My Apple Experience!!

I wasn't a fan of Apple products for a long time. My first introduction to Apple products was in early 2005 when my employer gave me a Powerbook and I bought an iPod shuffle. They were both nice looking products and worked just fine, but I wasn't terribly impressed.

Those days I used work on my powerbook with Mac OS X Tiger at home and had a light weight 12" dell for work. As fas as the OS goes, I didn't find Mac OS X to be any more powerful or stable or easy to use than my XP. I found myself more at home with XP than with OS X. Lack of the range of software was a big negative and even for the apps that were available, the Mac versions are limited in feature set compared to my PC. Yahoo messenger didn't have video chat, websites with telugu scripts didn't work with firefox or safari neither does Yahoo music and telugu radio, iphoto couldn't handle a gigabyte of photos without freezing. Many little problems add up and made the experience less than ideal. I liked the hardware very much, a lot of thought is put into the placement of the keys on the keyboard and some special keys that makes life easier. The look of the machine was pretty cool and the coolness factor is pretty much evident. I carried it around to coffee shops, libraries, friends places etc...

And iPod shuffle, I just wanted to check out what the fuss about an iPod was all about and I bought the cheapest one I could get. Not the magic I was expecting. No display, no FM, its just a dumb device. The sleekness will only make u happy when u buy, after all its the utility. For the price $129, it was a rip off. May be if I went with regular iPod, I might have had a different experience. But Hey... the shuffles were selling as many as the regulars. Also, I never had a music player before shuffle and I never understood how can some one spend so much money on a device that does only one thing, play music.

With my experience with powerbook and shuffle, I couldn't understand what is so great about Apple products that people around me love so much and are willing to pay a hefty premium, I was certain that it is just bought by young and hip people to feel cool and so a great but mere marketing win by Apple.

When a phone from Apple is rumored a couple of years before it was released, I vehemently argued with my friend that the mobile phone market is not that easy to crack. Some of the most innovative companies like Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Microsoft have been in the market for years. I said it is impossible for Apple to beat them at their own game. I told him this time it would be different and apple is going to get smacked. My friend said he don't know how, but Apple will come up with something new that can compete with other phones on the market.

When MS was coming in with Zune and its marketing muscle, I said MS will neutralize iPods halo as well. My friend was sure that Apple would continue to innovate on iPod, and MS will be left chasing iPods tail.

I suspected he joined the cult of Apple and cannot see the truth. Not really. His prophecy came true.

Apple announced iPhone. I was on road for a conference and checked out Jobs key note after work. I called my friend and said I would buy it today if they sell it for $500 unlocked and if it is available on Verizon, since my employer pays for the service. I was so impressed with the device I was willing to shell out 500 bucks with out seeing it. But I was disappointed to learn that it is going to be available only on ATT and only 6 months later. Months followed with discussions on lack of keyboard, lack of features, blah blah... When the crazy rush subsided after it was released, I went to an Apple store and was disappointed with the phone as it took me less than two minutes to run out of things to check. I wrote about how expensive it is for the limited stuff to do and declared Apple just sells cool overpriced stuff for stupid kids.

Then things changed. I became a Product Manager. I had to shop for phones as I moved to my new job. I checked out Blackberrys, WinMos, Nokias and what not. I suddenly realized how inelegant and antiquated the rest of the phones and their interfaces are compared to iPhone. I could not believe how stuck the biggies are. There is nothing in those phones that says 'User Experience'. But was sure that Nokia will slam a dozen phones at Apple and drown it. Then, Apple announced App Store. Applications treated like MP3 songs? How did they even come up with that? That made me relate to the MP3 world before iPod and iTunes and why they were such a hit with music lovers. As I continued working on my product as a Product Manager trying to decide what to build and how to build, I started to truly understand the magic of Apple. The fact that after all these years, all these big wigs are still chasing iPod's and iPhone's tails.

I was not around to understand the impact when the first Mac was released or when the first iMac, the first iPod or iTunes were released. But I bet the excitement and WOW factor would have been as much as I have felt when I first saw and read about iPhone and about App store in iTunes. It is truly incredible how Jobs remade so many industries over and over.

What's made the iPhone successful?

Success of iPhone is phenomenal and beyond the imagination of consumers, analysts and competition alike. While 'Steve Jobs' and his pursuit for perfection has been the driving force, I'd attribute three reasons to its continued success - Design, AppStore and Marketing.

