All I Want for Christmas (is way too expensive!)
While I certainly quote liberally from other writers (especially ones who write for outlets like EnGadget, SlashDot and anything by ZDNet), I rarely spend an entire article re-posting and commenting on somebody else's post. But I have to say that this article struck me as wise words, and I wanted to share some of it with you. If you want to read the whole thing, you can just link on over to it here.
Otherwise, stay with me and we'll parse it out.
The writer has given 10 reasons (an aside: I always find it a challenge to choose a nice, even number of "reasons" or "best books," or something like that... why can't it be my Top Seven Reasons for Not Wanting an iPad?) why he won't be getting an iPad for Christmas. (Leaving out whether anybody wants to give him one!)
The first two are obvious, and won't matter all that much to most of us who are lusting for an iPad: it'll cost less next year, and there will be more features next year. That's just a given with technology, whenever you choose to jump in. I remember when I thought my computer's 4mg of memory was the cat's pajama's. (And we even used that expression back then!) Granted, the price differential tends to be dramatic with Apple products, and while I wasn't a first adopter of the iPhone, I can certainly feel for those who bought that very first model only to see the price drop - and drop dramatically - only a few months later.
The next two reasons are the ones that made stop and ponder, and decide to write this post.
Reason three: the writer doesn't want to support Apple's crazy profit margins. Says he, "OK, I admit it: I've been wrong about Apple stock lately. After correctly turning bullish at $85 two years ago, I turned cautious waaay too early. My mistake? This isn't a technology company. It's a luxury brand, like Hermès or Tiffany. And it's wooed customers so they'll pay almost anything for its products. Last Christmas, Apple's gross margins were 41%. That's incredible. It's good for Apple, good for stockholders—but not so good for shoppers. Me, I don't want to support someone else's 60% markups with my own dollars. Generally speaking, the smarter move is to invest in the Tiffanys of the world—and shop at the Wal-Marts."
This is a point worth stopping and considering. It's true, there is nothing - and I mean nothing I buy in the luxury model. Brand names just don't mean much to me, especially when the quality of another item is equivalent, and far cheaper.
But, of course, that's where Apple products have always had a bit of an edge - they are usually first-out with something new, like the iPod's scroll wheel, or the iPhone's touchscreen interface. And one thing you can't dispute, Apple designer's have a knack for knowing how to make the interface feel good to users. (Try typing on a Mac laptop keyboard, and then go back to your HP or Toshiba. There is just something very satisfying about the feedback from the Mac's keyboard that you don't find elsewhere.) (I could also argue that they do things in the internal packaging of some of their products that defy logic, like burying the memory slots in some of the laptops, but that's another story.)
All by itself, though, the luxury brand argument won't be enough to deter some shoppers until you pair it with the writer's next point, "Competitors are coming."
As we've already seen with the Droid vs. the iPhone, it is better to build another, maybe not better, but just-as-good mousetrap. Of course, the Droid wasn't necessarily cheaper. But now there has been time now for competing engineers to suss out what is so great about the iPhone, and make those features available on a wide variety of other phones, or take another
His next point is one that has always had me scratching my head where Apple is concerned: No Flash. If you're going to serve up the Internet, how in heck do you do it without offering Flash? Flash is ubiquitous. (Really!) And while some developer's feel that perhaps its time has come, there being other choices now that are simpler, cheaper, and easier to deploy, in the immediate future, you want to see flash (like, can you say YouTube and Hulu?) you're not going to see it on your iPad.
From there on, his points are good but it could be argued that these are true for any and all Internet, even technology, platforms: high cost of add ons and data plans, wasted time - which is only slightly different from his next point, the games which eat up your life, it'll get boring (well, that's debatable), and one final solid point: the Apple cult is starting to creep him out.
There is something to be said about the cult of the Apple fan. My good friend and technology guru, Al Fasoldt, (see his column Technofile) was once an avid defender of all things Intel, and then one day, like Paul on the road to Damascus, he had a conversion to Apple, and is now its most devoted fan. I agree, Apple products tend to take a lot less of our time in just plain fussing. And to an extent, founder Steve Jobs has shown some wisdom in guarding the gates against hardware and software that isn't absolutely compatible with the Apple products - and moreover, the Apple experience.
While it's possible to go too far with this philosophy (see Flash, above), it's also this fanatic devotion to brand that makes it possible to simply boot up your Apple device and -- whoa, it works! (Of course, when it doesn't, it's mighty hard to figure out why, and if you've ever tried to mess around behind the scenes in an Apple product, you'll soon be lost in a maze of sudo -s and bash commands (reminding me faintly of the old DOS days)).
