The iPhone!
I'll be the first one to say that I hate the trend of sticking lower-case "i" or "e" in front of things to make in HIP and DIGITAL. It's tired, ok? But I'll put up with it in this case because I WANT ONE. The iPhone has a little bit of everything: multi-touch, gps, voice-recognition, music, video, camera, widgets, web browsing. Plus, it's slim, sleek, and sexy. Who knows if it will work as promised. MY bet is that it's going to be full of bugs and Apple will be in over their head supporting it. Plus, it's still pending FCC approval and won't even be for sale until June. It might be deigned too radioactive for anyone to put near their head by that point.
Then there's the price point. I can't gripe that they've paired the device with Cingular because I'm a customer, but I'm not really motivated to pay $499 for the 4gb model WITH a 2-year contract, OR $599 for the 8gb. OUCH. Even though I predicted the price that high, talk about price gouging.
I'll give them a year to drop the price and make it work correctly, and then I'm all over that sunnovabitch. Also, they didn't release it today but I'd say that a plain-old wide-screen iPod will be available by midsummer.
Apple unveiled additional some new gizmos in addition to a name change: no more Apple Computer, Inc. Now they're just Apple, Inc. As if we... really... cared. They released the Airport Extreme, or as I like to call it, X-TREME!! Again, I roll my eyes at the name selection. Someone in their marketing department obviously thinks Extreme is a good moniker for something badass. I think it just sounds stupid.
Then we have appleTV, a completely useless product for computer-challenged idiots. For $300, you can buy a box that will allow you to play movies you download on your computer on your TV. Yes, it solves the problem of huddling around a computer monitor (a cinema display does that too ;), but, y'know, I solved that problem with a FIFTEEN DOLLAR S-video cable that both Justin and I can plug our laptops into. Hurr.
OK, OK, I realize that not everyone has a laptop and wants to move their desktop to the living room. But that brings me to the next problem-- getting the movies FROM the computer TO the box. Who wants to move the box? Well, obviously Apple can't expect that of their customers, so they've implemented wireless transfer. I admit, it's a pretty sweet idea for lazy people, but they have to be patient as well as lazy. Moving the computer to the living room will honestly take less time than streaming an entire MOVIE over WIRELESS into the appleTV. Whoo-boy.
The presentation, which was recapped live online by Macrumors.com and TechNotes, did an excellent job of firing up the public, such that Apple's stock rose $2.50 during the preso and over 7% during the day. According to TechCrunch, "Competitor Research in Motion (Blackberry) is down over 6%, wiping $2 billion dollars in market cap off the table. Palm, maker of the Treo, is also down, nearly 6%." No matter if it's all hype... I give Apple props for rapid ingenuity. They've come up with some amazing stuff over the last seven years and all the hype has brought them back from the brink of extinction to the new God of computing. Right now, it's good to be Apple.
Posted on January 09, 2007 @ 11:45 AM | 3 comments
Comments:
Apple has put themselves in an amazingly successful place for brand marketing. All they have to do is come out with *something*, even if it's overpriced and non-functional, everyone shits themselves trying to acquire it. It's genius, really.h
By 
Rachel, at
9:18 PM, January 09, 2007
I think the iphone is going to be a huge iflop. If they came out with a non-phone version of it, and dropped the price to 300ish I'd be all over it.
By micah, at
11:08 AM, January 10, 2007
Yeah apple, way to introduce a $600 phone that's Wireless-carrier proprietary with a carrier that's not available everywhere. GG.
By Lazy Lightning, at
4:06 PM, January 10, 2007
