
Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges - epi0Bauqu
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/19/apple-is-flailing-badly-at-the-edges/
======
martythemaniak
"I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and
dropped calls to get it out of my hands."

As long as stuff like this (and you can see a lot more of it here on HN) is
the prevailing wisdom, Apple has little motivation to actually do anything to
fix their problems.

The hype around the iPhone is particularly telling - people put up with
developer draconian restrictions, they put up with unstable software and poor
reception that most other companies would be ashamed to release.

I've had an iPhone for about 3 weeks now, and I still don't get the hype. Have
iPhone owners never used a smartphone before? Did they all trade in their
Nokia 5110s before buying the iPhone?

~~~
stcredzero
Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before. You can think of them as
the AOL of smartphones. Considering that, maybe the draconian babysitter
policies they have over apps make sense.

EDIT - iPhone users I know:

Me - programmer, but no longer an early adopter. Had a Palm V awhile back, but
found it annoying to have the additional device. 1st time smartphone user.

Fellow musician - singer, engineering student. 1st time smartphone user.

Veterinarian. Her husband's a Gentoo developer though, and he bought her an
iPhone for her birthday.

I also know of two coworkers who are early adopters who also own an iPhone.

So of the 5 people I know, only two are early adopters. Two of them are
female, and both of those users prize the iPhone because it's fun to use and
it looks nice.

~~~
jsdalton
> Lots of iPhone users never had a smartphone before.

This statement may be technically true, but I highly doubt it's true among the
writers and commentators like Arrington that we hear so much about the iPhone
from.

In fact, most of the people I know who have iPhones are early adopter types.
People like my mom -- a prototypical AOL user -- wouldn't have a clue as to
what to do with an iPhone.

Arrington's willingness to put up with the bugs, flaws, and "draconian"
babysitter policies is a less a statement about Apple as it as about the rest
of the smartphone marketplace, which frankly stinks.

~~~
martythemaniak
No, its more of a statement to the power of Apple's marketing and trends.

The BB Bold vs. iPhone 3G is pretty telling - the Bold was announced a month
before the 3G iphone, but is only to be released a few weeks from now.
Meanwhile, Apple went ahead and released their product with piss poor battery
life and according to many users, unstable software, often unresponsive UI
etc. When the Bold comes out it won't have these problems.

iPhone users have made a pretty clear choice: looks above ALL else.

> "statement about Apple as it as about the rest of the smartphone
> marketplace, which frankly stinks."

I'd really love to see you try and back that statement up

~~~
randallsquared
For people who aren't already using a BlackBerry, the Bold just doesn't even
seem like a competitor. I'll be a first-time smartphone buyer shortly, and
it's difficult to see why I'd want to buy a handheld computer with such a tiny
screen. I'm far more likely to want to browse the web and watch video on my
smartphone than type a novel, so a separate keyboard is pretty unimportant,
but the screen is one of the most visible and important parts of a first
impression, and the iPhone seems to have a bigger screen than anything
competing with it. Even with the problems I'm hearing it has, it's hard to
justify dropping money on something with a significantly smaller viewing area.

~~~
martythemaniak
In many ways the Bold isn't a competitor to the iPhone. You want one for the
same reason I bought one - a large screen for multimedia and web.

Now, if depended on your smartphone to get stuff done, you'd be scratching
your head over the iPhone. It may have eye candy, but what about the features,
reliability or stability that you'd actually need? I don't think the HN crowd
appreciates how many people out there can do 80% of their job with just a
BlackBerry. I didn't understand what the big deal around the BB is until I
actually used it in such a scenario for a bit, and I know using the iPhone
like that would be a no-go.

------
kylec
Since he doesn't detail the nature of the problems he had with his failing
Macs, I can't really say anything definitive. Personally, I've owned 4 Macs
over the past few years and the worst failure I've suffered has been a hard
drive crash, so maybe he just has bad luck.

I do believe his criticism of MobileMe is warranted though. I'm happy enough
to play with it on my free trial but I wouldn't trust its reliability to
exclusive use, nor do I want to be locked into an email address at $100/year.