Design: 'Keep it Simple, Stupid'. There are more powerful mobile phones all over the world that are incredibly more powerful and feature rich than iPhone. But smart phone software had mostly been stripped down versions of the desktop software, ‘User Interaction’ paradigms from the personal computers with windows and menus with a key board are translated to mobile phones. iPhone redefined the mobile user interaction and kept it simple.

App Store: 1st generation iPhone is incredibly successful even with limited features. To sustain the innovation and maintain its leadership in a market that has innovators like Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony and RIM is a challenge. Opening up the platform and letting hundreds of other companies innovate is only part of the story. Providing a platform for these applications in iTunes AppStore, making it incredibly simple to explore, buy and install apps replicating the iPod/iTunes eco system is critical for the explosion of the app market. This increases the iPhone’s capacity to expand and retain the user base .

Marketing: Smart phones before iPhone have positioned themselves for business users and have been competing to capture the small but profitable market. iPhone instead marketed its smart phone for mass market. Its approach to market these ‘smart phone’ features to the mass market has opened up the incredibly large market. Apple's continued reliance on the ‘Apps’ instead of ‘coolness’ in its marketing campaign has taken iPhone beyond traditional Mac/iPod consumers would ensure its long term success.

Apple netbook/ umpc??

I see the tech blogs rooting for Apple netbooks. I say apple will not and should not get into the netbook business.
In fact, I say they have already have a netbook. It's called iPhone/ iPod Touch. Serves the same market fairly well. They do not need to design and market yet another device.

Big Joke

Apple pulls out the NBC TV shows after being show the door by NBC.

Apple is the most expensive MP3 player in its class. Even after it has this amazing market share and un heard of profit margins per device that comes out of its scale. It doesn't reduce the price and it doesn't allow the 'VENDORS' to play with the prices as they want. Yes you cannot sell an iPod for less than the price specified by Apple.

But it does not agree to the owner of the content to sell their content for a price they want. That is alright, it can deny if it doesn't make business sense for Apple. But trying to blame NBC and making it look like Apple is for customer and NBC is this evil corporation because they are not dancing to its tunes is stupid.

Of course, Apple can afford to be stupid. After it has a stupid and loyal fan base who thinks Apple is always right and Steve Jobs is God to root for it and blast NBC with out even listening to what NBC has to say about this whole deal.

They might want to have the content sold through their Hulu for a cheaper price or make it available for free with the support of Ads. With the new video technology that can display un obtrusive in line ads with video based on context, it might have its own plans.

Oops, I am an Apple fan boy and I can't think.

Do No Evil (Series)

"Viacom is a company built from lawsuits, look at their history," Schmidt said on Friday.
"Look who they hired as CEO, Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years," he added.

Google takes swipe at Viacom

Now it is getting personal.
You built an empire by pirating the copyright material, i.e youtube. You are making money off the content you do not own. And when they ask that you should do something about it you didn't care. And when they file a law suit, you come around and abuse them. When you can screen sexual or racist content from appearing on youtube, why can you not screen copyrighted content? Which part of it is not Evil. May be you can get out of the court unscathed but that doesn't make what you are doing any less evil.

It just shows that they all are the same, Evil Corporates.

iPhone's succeess

iPhone crossed 1 million sales in less than a week.to put that in perspective, Windows has 3.2 million licences sold in the first quarter of 2007 and that account to about 60% percent market share. So total of 5.1 million smart phones. Ammaaazzzinnnggg!!!

• the iPhone is not competing with smart phones, and I think the people who bought iPhone are not existing smart phone users.



• it is clear that people have enough money in hand, but they did not find any of these existing phones worthy of their money.

It sounds like all these million users are iPod users and are upgrading to iPhone. would these guys have bought it irrespective of the features?Did they buy it just because they want to own that coolest thing in town. Does that mean iPhone is going to cannibalize iPod market to certain extent.

It is rumoured that wide screen iPod is on its way with the touchscreen goodness with out any kind of wireless connectivity (no phone, no safari). What would happen then? is ATT going to bite the dust? Or would people be willing to pay that extra money to ATT when they can still own all the coolness with one time payment and probably less upfront.

It'll be interesting to see the statistics of the early adopters, how many of them own nanos, video ipods and existing smart phones. That'll probably tell us how many iPods vs iPhones will apple sell in the future.

But when I think about it, I think you can throw all the Market research and analysis to trash. Apple would probably defy all the conventional wisdom and sell these gadgets in millions anyways.

Apple is already came to half the market cap of MS. Its probably going to reach MS very soon. On the other side, MS's hopes to get hold of the living room is under serious threat with the failure rate of 33% and less than desired success of IPTV so far. If MS doesn't get its act right and overwhelm the TV set top box market by this holiday season, it is as good as gone. Come next holiday season, I expect to see a completely revamped Apple TV that's going to storm the living room, the fourth leg.

