MacWorld: Steve's Keynote

[CLiDE FTW!!1]

In the world of cell phones, drastic price cuts are quite the norm, especially for high end featured phones. When the MotoRAZR first came out it was a $400 phone, but within a few short months it was down to $249. By year's end the same RAZR phone was only $99. It happened again with the the Samsung BlackJack, its price was cut in half from $199 to $99 after only three short months! Did any of those companies offer refunds to their customers? NO! The fact that Apple values its customers more and offered them a rebate in this same situation should tell you something, but the lesson is not to be a crybaby.

Actually, if anything, what you just explained to me says that being a "cry baby" IS a good thing because if no one complained about the iPhone's price drop, no one would have got $100 out of it.

 

Incase you didn't remember, Apple didn't drop the price and automatically offer $100 store credit right off the bat. Apparently Steve Jobs got thousands of e-mails from people complaining, or in your terms, "cry babying" about the price drop, and therefore he offered the in-store credit.

 

It's not about being "whiners", its about being treated fairly. If no one ever complained, our Apple products, imo, wouldn't have the same quality. Business thrives on customer service. And Apple has to act kindly, especially since they're under the spotlight these days.

[blackturtleneck]

Yeah, portability, less weight, less space are luxury.

 

 

It is not crippled, is a differnet market, one that PowerBook 12" filled before.

 

The 12" was also with less features than the 15" and 17", and less power too, stop complaining.

 

Pros: The MBA is 1/4" thinner than a MB (same width and length), two pounds lighter and has a multi-touch track pad.

 

Cons: No optical drive, no onboard ethernet, no firewire, one usb port, slower cpu, pata hard drive.

 

Sorry, I just can't see how stripping out a bunch of parts from a MB and making it a little thinner makes it worth $700 more. It takes the same amount of desk space, more if you use the external superdrive. So if making it such a tiny bit smaller and removing a bunch of things makes it worth so much more, the Touch should be selling for at least $3000. The Touch should also be worth more than the iPhone, because it's thinner, lighter and has less features.

[Maxintosh]

Actually, if anything, what you just explained to me says that being a "cry baby" IS a good thing because if no one complained about the iPhone's price drop, no one would have got $100 out of it.

Yeah, and now because of those cry babies Apple will be gun shy about lowering their prices for everyone else next time. So instead of Apple reducing the price of something as soon as they can... NOW BECAUSE OF YOU CRY BABIES they will probably just play it safe and wait longer to reduce the price of a product... Nice job Einstein

[CLiDE FTW!!1]

Pros: The MBA is 1/4" thinner than a MB (same width and length), two pounds lighter and has a multi-touch track pad.

 

Cons: No optical drive, no onboard ethernet, no firewire, one usb port, slower cpu, pata hard drive.

 

Sorry, I just can't see how stripping out a bunch of parts from a MB and making it a little thinner makes it worth $700 more. It takes the same amount of desk space, more if you use the external superdrive. So if making it such a tiny bit smaller and removing a bunch of things makes it worth so much more, the Touch should be selling for at least $3000. The Touch should also be worth more than the iPhone, because it's thinner, lighter and has less features.

 

Haha, great analogy!

 

Yeah, and now because of those cry babies Apple will be gun shy about lowering their prices for everyone else next time. So instead of Apple reducing the price of something as soon as they can... NOW BECAUSE OF YOU CRY BABIES they will probably just play it safe and wait longer to reduce the price of a product... Nice job Einstein

I bet you applied at Apple and got turned down because you made no sense.

 

APPL 4 LIFE, eh Maxintosh?

 

I think you lack business sense -- the point here is that with enough user demand, or complaints, a company will react. And the fact is that since the iPhone price drop, sales boomed. It tells Apple to price the product reasonably, not overprice the hype and wait longer for a price drop. Duh.

[Maxintosh]

I think you lack business sense

I think you lack any kind of sense

 

And the fact is that since the iPhone price drop, sales boomed.

Well there's a big mystery... take a product that is talked about everywhere you go, hype it up, and then drop the price... and wow, I wonder why its sales are up?

 

It tells Apple to price the product reasonably, not overprice

No company, Apple included, wants to be in the news for the wrong reason. They got a bad rap for droping the price thanks to you whiners, and now, next time, they will wait a LOT longer before they lower the price of another product. That hurts a lot more people then the few moaners who got a small store credit, but don't expect you to understand something like that clide

[Sabr]

Less of the offensive attacks guys - debating is cool, but it needs to be done in a mature manner.

 

[CLiDE FTW!!1]

When you're a troubled teen like Maxintosh, of course you're going to take it out on the anonymous people of the internet.

 

 

I think you lack any kind of sense

Well there's a big mystery... take a product that is talked about everywhere you go, hype it up, and then drop the price... and wow, I wonder why its sales are up?

No company, Apple included, wants to be in the news for the wrong reason. They got a bad rap for droping the price thanks to you whiners, and now, next time, they will wait a LOT longer before they lower the price of another product. That hurts a lot more people then the few moaners who got a small store credit, but don't expect you to understand something like that clide

 

Source? Or are you just making all of this up? I didn't know that you ran Apple...

