Macworld ’08 Hype
Published by Yoni • January 13th, 2008
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Why Macworld ’08 won’t shock the world
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Yoni is a business / tax attorney from the windy city. Yoni is also a gadget enthusiast who enjoys writing in the third person.
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Quick question, out of curiosity. What, then, is the point of Macworld? I’m new to the whole world of Apple, and really didn’t know they even had an annual expo.
So, if their strategy is to consistently provide systematic improvements, why hold a huge expo? It seems contrary to their overall strategy.
Pat
Macworld is an even every year where new products, updates and plans for the coming year are announced, it is generally a motivating experience for Mac users and Apple users, even some non-closed minded PC users benefit slightly.
A huge expo is held so that a connection is made between the CEO/Apple and the people, demonstrations and special events are held within the week.
Obviously, if you hate Apple it isn’t that interesting, and you may even resent it. Personally, I use Mac, so I am looking forward to what may be announced, but I’m not getting hopes up.
It’s an expo that announces all the new things Apple is releasing. This is where all their new products and improvements are released. Once you’ve spent a little while with Apple and their products, it’s easier to understand why someone would want to watch the expo, or even why it exists.
If you don’t like Apple’s products, though, you’re most likely not going to understand.
Well, I love apple’s products. And I’m excited to hear about what they announce.
I’m speaking strictly from a strategic viewpoint. Is it safe/a good idea to create so much buzz about a product, when they know that 6 months down the road, they’re going to change it/update it to make it better?
Pat
I completely agree with your assesment of the long-term startegy of incremental improvements to existing product as the right measure of Apple. You could also argue that the iPhone is an improvemet on the iPod but I don’t see it as incremental. Products like the iPhone are the kinds of thing that we get spoiled by and want more of and have a somewhat unreasonable expectation of seeing again. However what other products measure up to the iPod or iPhone? How many years was it between these product announcements? If we take these two milestones as any kind of indicator then a year is not a long enough interval. Again I agree that the real Apple success story is in the long term incremental changes that build on a solid foundation of knowledge and success gained in small updates but the flashy announcements are what we hope for.
Pat,
I don’t think Macworld is Apple’s event. I think it is organized by the magazine with the same name, and Jobs uses the expo keynote to introduce new products.
MacWord Expo has been going on since 1985. I have attended 3 shows and those were over 10 years ago. It is only in very recent history that truely ground breaking news came from the keynote. The show was just that, a trade show.
When Steve started using the keynote as his “stage” to the world he began to “wow” the croud with news or new gadgets. The first time I remember the financial community jumping on the Apple bandwagon was at the 1997 Expo in Boston. When Steve returned to Apple as “iCEO” and gave a keynote that presented him in charge and making plans, the markets took off. There were ups and downs since then, but that is really the birth of the keynote as we know it today.
The keynote has really grown as an important venue for product intros or business deal intros. I for one always hope for something fantactic, but I am also realistic when it comes to the keynote.
In any event, Apple is still hot. The iPod works and works well. With iTunes, it is “fall off a log easy”. Those geeks that complain about iPod’s “closed” architecture must have a lot of free time to waste. I like iTunes and iPods because they work and are easy to use. That is why Apple is a winner.
Those “geeks”? I think that snooty attitude is why mac fanboys attract so much negative attention. It’s an MP3 player, don’t be smug.
I think that iWork is probably the best example of this trend among all of Apple’s endeavors, even in comparison to iLife. Pages was not much better than TextEdit when it first came out, and I couldn’t find much use for it, but the latest version has become a real replacement for Microsoft Word, equal in status to Mellel.
I’m glad to discover that I’m not the only long-time Mac user who wasn’t wowed by the iPod. I’ve been using Macs since 1983 and buying Macs since 1990, but it wasn’t until 2004 that I even bought an iPod, even though I already had thousands of songs on my computer years before then.
I’m sure that I’ll wait until the iPhone takes on Palm-like functions before I’ll splurge on such a purchase, as I’m not much of a phone user and am satisfied with the RAZR. I would really like to read and search PDF and word processor files on a handheld device, taking the scriptures to church on an iPhone with quick access to any verse rather than lugging so many books around every Sunday. Editing word processor documents would also be a great benefit.
Palm’s small storage capacity rendered its platform useless to me about 7 years ago, so I don’t even use one, but having an internal hard disk as large as my iPod would make handheld document reading and searching possible. I guess I’d be happy if the iPod could do that eventually, which should be really easy to incorporate.
It’ll be big. Apple has changed and evolved. It will be big.
You’re not mistaken, but somehow I think we can trace that to the PC notion that Apple is the Anti-Christ. Thus, wine to water. It’s a stretch, I know.
You are not mistaken Petter. Good catch!
>When the initial OSX came out there wasn’t much there to drool over.
WTF… Did you just start using the Mac?
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