Can MS at least get hold of the tail, i.e Cars?? By the ways things are going, it doesn't look like it.

Business Sense

I am Borders. I want to sell each and every book for $9.99.

No matter
how new or how old the book is,
how popular or how flopped the book is,
whether it is a paperback or a hard cover,
whether it is 100 pages or 1000 pages long,
whether it is written by John Grisham or Joe Writer,

And I'll pay only $2.99 to the publisher no matter what because I have 80% market share, I can dictate the terms.

Makes great business sense, doesn't it.

Get over it...

I am another guy who is tired of the iPhone coverage in the media. I can't believe that some one dropping a iPhone is worth covering. Now I see all these warnings and notes to the prospective buyers on the cons of buying an iPhone. What features it doesn't have and how pricey it is and that ATT is evil.
Wait! Ten Things You Should Know Before You Buy an iPhone


Now get over it... when does price become an issue with Apple products. iPod is always pricier than each and every mp3 player in the market. What abt the features? I would say each and every mp3 player in the market does more than what an iPod does.
You can shout over the roof tops, but you cannot stop people buying iPhones. They are not buying it for the utility, they are buying it because it is iPhone. And these guys do not even care about what other phones are in the market and what those gadgets can do. They do not do research on what kind of features it has. If they need to change their ways of using a phone and settle for less functionality, they would do so. You take out the maps, safari, youtube, weather and maps, they would still buy it. They just buy it because it is iPhone. and you made the iPhone what it is.

Steve Jobs chickened out??

The reviews of the iPhone from the hand picked reporters is out a couple of days ago and the verdict is Unanimous.
Apple iPhone is a ground breaking product and is fun to use. But ATT sucks.

I can't help but wonder how similar all these reviews sounded, right from the keyboard and the testing for scratches. As if they got step by step instructions on how to test this product. In particular each of these guys said the same thing about the keyboard, that u'd get used to key less keyboard. hmmm, can't imagine if any of these reviewers would patiently test a product for 5 days to get used to in order to give a positive feedback on the keyboard. May be a call from Jobs himself helps. yes he did spoke personally to each of the reviewers. That shows the marketing genius of Steve Jobs.

But even after all these every one is disappointed with ATT service. We are told that Jobs even considered taking the MVNO route like Helio. But he seems to have chickened out.

If he wanted to give out the best ever product to the customer, he could have opted for 3G and go for an MVNO and could have controlled the entire eco system, just like he does with itunes - ipod, mac os x - ilife - .mac. As far as availability of edge in more places than the current 3G service like HSPDA/ EVDO, they are covered in the places that matter, that is most the cities across the US where the bulk of the iPod market and also the smartphone market is. And having 3G doesn't mean that the phone do not work in the non coverage area. He seems to have gone for the ATT option and EDGE for two reasons, not daring to go all alone for the afraid of losing? And for better battery life and the device size?? (Then why do you put up charts comparing the talk time and size of an EDGE phone with 3G counterparts). Also, he must be getting a lot of subsidies from ATT to control the price to $599.

I think he could have gone all alone and could have succeeded to the same extent. Who is buying iPhone for features anyways? He should probably comeup with a UMPC on the same platform with GPS and other extra features like GPS sans phone.

Apple and MS

Hmmmm.... i like apple products... but am not a great fan. I particularly don't like the smugness of the apple fanboys. I do have a Powerbook which I like very much. I have ipod shuffle which I repent buying. I don't think Mac OS X is a better OS than Windows XP or Windows Vista. Infact I like the bright colors and the ease of use of Windows and all the software that is available on windows. The only thing I miss in windows is the 'expose' which can be set up using 3rd party softwares. But there are a whole lot of features I miss when I am using a Mac. I think what makes Mac OS X seem better is the combination of Mac OS X and well designed hardware. In built webcam, well thought out placement of keys on the key board, back lighting of the keyboard, two finger scrolling on the mouse pad, the sleek power cord and the built in mike and speakers and such. Security is a non issue for me, because I know what I am doing.

I think Microsoft should work more closely with their hardware partners to bring out the best of the Windows OS. There are Sony Vaios and Lenovo thinkpads, but I don't think they are doing a good job in Marketing their products as well as Apple does.
I know how it works when you have a partner channel selling your product. Its not very easy. The image in the public is that Macs are cool, easy and fun to use and that Windows is boring. Which is completely ridiculous and false. Mac is not much just as an OS, but with the Apple hardware it has one of the best computer line up out there. And they only have one line up to market and can pump millions into that small line up for marketing.