So, bottom line: yeah, I still want an iPad. Are you listening, Santa?
Otherwise, stay with me and we'll parse it out.
The writer has given 10 reasons (an aside: I always find it a challenge to choose a nice, even number of "reasons" or "best books," or something like that... why can't it be my Top Seven Reasons for Not Wanting an iPad?) why he won't be getting an iPad for Christmas. (Leaving out whether anybody wants to give him one!)
The first two are obvious, and won't matter all that much to most of us who are lusting for an iPad: it'll cost less next year, and there will be more features next year. That's just a given with technology, whenever you choose to jump in. I remember when I thought my computer's 4mg of memory was the cat's pajama's. (And we even used that expression back then!) Granted, the price differential tends to be dramatic with Apple products, and while I wasn't a first adopter of the iPhone, I can certainly feel for those who bought that very first model only to see the price drop - and drop dramatically - only a few months later.
The next two reasons are the ones that made stop and ponder, and decide to write this post.
Reason three: the writer doesn't want to support Apple's crazy profit margins. Says he, "OK, I admit it: I've been wrong about Apple stock lately. After correctly turning bullish at $85 two years ago, I turned cautious waaay too early. My mistake? This isn't a technology company. It's a luxury brand, like Hermès or Tiffany. And it's wooed customers so they'll pay almost anything for its products. Last Christmas, Apple's gross margins were 41%. That's incredible. It's good for Apple, good for stockholders—but not so good for shoppers. Me, I don't want to support someone else's 60% markups with my own dollars. Generally speaking, the smarter move is to invest in the Tiffanys of the world—and shop at the Wal-Marts."
This is a point worth stopping and considering. It's true, there is nothing - and I mean nothing I buy in the luxury model. Brand names just don't mean much to me, especially when the quality of another item is equivalent, and far cheaper.
But, of course, that's where Apple products have always had a bit of an edge - they are usually first-out with something new, like the iPod's scroll wheel, or the iPhone's touchscreen interface. And one thing you can't dispute, Apple designer's have a knack for knowing how to make the interface feel good to users. (Try typing on a Mac laptop keyboard, and then go back to your HP or Toshiba. There is just something very satisfying about the feedback from the Mac's keyboard that you don't find elsewhere.) (I could also argue that they do things in the internal packaging of some of their products that defy logic, like burying the memory slots in some of the laptops, but that's another story.)
All by itself, though, the luxury brand argument won't be enough to deter some shoppers until you pair it with the writer's next point, "Competitors are coming."
As we've already seen with the Droid vs. the iPhone, it is better to build another, maybe not better, but just-as-good mousetrap. Of course, the Droid wasn't necessarily cheaper. But now there has been time now for competing engineers to suss out what is so great about the iPhone, and make those features available on a wide variety of other phones, or take another
His next point is one that has always had me scratching my head where Apple is concerned: No Flash. If you're going to serve up the Internet, how in heck do you do it without offering Flash? Flash is ubiquitous. (Really!) And while some developer's feel that perhaps its time has come, there being other choices now that are simpler, cheaper, and easier to deploy, in the immediate future, you want to see flash (like, can you say YouTube and Hulu?) you're not going to see it on your iPad.
From there on, his points are good but it could be argued that these are true for any and all Internet, even technology, platforms: high cost of add ons and data plans, wasted time - which is only slightly different from his next point, the games which eat up your life, it'll get boring (well, that's debatable), and one final solid point: the Apple cult is starting to creep him out.
There is something to be said about the cult of the Apple fan. My good friend and technology guru, Al Fasoldt, (see his column Technofile) was once an avid defender of all things Intel, and then one day, like Paul on the road to Damascus, he had a conversion to Apple, and is now its most devoted fan. I agree, Apple products tend to take a lot less of our time in just plain fussing. And to an extent, founder Steve Jobs has shown some wisdom in guarding the gates against hardware and software that isn't absolutely compatible with the Apple products - and moreover, the Apple experience.
While it's possible to go too far with this philosophy (see Flash, above), it's also this fanatic devotion to brand that makes it possible to simply boot up your Apple device and -- whoa, it works! (Of course, when it doesn't, it's mighty hard to figure out why, and if you've ever tried to mess around behind the scenes in an Apple product, you'll soon be lost in a maze of sudo -s and bash commands (reminding me faintly of the old DOS days)).
So, bottom line: yeah, I still want an iPad. Are you listening, Santa?
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