-
No Convergence of iOS & OS X
-
I also think that the line about the Macbook Air can be viewed as tacit confirmation that the Macbook Pro is dead, at least the way that we know it.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
If that means losing the bulky optical drive, good riddance. I’d rather have room for more storage or more battery. But I don’t think it is in any way suggestive the MBP line is being killed of. The question named the Air specifically, so Cook answered about the Air specifically.
Best,
Andy -
I think there are several reasons Apple acts (or acted) the way it does.
After reading Walter Isaacson’s book, it appears that Jobs would frequently dismiss an idea only to do a complete 180 on the concept. Even to the point of believing it was his idea.
It also appears that Apple works on concepts that don’t always make it to market, at least not right away. I thought that the iPhone grew out of a tablet concept that wasn’t moving forward. So, at that time, you could probably say Apple wasn’t interested in tablets, which may have been due to the fact they didn’t care for the initial concept.
Apple is also what I believe to be the most secretive company when it comes to what it’s doing. Not only do they not want anyone knowing what their doing, they don’t want their employees to know what their doing. They have no tailgating (or did) rules in their facility. If you aren’t authorized to enter an area, you can’t get into that area.
When Apple talks to anyone outside of Apple, I’m sure they take the view they are talking to their competitors.
So I’m not surprised when Apple says one thing and does another. Whether it was the original plan or not.
-
[Tim Wilson] “”We didn’t think we’d do well in the cell phone business…We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA.””
Then they stole technology from Motorola.
-
[Chris Kenny] “Apple did books because they were easy once the iPad was out there and the iTunes Store infrastructure was in place, not because they were a big market.”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but a digital bookstore and the iPad as an eReader was part of the plan all along, IMO. Even when Jobs gave that interview panning eReaders and digital book stores I bet he knew Apple would have a digital bookstore and a key selling point of the iPad would be as an eReader.
Jobs did something very surprising, at least to me, in giving props to Amazon and the Kindle during the unveiling of the original iPad.
“But yes, Apple has a history of insisting certain products aren’t worthwhile until they start making them. In some cases (when Apple only enters markets years later), it might even be genuine — Apple really doesn’t think certain products are worthwhile until new technologies and new approaches make them so. It’s quite possible that Apple doesn’t quite see how iOS and OS X could be usefully merged today, but they’ve got people working on figuring it out.”I think it’s the extreme black and white nature that makes it stand out so much. Some companies might give a non-answer like “we’ll see where the market goes and if it makes sense for us blah blah blah” and some companies, like Adobe w/Adobe Labs, will actively show off things they are working on in an ‘Hey, we don’t know exactly what to do with this but it’s cool and we wanted to share it’ type fashion.
Apple, on the other hand is very black and white, yes or no about their products publicly. If they make something it is unprecedentedly magical and if they don’t it’s useless crap. I say ‘publicly’ because from what I’ve read there’s a stock pile of things in Apple’s labs that have never, will never, see the light of day and that doesn’t surprise me.
I mean, Apple had OSX running on intel chips for years before they made the switch from PPC and I bet they have contingency plans up the wazoo. I think Apple is a very prepared, methodical company that has far flung product road maps, they just don’t give any hint of what’s on those road maps to anyone but the most senior staff at Apple.
-Andrew
2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5) -
[Andrew Kimery] “Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but a digital bookstore and the iPad as an eReader was part of the plan all along, IMO. Even when Jobs gave that interview panning eReaders and digital book stores I bet he knew Apple would have a digital bookstore and a key selling point of the iPad would be as an eReader.”
Panning a device that’s only an eReader was justifiable, given the relative sales numbers for books/songs/apps. That doesn’t mean books weren’t worth eventually supporting on a multifunction device.
[Andrew Kimery] “I mean, Apple had OSX running on intel chips for years before they made the switch from PPC and I bet they have contingency plans up the wazoo. I think Apple is a very prepared, methodical company that has far flung product road maps, they just don’t give any hint of what’s on those road maps to anyone but the most senior staff at Apple.”
Yes, this is almost certainly true.
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Andrew Kimery] “Apple, on the other hand is very black and white, yes or no about their products publicly.”
Don’t worry, the internet will fix it.
-
[Chris Kenny] “He was sort of right about books:”
The problem isn’t eBooks. It’s that Apple decided to do the exact opposite of what they did for iTunes. Instead of a huge library of cheap stuff, they have a tiny library of expensive stuff.
I’m frankly amazed that they’ve sold even ONE book. I can buy from a dramatically wider universe through Amazon, almost always for less, and sometimes a LOT less, and read them on my iDevices and computer desktop with the Kindle app just fine thanks.
In fact, I now use my Kindle more than my iPad because it’s so much easier to buy — and BORROW, and SHARE — books. And as a result, my book buying has skyrocketed.
Let’s tally. You create an amazing store that makes me want to buy a device. The device and the store are so compelling, and it’s one click to have it INSTANTLY, and the prices are so close to impulse buys, and it’s so easy to discover exciting new stuff that I buy more from the store than you ever imagined I would. I love this device! I love this store!
Dang! Wouldn’t it be great if somebody could figure out how to do that with music?
Morons.
Apple is never going to get a penny of it because they’re doing it WRONG. Which is idiotic. They’re running their book business like they never heard of iTunes.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Tim Wilson] “Apple is never going to get a penny of it because they’re doing it WRONG. Which is idiotic. They’re running their book business like they never heard of iTunes.”
In order to lure publishers away from exclusively supporting Amazon, Apple offered to take a substantially smaller cut than Amazon was taking and let publishers set their own prices. Did publishers turn around and say “Great! Now that we’re getting 70% instead of 30-40%, we can lower prices”? They did not. They raised prices. This is silly, and it is broken, but it’s hard to see what Apple could have done. With music, Apple had some clout to try to force record labels onto Apple’s pricing scheme. With books, because Amazon, not Apple, was the market leader, Apple didn’t have such clout.
(Apple also lets app developers set their own prices, of course, and apps tend to be priced quite reasonably, but this is probably attributable to the app market being so much more competitive — there are many more app developers than major publishing companies.)
—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
-
[Chris Kenny] “Apple offered to take a substantially smaller cut than Amazon was taking and let publishers set their own prices. Did publishers turn around and say “Great! Now that we’re getting 70% instead of 30-40%, we can lower prices”? They did not. They raised prices. “
And we have Apple to thank for it. They very explicitly conspired with publishers to raise prices. This isn’t some shadow theory. I’ve read the emails and with a quick Google search, you can too. Raising prices was Steve’s explicit goal from the beginning. Again, not a shadow theory. He said so. That part is public even outside the DoJ’s filing. Look it up.
The fact is that they had a number of paths to choose, and chose one based on collusion between competitors to fix prices that were higher than previous market standards, with punishment for those who deviated from the plan.
Sure, Apple didn’t have the upper hand for once, and tried to play a different game than the market leader was playing. Why not? It has worked for them before. Not this time.
The irony is that once this ridiculous arrangement is undone, I think Apple’s book fortunes are potentially limitless. If I was Amazon, I’d be praying that Apple tries to stay the course.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up