashion sense.
These billionaire guys are such icons, with such caricatures painted of them, that it’s easy to forget that they are still full of brilliantly marketable ideas. It’d be a shame if people don’t take a listen, read between the lines, and figure out where they’ll be taking us, for better or worse.
On an aside: I came off critical of the iPhone a few months back, and I generally standby my predictions still. However, I am thinking… easily my favorite new web service to come around in the last 5 years has been Google Maps, and if it turns out the iPhone’s client for Google maps is as good as Jobs is saying, I may not be able to resist.
Totally agree with Mats. Economics of mobiles is nothing to oversimplify. Apple has made a serious bet on this market, taken many technical risks, and will need every ounce of its mystique and reputation to make the iPhone a success.
Here are my predictions:
The iPhone will invite critics for its touch screen. While I suspect the gesture interface will be a revelation, I think it is wrought with two huge problems. Fingerprints and people-grease will make it look stank, and unsanitary. Secondly, the lack of tactile feedback for control inputs will impact usability negatively. Particularly when typing emails.
Battery life will suck for anyone who actually uses more than one of its core features. Can Apple tell us how much talk time we get if we listen to the iPod mode for an hour? Or if we watch one episode of Lost? Or if we just fiddle with the cool GUI and never give the backlight a rest? Prediction… users will not last a day if they use it as a primary device for any two of its applications.
People will pay. The price won’t matter to the users who must have this device. AT&T (Cingular) customer service will be real problem though. The three years I used Cingular were the worst consumer experience years of my life. T-Mobile missed the boat… their service rocks, and they could have used the iPhone to generate new momentum for their market penetration in North America. I’m suprised Apple couldn’t negotiate a better subsidy from them. Tisk, tisk.
My BlackBerry Pearl is too awesome. Why switch? Apple never told me this.
Dell, my old employer launched the Dell XPS One. Not bad. It’s like a iMac, except add some decent speakers and a phatty Windows Media Center remote. I’m tempted to pick one of these up, since pretty much the only Dell stuff I’ve been buying in recent history are their desktop monitors. In fact, I use a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor from Dell with my Mac mini.