[Maxintosh]

Source?

It's this new thing called the news (and no, the Internet doesn't always get it right) Everyone knows they got a bad rap, and everyone with common sense knows now they'll wait longer next time before lowering prices on anything. Need proof? Let's see if they drop the price as much to the MB Air next month, or later this year like June/July. Only time will tell who's right. Of course I still wouldn't buy one because it lacks a Firewire port, but that could change too over time

[CLiDE FTW!!1]

It's this new thing called the news (and no, the Internet doesn't always get it right) Everyone knows they got a bad rap, and everyone with common sense knows now they'll wait longer next time before lowering prices on anything. Need proof? Let's see if they drop the price as much to the MB Air next month, or later this year like June/July. Only time will tell who's right. Of course I still wouldn't buy one because it lacks a Firewire port, but that could change too over time

I'm willing to bet that Apple doesn't drop the price, at all.

 

How often does Apple re-adjusts the prices of their computers? Almost never. Come on, you, being a fanboy and all, should know this.

 

You act like you know what Apple is going to do, based on your common sense. But then you say that OS X isn't licensed.

 

Maxintard, are you linking me to the common sense test because you need help with it? I bet you actually looked for an "Any Key" on your keyboard when taking the test.

[Maxintosh]

I'm willing to bet that Apple doesn't drop the price, at all.

Maybe now (because of what happened) they won't. That falls right in line with what we said before earlier. Sometimes they don't technically drop the price, BUT they add additional features or better specs which makes it a much better value. Look at the Mini. Same difference.

 

you, being a fanboy and all

Only in your mind I think my attorney would certainly get a good laugh about your theory, but you go on believing anything that you want

[pyrates]

Here's my thoughts on the keynote:

 

1. iPod Touch apps for $20? But new buyers get them for free? Way to screw your early adopters Apple. I can simply just jailbreak the iPod Touch and put the apps on myself instead for free. Remember these apps were already on the iPhone and they required no code changes to get running on the iPod Touch, so it's all profit for Apple here. They're counting on the suckers to buy them, while the ones with sense and not blind loyalty will put them on the iPod Touch via jailbreak or through iTunes using this hack for it. You don't even have to jailbreak it then. I can understand if the iPod Touch price was raised by $20 to $429, but that's not the case here. Apple is screwing the early adopters. How's it feel to be screwed?

2. I like the idea of time capsule. But does it work with an airport extreme with an attached hard drive via usb too? If so, great.

3. iTunes rentals I like except make it 72 hours instead of only 24 hours. But why limit HD to only the Apple TV? Why not let the computer watch it too? It's great it no longer depends on a computer, but don't take away the computer if you have one and want to use it. As for the "free update" that existing Apple TV users can get, what does that say about the iPod Touch users getting charged $20? Clearly this is not SOX at work here.

4. The iPhone firmware being upgraded to 1.1.3? Not as big a deal to me. The only thing it adds is the ability to add url links to the home screen and the page transitions where you are flipping a page over. I've got the sudo gps location software called locateme on there already that does exactly that and I can rearrange the icons using customize. The rest I consider to be cosmetic.

5. The MacBook Air, the thinnest notebook from Apple yet. But who is it targeted towards? When it is the same size as a MacBook and costs more and gives you less, why even buy it? It has a non-removable battery by end users, non-upgradeable. The specs for it can't ever change once you buy it. The dvd drive for it you gotta pay extra for it. No firewire or ethernet ports. So who is gonna buy this besides that they think it looks cool? Is it weighing 2 pounds less really that big a deal? I can tell ya the ones who will buy it will buy it so that they can show it off to other people. Because it looks damn good. But I think of it as nothing more then jewelry when comparing it against the macbook 13" model. If the macbook is a niche market, this one is an even smaller one.

 

I would like to add something though about the Apple TV. How was the original iPod so useful? Because you could rip music from your cd collection onto it. What about the Apple TV? Can the end user put in their dvd movies and rip and encode them for the Apple TV as easily as you could rip a CD? Nope. So until Apple does allow for this, I don't see the Apple TV being all that useful. Now I am aware of the family guy dvd having an iTunes compatible version on it, but not every dvd movie or even the existing dvd movies you buy will have this. That is why the ability to rip and encode a dvd movie from iTunes itself is so needed here. Sure there is handbreak, but to the average end user, they would much prefer to do it in iTunes instead. And one more thing. Movies that are encoded for the iPod and iPhone, can be played back on the psp so if you like the psp instead, you can watch it on their. But not with the way it was announced, because it has DRM. You own it, you should be able to do what you want with it. And it's just another way for Apple to lock you into using its products.

 

One more. When Blu-Ray's second drm system is hacked, not AACS since that is already cracked but Bd+, then I want the same thing for iTunes here. Allow me to rip and encode from a blu-ray movie so that any devices that choose to follow the encoding format that the Apple TV uses can also be used. Don't let drm get in the way of the movies and tv shows that you paid for.