Jefflog

There’s been lots of chatter on “teh Internets” regarding Apple’s iPhone announcement. It makes me believe that Apple is starting to slip up and they know it.

For a long time, Apple Computer (now, simply Apple, Inc.) has been the master of surprise. Steve Jobs will be on stage, and out of the blue, *boom*, the iPod Mini, or the Intel iMac. This is usually accompanied by the announcement that you can buy it “starting today” or “next month, preorders accepted”. They were so ahead of the game that they didn’t need to pre-announce anything.

But during the last developer’s meeting, Steve Jobs did something uncharacteristic: he demoed a set-top box which he called “iTV”, and announced that it wouldn’t be available for four or five months. That’s not their style, so why was it announced so early? There may be a couple of reasons:

1. Make your audience wait for your product instead of going with the competition. Microsoft does this all the time: customers say Microsoft Word doesn’t have this particular feature and WordPerfect does, so they think about migrating to WordPerfect, only to have Microsoft say “No wait, we’re going to have that feature in the next version, don’t you worry!” So people stick with the old, because switching is a chore.
2. There wasn’t anything else Apple had available. You gotta make the keynote wow the audience.
3. To distract people from other shortcomings, such as declining sales or stock option grant improprieties.

For the iTV, I suspect reasons #2 & #3. For the iPhone, I suspect all three.

We heard information about iTunes sales during the keynote (two billion songs sold so far), but nothing about iPod sales or Mac sales. I suspect iPod sales are not going as well as analysts are expecting, and Mac sales are down. So Jobs takes the focus off those products and announces a product that’s six months away from being released.

That’s not the Apple Computer I used to know.

Life has been so busy with work and family that I hardly ever have time for recreational computer time. My RSS reader shows 264 unread messages, and it’s only that low because I occasionally go in and invoke “mark all as read” for the less-interesting feeds.

Right now is an exception to that rule. The planets are aligned and Hong, Maggie, and Oliver are all asleep. It has been a long while since I’ve been able to sit in front of my Powerbook without the pressure that I could be called away at any minute to tend to a crying baby or pay attention to a hyperactive toddler. Eric Dolphy is playing on my headphones, and I got a full nine hours of sleep last night. A steaming cup of coffee is the only things that’s stopping this moment from being a perfect dream.

I realize that I miss using my Mac. I use Windows at work, and without trying to get into any holy wars here, my Windows machine just doesn’t have the elegance, the consistency, or the fun that my three-year old Powerbook has. I don’t suppose there are any programming jobs out there that would let me work on my Mac? (short answer: yes there are, they just don’t exist in Indiana.)

Now, it’s time to see if I can make that cup of coffee a reality without waking up the baby…

It seems like lately, Apple’s been on a tear, selling millions of iPods and increasing its market share (even if it is still only 2.28 percent). They’ve managed to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel chips go very smoothly — in fact, I don’t think any other company could do it as well as they have — which shows the company can stop on a dime and turn itself around if they have to. Thus, I hope they can do it again soon.

During their most recent “fun” special event, they merely announced a new Intel Mac Mini, the overpriced $350 “iPod Boombox”, and the even more overpriced $99 leather cases for the iPod. While I wouldn’t mind picking up a Mac Mini, I would really like it if they added a TV tuner to it. I could replace my aging Tivo once and for all and get a very flexible machine. But even though you can use it to share video, music, and photos throughout the house, you can’t directly record TV with it (at least, not without an expensive add-on).

Alas, Apple probably won’t include a TV tuner anytime soon because it would eat into their TV show sales profits and no doubt anger the networks who they are starting a cozy relationship with. Hmmmm… this sounds a lot like Sony’s problems a few years ago, where the music publishing arm of Sony conflicted with the electronic division which forced them to put out inferior digital music players. Apple won that battle, but unless they wise up and change course, they’ll lose the video one.

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