

Dear Tech Early Adopters: Manufacturers Don’t Care About You - jgalvez
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/21/dear-tech-early-adopters-manufacturers-dont-care-about-you/

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dotBen
_tl;dr: normal people don't care about specs, the operating system, etc.
manufactures ship shit cos they can and ultimately just need to sell it. as
early adopters we are influencers but thats it, manufactures don't care. early
adopters pontificating about tech are just chirping to the echo chamber.
something about tight pants._

What a load of old bollocks. In his attempt to prove a point he totally over-
simplifies the situation.

Sure my mother doesn't care whether her phone has a 900Mhz Targa CPU or a 1Ghz
Snapdragon CPU. But of course she does care which OS it is. _"Why don't the
apps I bought on the Apple App Store work on this Android phone I just
upgraded to?"_.

And of course it is not ok for some manufacture to offload some stinky pile of
shit tablets to Walgreens, one that have fundamental hardware and software
flaws which is why they can't be sold via regular channels, and call them "$99
Android Tablets". Because poor customer who buys said tablet now goes away
thinking all Android tablets are crap, perhaps all tablets in general are
crap, and goes and tells their friends to boot.

Who else is going to call out the manufacture than the early adopter crowd?
Other manufactures can't (it's not the done thing). It makes the space crap
for everyone.

And as for saying manufactures don't care about early adopters, most first-gen
products are aimed squarely at the early adopter crowd because often on day 0
there isn't the network effect, product development, etc to really bring out a
proper fully baked product and so they rely on the early adopter crowd to
start the ground swell.

Android G1, current line of Google TVs, First DVD/HD-DVD/Bluray players are
all examples of products manufactures built for early-adoptors. Even Apple,
usually very good at being totally consumer-focused, has openly been courting
he early adopter crowd with the AppleTV while it R&D's in public what the
sweet spot is in that space.

Yes, us early adoptors != general public buyers, but this article completely
discounts and discredits a still significant and important part of the
technology market and ecosystem.

~~~
frossie
To be fair, I think what he is specifically saying is that a lot of the
blogosphere/tech buzz/flame wars etc. is not influencing anything because by
the time the early adopters get their hands on the gear, the next product is
already in the production pipeline, so there's no _real_ net effect in being
able to influence product development. (The "influencing" effect is more of a
marketing effect).

But I agree with you that I have not encountered a computer user, no matter
how naive, who didn't take specs into consideration when they buy their next
computer. They know they need "more" if nothing else.

------
marze
The article is incoherent.

In any case, if the early adopters of Apple products are getting a bad deal as
the author seems to be saying, where are these unhappy customers? Shouldn't
such unhappyness show up in customer satisfaction surveys, where Apple leads
by a wide margin?

On the other hand, the author's central point that early adopters often don't
make out so well generally is probably true. Experienced tech customers
understand the risks, others may not.

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plusbryan
I would imagine the microsoft ad linked in the article will resonate with a
lot of people. Very well done.