Microsoft should partner with a partner to pitch some windows pc (say vaio) directly against the Macs and market aggressively. they cannot pretend that they are not affected by the Apple phenomenon thats happening. It may be too late if they wait longer.

MS partners got Zunk'd

MS announced zune. And what is the response from the blog community??
All the web is resonating with articles and opinions on how the MS partners are zunk'd.

Strange, no body knows for sure what this zune is about. What constitutes zune?
And these kids are already writing swan songs for the microsoft partners and their players.
Saying that Microsoft would stop supporting them.. (MS stop supporting Windows Media Player?? Can any one think about that happening? -play for Sure' is nothing more than a marketing campaign)

Stranger thing is that people claim, MS can gain the market share only from their partners and not from apple. Or at least they say zune would have to step over the MS partner players before it can challenge ipods.

There is not word yet from MS on what kind of players they would be releasing. flash or hard disk?? what is the price range. 100 or 400?? What kind of service they would be providing?

Above all, not even a single partner complained about the Zune yet. So what is the problem for these bloggers? Why do they care so much for the small time mp3 players? Or are they afraid that MS would be a strong competitor for their favourite Ipod. Why is the rush to write off MS. Let's wait for the MS to announce the details of ZUNE.

MS Haters

I see a lot of people don't like Microsoft, for the trouble they had gone through using windows. Windows is a very good OS for sure in terms of functionality and usability. The problem is with the security. With spyware, viruses and popups. It is perfectly alright not to like MS.

But people call MS evil for a lot of things. Which doesn't make sense.
One major complaint every one has is that MS killed Netscape by providing IE for free. That is ridiculous. MS is in business and not in charity. If some one introduces a new application, it doesn't mean MS has no right to build a competitor?
If Netscape is that great, people would still have used Netscape as it is also a free software for most of the users. People simply didn't bother because Netscape doesn't give them any thing great.
What has stopped Microsoft from killing firefox. They couldn't. Simply because firefox is simply a better application and had a better marketing strategy to outfox MS. The same people have introduced thunderbird mail application and a calendar. They didn't take off, since they didn't have much for users to move from their outlook applications. Simply MS has a better product here and is providing what the users wanted.
May be if google comes up with a better online office suite, atleast consumer market would go for it even if MS provides office with Vista for free. If openoffice is as good as they claim it to be, what is stopping the users from using it, at least in the consumer market if not in the corporations. I've used it a while ago, when openoffice is not upto the mark. I cannot comment on th quality now. If they really have a great product rivaling MS, they simply lack proper marketing skills. If they don't have money, they can go viral, just like firefox did. Same with Linux machines. You cannot put the blame on MS, for their own failure.

Apple and Google

IPod and Google Search are great products to start with.
They created these markets and are the leaders.
But now we have other players who offers better products.
But the market share of these products keep growing.
the notion is that their simplicity is the key selling point.
But I say it is all marketing. Free publicity. First mover advantage.

Ipod shuffle is a BULL product, but it sells better than other cheaper flash players with a display, FM transmitters and SD slots to upgrade memory.
Yahoo Music and Napster gives you a better music download plans for the real music buffs.

And coming to search, Yahoo gives you better functionality, fewer clicks, social networking in search, great shortcuts,
and wonderful 'also try' feature and many more. But google is growing bigger and eating up yahoo search's mkt share. (firefox and DELL are also major influencers by bundling ;))

That is because these names have become synonyms for what they do.
People plan to buy IPods, they don't plan to buy 'MP3 Players'
People don't search, they google.

Most of them I believe don't even explore further. They just go straight to them!!!

Intel Inside

Apple is working hard to improve its products. It is trying to increase its market share in the PCs. And it now got a powerful intel processor inside.
So what??? Who buys a Mac machine for speed?? Who is going to move from buying a dell machine to buy these new imacs and macbooks??
I'd say NONE.
People buy Macs, because they are cool. People buy Macs, because they are easy to use. People buy Macs, because they have the money to buy it.
So having an intel processor, does it effect any of these. NO.
Nobody cares if it has an intel inside or powerpc inside. No one bothered when the Mac gets heated up.
The only way to get into the Mass market is to make them inexpensive. Make them compete with PCs in the price.

All the marketing hoopla starting from the announcement in Developer's conference last year on moving from IBM to Intel, right to the release at the Macworld last week, it'd result in nothing. Absolutely Nothing!!!!