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Memo to Apple: Ignore the Analysts

April 16th, 2009

Now this may be the sort of column that works against my interests, since I’ve long been a member of the crowd that keeps making suggestions about improving Apple’s marketing and product plans. Like others in the tech media, though, I can tell you that I have no experience whatever running a multinational corporation. So I can say without fear of contradiction that none of my ideas of that sort have been tested and proven, even on a small scale.

At the same time, I like to think that, as a customer of Apple (and Microsoft for that matter), I can certainly tell you what I like and don’t like. That doesn’t mean that these companies should listen to me, but when lots of people demonstrate similar tastes and desires, maybe there’s some product potential that can be exploited.

On the media front, however, it’s all-too-common for commentators to behave as if a company, or even a government agency, is run by idiots and if they’d just listen to a few new ideas, their ideas of course, they’d fix whatever problems they allegedly have.

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Is it Too Late for an iPhone 3.0 Wish List?

March 12th, 2009

Just when folks were settling down to figure out how best to deal with the complicated structure of the remote control on the new iPhone shuffle, along comes news that the iPhone 3.0 software will be previewed at a special Apple media event next week.

To put this all in perspective, this would be the first time Apple has run such a presentation — outside of the Macworld Expo keynote of course — since Steve Jobs went on his extended sick leave. So no doubt the folks who will be present will include the appropriate Apple product marketing people, with perhaps a development person or two to provide the appropriate geek veneer to the event.

More important, though, is how innovative Apple’s developers have been over the past year, since the iPhone 2.0 software was revealed. Have they answered the complaints with the previous firmware, and are there loads of spiffy new features with which to help sell the next generation of iPhones — and the existing ones of course?

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The Night Owl’s Favorite Mac

December 8th, 2008

The other day I read an article in Macworld observing the 25th anniversary of the Mac, which will actually occur in January of 2009. Several writers suggested that the SE/30, introduced in 1989, was their favorite model — ever.

In production less than two years, the SE/30 was basically an amalgam of the original Mac form factor with a — for its time — powerful 16MHz Motorola 68030 processor. Selling for an exorbitant $6,500, it was basically the all-in-one equivalent of the IIx; in essence of souped up SE. You can see where the obvious name for this product, SE/X, was a little too suggestive.

Now I understand the power of nostalgia, and I can see where pleasant memories may conspire to overpower logic and reason. So maybe an event or a possession that perhaps wasn’t so great at the time assumes greater importance later on.

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Apple and the 50% Factor

October 29th, 2008

There’s a key figure that’s touted at every recent quarterly meeting with financial analysts, and it may give a clue why Apple’s sales are soaring. You see, some 50% of the people buying Macs at an Apple Store are new to the platform.

Some, no doubt, are buying their first personal computer. Others are evidently migrating from Windows. Regardless, it signals a rapidly growing user base; that is, if the figures are to be believed. You see, those analysts usually tend to ask arcane accounting-related or softball questions. They seldom try to probe or even follow up a particularly intriguing response, so we can only guess at Apple’s survey methodology.

Now, it may just be their registration database. Are the new owners already there? Then again, if that’s a component of these surveys, what about customers who have simply moved? What about the newly-married, where one spouse assumes the other’s last name?

For the sake of argument, however, and lacking evidence to the contrary, I’m going to assume those statistics are fundamentally correct. It goes to show that, if Macs are displayed and demonstrated in a properly-controlled sales environment, people will buy them.

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