Wired: Has Apple Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew?
July 28 2008
As a reminder, this household owns an iMac, iPod, and iPhone 3G...I'm a fan of Apple. But in my day job role as an ISV, as much as I want them to be successful, I want them to be successful:
[S]ome, like Crunchgear writer John Biggs, have called Apple's success a curse. As Apple has grown to absorb as much as 20 percent of the U.S. computer market, its customers are getting more diverse and harder to satisfy.My wife finally got her iPhone 3G last week, but only after camping out at the Apple store early in the morning, two weeks after the device's initial release. Apple's website said clearly that the store would have the devices in the morning and they would open at 8 AM. At 8:20 AM, they told her, sorry, no devices yet today. She was expected to wait it out, just because, until what ultimately ended up being more than three hours later. I realize they can sell these things to anyone right now and it's good to have that kind of success, but impressions count, too. It was almost more interesting to listen to my sister-in-law explain to my wife that "it just works" doesn't always work... that the mail sync can be slow, that sometimes it needs to be reset, etc.
"Apple, it seems, now has to deal with the average Joe and the average Joe is considerably more cranky than some turtle-necked fanboys in their loft in SoHo," Biggs wrote.
And yet, Apple hasn't changed any of its ways. The corporation continues to operate behind closed doors. When Apple makes mistakes, such as the MobileMe e-mail debacle, the company puts up a vague status message -- while 20,000 users are left without e-mail access for a week. To make matters worse, Apple downplays the problem as affecting a meager "1%" of users.
And Apple ignores the media, too. Ordinarily, Steve Jobs only speaks to a small group of journalists. The company wants to keep a lid on upcoming products, which is understandable, but even when journalists inquire about other matters, Apple can be famously unresponsive. Apple didn't return Pogue's phone calls regarding the MobileMe matter, nor did the company return Wired.com's.
"Unfortunately, they are dropping the ball, not communicating, and adding to the problem by increasing the frustration of their users via their unwillingness to shoot straight with us," MobileMe user Joe Holley wrote in the support forums.
Link: Wired: Has Apple Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew? > (Thanks, Mike)
Post a Comment
- 2
Blair MacDonald http://www.lotusfoundations.com | 7/28/2008 12:37:40 PM
I think that "MAC" has been hanging around with "PC" too much:
{ Link }
- 3
Chris Whisonant http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/lotusnut | 7/29/2008 7:45:10 AM
Interesting - if you sell it they will come...
I will say, though, that I've had to "reset" my iPhone (1st Gen) a lot more frequently since upgrading it to the 2.0 software. So I don't know if the new hardware can actually be blamed for it (not that you were blaming it).
- 4
Matthias Hundertmark | 7/29/2008 11:58:37 AM
It's interesting to hear about the squeeze in sales of the iphone. My 3G has nat had to been "reseted" ever. But it's only almost one month old. (Designed in California, assembled in China)
In my opinion everyone who thinks that Apple doesn't play the same Game as every global company is dreaming.
- 5
Bruce http://elguji.com | 7/29/2008 7:24:37 PM
@3,
Can you say Notes 8.0? 2.1 will be out before you know it. Apple as is Lotus is very good about getting fixes out.
- 6
Michael Brown | 8/5/2008 4:23:19 PM
From Ars Technica:
"In an internal e-mail sent to Apple employees this evening, Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe was launched too early and "not up to Apple's standards... In addition to needing more time and testing, Jobs believes that Apple should have rolled MobileMe's services out slowly instead of launching it "as a monolithic service."
{ Link }
Cheers,
- Mike
Wired also had an article on Steve Job's 'evil' ways of conducting business, motivating or demotivating staff by way of fear, threat and almost illegal tactics to negotiate contracts.
Interesting read, { Link }