~~~
mrtron
I just found it hilarious that to paraphrase he said 'My Macbook Air couldn't
stay connected to our office router so we took it apart for another project.'

Wait...what? You realize that there could be many reasons for that - and many
solutions.

Follow that up with his 'high end' black Macbook had a problem...wait just
because you pay 200$ more for a different colour doesn't make the laptop high
end.

Yes, quite an 'expert' able to judge how a company is doing by his folly with
devices.

------
glymor
The title's some kind of mixed metaphor about medieval weaponry. It's
terrifying.

What's wrong with fraying? It would have worked better anyway.

------
tptacek
Apple is definitely the worst computer company. Except for all the other ones.

~~~
jrockway
What's wrong with Lenovo and Dell? They both make millions of solid machines.
I suppose that they're not very sexy... but I tend to pay attention to what's
on the screen, not whether or not the case won any design contests.

(And FWIW, the Thinkpad has won a lot of design awards. The matte-black box is
beautiful and durable. The Macbook feels like a cheap toy in comparison.)

Finally, Asus' eeepc is also a beautiful computer.

~~~
ank7ovy7
It's the OS.

------
sdurkin
A couple anecdotes of broken machines does not make a trend, or a commercial
failure.

~~~
evgen
And to prove that the plural of anecdote is not data, today's news is that
Apple has once again topped the PC industry in consumer satisfaction scores
[[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10019711-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5)]
and is the only company in their class whose satisfaction rating actually
increased since the last survey.

~~~
mattmaroon
Consumer satisfaction is as much about marketing as it is about sustained
product quality. Apple customers may just be happy to be part of the club,
even while their iPhone drains in one hour or their Macbooks are in an out of
the shop, because it's better than using Windows.

I'd be much more impressed with them leading something comparable to the IQS
JD Power does for cars. It's kinda sad that nothing like that exists.

~~~
evgen
Ah yes, the old "they are all stupid sheep" explanation for results which do
not support your particular worldview. The study in question is pretty open
about its methodology, and includes everything from product quality to
customer complaints and perceived value of the products. I guess the
difference between real social scientists who build econometric models to rank
consumer satisfaction values over tens of thousands of subject interviews and
you is that the former can speak from authority and you speak only for your
own biases and perceptions.

~~~
mattmaroon
Has nothing to do with stupid sheep or Apple in particular or my world view.
It's about sound methodology. The reason the IQS metric is the gold standard
in the auto industry is because marketing ensures that quality (from the
reliability standpoint) and customer satisfaction are two very different
things.

One was being used as a proxy for the other here. Apple products could be
somewhat unreliable yet still score high in overall satisfaction, apparently
even given the methodology they used.

Also, since it specifically mentions that the 3g iPhone is not included, that
probably means that the older version and iPods are. Is it fair to rate Apple
against HP when most Apple customers have used only their portable media
players? Do HP's printers count in this?

------
gaius
_unexceptable_

Is this a new word meaning "unable to make an exception for"?

------
rainface
I have owned a number of Apple products; workstations, laptops, iPods etc. I
had one super bad incident with Apple which they will never live down. (After
6 months of phone calls, and visits to their 'geniuses'. It ended with them
giving me a brand new $2000 workstation in exchange for my $1300 brick.) But
that was it. If you are having problems with everything you by from them,
you're doing it wrong.

------
alaskamiller
Within corporate only Apple TV is considered a flop. Mac mini had great demand
but not important enough for more focus, the same with MacBook Air.

People also tend to forget or don't know this but Apple only has 26,400 or so
employees and it caters to consumer, enterprise, and government/school on a
_global_ scale. Dell and HP and IBM are running around with hundreds of
thousands of employees. And the size of the company is impacted entirely by
the managerial abilities of one Steve Jobs. It's a mixed blessing.

~~~
joao
And more than half of those employees are in retail, not
development/business/management/etc.

