A new episode of the Simpsons aired last night and it poked a little humour at something i blab about everyday to one of my friends; APPLE. The clips below (via Engadget) poke fun at everything from the G4 Cube, IPod, IPhone and of course, Steve Jobs. A lot of the comments are very in-you-face kind of humour and clearly explained to the non-tech crowd. Summary is basically:
- Overpriced
- Most users sport them for pure bragging rights and are willing to pay for the Apple tax
- Steve Jobs knows everything and tells us what’s cool
- Mess with functionality for the pure sake of Form
As we find ourselves in this economic low, I find it ridiculous that companies like Apple got to coast through with overpriced merchandise and get to take advantage of people who most likely can’t/shouldn’t afford these products. In an interview a month or so ago, Jobs had said their are not stooping down as low as netbook manufacturers, because frankly the products would not be of quality. They chose to address an elite crowd of customers who are willing to pay the premium. This leaving the majority of the people drooling over the flashy gear and willing to go into debt to have them. On Black Friday last week everyone waited anxiously on the discounts on for MAC hardware ware only to be disappointed with the $50-$150 rebates. Even with the lower prices, their notebooks are overpriced.
As mentioned in the last Apple Keynote, the now have “10% of the home computer market“. What they failed to mention is that this is in the OEM market alongside DELL, HP, Sony, etc. This does not take into account all pc users and custom built PCs. I would estimate their market somewhere around 4% optimistically. When tailoring to such a small market share how can one be so strict on the high pricing . You’d think that with all the Apple switchers adds we see on TV Apple cares about gaining ground on Microsoft. Price the items lower and people will buy them, or at least try them out.
Don’t say Windows sucks, PCs are boring and MACs are good for media creation and editing.
- Even Linux supporters have stated that their distros are not better, but merely a preference. Running a Mac as opposed to a PC is a preference and nothing more. This is definitely not a movement. As Paul Thurott mentioned in one of his latest posts: “Apple and its users are mistaking simple with easy”.
- Don’t take away my buttons
- track pad gestures are a gimmick
- unibody design is pointless and expensive. Innovations should save money and pass that on to the end users.
- PCs are far from boring. They are customizable, affordable and sometimes damn attractive. Companies such as Dell, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Asus, HP are constantly changing their product lines to great products, but no one holds keynotes and makes a big fuss. It creates diversity and originality most of the time in a user base. Release often and people will not be bored (BTW, how’s that MAC mini doing :p). Products are priced well and sell decently. Between all these manufactures there are plenty of styles and configuration to satisfy pretty much any consumer. They also get a variety of colours as opposed to Black, White and Aluminium.
- The latest release from Adobe, CS4 runs significantly faster on PCs with x64 architecture. From what I have been reading, a lot of production companies have switched over a few machines for encoding video material already and saved money on the hardware too.
Don’t poke fun of Microsoft for “spending all their money” on advertising rather than fixing Vista bugs
- Apple spends $500 million (13% of SG&A Budget) this year alone on switcher adds and IPod/IPhone adds. That seems to me like a lot of money to throw at consumers advertising when remaining a Luxury Electronics manufacturer.
I predict:
- Apple will suffer through the next 6-8 months and sales figures will show
- Zune flash players will outsell the IPod Nano with the current pricing scheme
- MacWorld won’t bring anything groundbreaking except small refreshes and the usual Mac user burn on purchases previous to the show
- Either the Mac Mini will be killed off or it will get the nVidia treatment
- Snow Leopard will bore fanboys to death
Wake up Apple! Rant done…
Leaked today on the Internet today were images of 4.7(unlike the expected 5.0) OS of the much anticipated IPhone “killer” from RIM. Spec’d out to have a 360×480 resolution, places it at slightly bigger than the IPhone form factor. The device is said to come in both GSM and CDMA flavours.
) or spend some time with your loved ones. You can make a difference…
has said that (as of 2 weeks ago) there is about a 50-60% failure rate on Blackberry Bolds. Most of the test units suffering from malfunctioning software. Though the high failure rate, RIM is apparantley known to having major issues with products right up to delivery time.
