It’s been a big few weeks for everyone who just can’t stand anything that Apple does.
And there are more than a few folks who just don’t like all those things with a small i in the name, like the iPod, iPad and most of all the iPhone.
The newest iPhone has been ground zero for this comeuppance. The amount of vitriol which has gushed forth over whatever signal problems the iPhone 4 may have, rivals that which has leaked out of that well down in the Gulf of Mexico. (For those just tuning in, the issue centers around the sudden signal drop when a certain part of the metal that wraps around the unit and serves as its antenna is touched.)
So imagine how happy the Apple “haters” were when CEO Steve Jobs held a press conference on Friday to deal with growing PR problem that Apple was facing. Even Consumer Reports said the iPhone 4 had a problem and it couldn’t be “recommended.” It was all proof positive that they were right and that all Apple products are all mediocre, over-priced technology that is made popular by exceptional marketing to status seekers.
This is where I usually get into fights with people who aren’t fans of anything to come from the folks at Apple.
Because it just isn’t so.
Debate the merits of Apple’s technology advances all you want, the fact is that you might not have a mouse or a graphical window interface on your home computer, Wi-fi on your laptop, or those apps on your touchscreen phone–if it weren’t for Apple pioneering each of those things.
This is not to say that everything that they have ever made has been groundbreaking, and history will be the ultimate judge of the current iPhone 4 kerfuffle, but whatever you may think of Steve Jobs, you can’t argue that he and his team haven’t made personal technology better through their efforts. Including changing the way cell phones work and what they can do. Because I don’t remember any phone from Samsung, Motorola, or Blackberry sporting a usable touch screen prior to mid 2007, when the first iPhone was released.
To mostly mediocre reviews.
And then a few million flew off the shelves, and the rest is history. Until now.
The internet is overflowing with gleeful cynics who are already to bury the iPhone 4 and Apple right along with it.
Oh, and that whole hip marketing theory? Depending on whose figures you use, the general consensus is that Apple spends about one third of what Microsoft does each year. It is a little more than half of what Dell coughs up on marketing every 12 months. We wont even talk about what the cell phone companies spend on advertising in a year.
Of course, that spending doesn’t take into account the quality or memorable level of the advertising those dollars are used on.
And I don’t remember a press conference from anyone at Microsoft to tell us how lame Windows Vista was. But many still used it just the same.
Did anyone hear Steve Ballmer go on stage and say “if you don’t like it–bring it back for a full refund?”
Yeah–me neither, but it is so easy to rag on Apple, isn’t it?