Apple’s On the Right Track

2010.03.15   prev     next

MacObserver ran a recent article in which it identified five problems with Apple. I want to take issue with two of them:

I’m certainly no expert on what’s been going on with Apple and Verizon, but I have to suspect that it isn’t really hurting Apple because:

• If Verizon refuses to accommodate out-of-order voicemail and the elimination of the “mandatory” 15-second robo-greeting, then Verizon simply isn’t allowing the iPhone to be a premium product, and so there’s no reason for Apple to “work together” with them, as long as AT&T is willing to accommodate.

• From what I’ve heard, Verizon’s network, which uses a different technology than AT&T’s, is inherently incapable of supporting data and voice at the same time, which would cripple the iPhone experience every time you’re on a call.

• Apple’s selling a huge number of iPod Touches, which probably indicates that people who want an iPhone, but can’t or won’t leave Verizon, are simply buying an iPod Touch. In many respects, that’s almost as healthy for the iPhone’s future as is an iPhone sale.

Apple has several reasons not to attend these conferences:

• Apple can and does hold its own industry-attention-grabbing presentations.

• Most companies that attend these shows use them to tease future products/plans, and attendees expect that. But Apple’s strategy is to hype available products, and keep future products under wraps until they’re ready to sell. Even if Apple had absolute assurance that its employees wouldn’t “spill the beans,” there would still be little reason to attend.

• Apple has superb and highly successful retail stores everywhere, which are the equivalent of having an immense, all-Apple, run-by-Apple show all year round. The New York glass cube store alone is probably better for Apple than purchasing a major presence at all the major electronics conventions.

• The typical member of the consumer-electronics-buying public almost never attends trade shows and conferences, but does visit retail stores regularly.

• And Apple’s whole philosophy — that computing devices are primarily for the typical consumer, not primarily for technie nerds — is not served by attending tech conventions.

Apple knows what it’s doing. And it’s working.