Dvorak to Apple - Stop The iPhone 409
eldavojohn writes "John Dvorak is advising Apple to cease all efforts on the iPhone, citing the mobile handset business as a 'buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies.' With Apple's image as a 'hot company that can do no wrong' on the line, Dvorak warns that the extremely fad-prone marketplace for cell phones will quickly turn the 'hot' iPhone passe'. Unless the company has several new models in the pipeline to release after the original offering, he says, they're likely to fail. 'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"
Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Informative)
Well if Dvorak doesn't like it... (Score:5, Insightful)
The man is a giant windbag of nerd conspiracy theories and technical misunderstanding. Why do the slashdot eds. slurp up all of his moonshot predictions?
Re:Well if Dvorak doesn't like it... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well if Dvorak doesn't like it... (Score:5, Funny)
Try to play that symphony on his keyboard ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well if Dvorak doesn't like it... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well if Dvorak doesn't like it... (Score:4, Interesting)
To top it all off, they aren't really introducing anything new that would be a "even if they fail, at least they brought us
I wish them luck, and I think they're going to need it.
Re:Well if Dvorak doesn't like it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a broken clock gives the correct time twice a day, right? Dvorak is about as accurate as that.
Now that Dvorak has condemned it, I shall now buy stock in Apple, for this is now a sure thing.
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And this is me being generous. At a casual observation, Dvorak seems to be insightful and informed; that is, mostly a "working" clock. Maybe he runs just fine, but is "broken" in the sense of having a bad
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We agree and disagree. (Score:4, Interesting)
As a product, ehhhh. Who are they selling to? Certainly not Joe Consumer -- who has $499 to throw away on a 4GB iPod, even if it also happens to be a cellphone and web browser? For $499, I want a device that matches up to what the iPhone ACTUALLY is -- a handheld OS X device. But no, Apple had to go and lock the machine down and give a bunch of phony excuses for it, when all it really comes down to is "Jobs wants to be emperor of 'his' product." So all of the potential that it had as a handheld OS X machine -- the potential that they actually touted with all of the talk about it "running OS X" and "having Cocoa" -- will go to waste. No GNU tools. No open-source software. Bah.
OK, maybe we agree more than disagree.
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No offense, but this just shows how out of touch you (and a lot of other people posting here) actually are. I know dozens of people with Linksys routers in their homes -- All of them are just checking their email.
Re:We agree and disagree. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, I know someone who just bought his son an iPod for Christmas: $299 (CAD). Now he's buying him the bigger model plus a speaker set, because he's getting a good deal on it: $599 (CAD). And this is a guy that's owed me $1000 for over a year now.
I think you underestimate how much people like their accessories, and how poorly they manage their money. All sensible spenders are people, but not all people are sensible spenders.
Of course, I think the iPhone could very well be a good buy, but I own two cells and a Nokia 770 (and I still have my Sony clie, and a Newton I got off ebay); overall, the iPhone would have saved me money without compromising what I do with my gadgets.
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My current plan for the N70 will run out in early 2008, when the iPhone will be available here in Europe, so I will
Even if he's right, he's wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
In any event, I think he's wrong on all counts simply because the iPhone doesn't represent a dead end for Apple even if the iPhone product itself fails. Eventually, Apple will want advanced touchscreen products, MacOS X running on very small low-powered systems, cellular internet access, and so forth and so on built into its products. iPhone may not be The Killer Product, but each of the technologies in it is core to Apple and important in the long term.
Strategically, the iPhone represents:
* Gee doesn't shipping the first consumer digital cameras count as a new product Mr. Dvorak?
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- A touchscreen mac. A Macintosh actually runs free/paid for apps you can download from the Internet. The iPhone will only have limited software available via "approved" (and paid for) apple online cell phone store. Expect to pay for each and every little utility, app, or game on that phone.
- Again, it's not a Mac, and it's only a 4G iPod.
- I could be running Windows, for all it matters. It's locked down. You can't put your own software on it. Ever.
- Camera function is a "me too" functio
Thin margins? Not for Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is that was overlooked is that thin margins are exactly what make the phone industry vulnerable. They have all been competing on no margin forever squeezing device functionality to come cheap as possible.
Now here comes Apple, who knows margins very well - and prefers large ones thank you very much. So they reject the who
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I don't ask for much. Just as I don't ask for a lot from my portable music player. Which is
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I doubt that. I don't think that the iPhone is a Newton. New revisions of the iPhone will certainly come out, and I expect to see one with a 60 GB hard drive sometime in the near future. Currently, it competes with a nano in terms of storage, and any other cell phone around for ease of use.
It DOES bring new stuff to the table. It has the ipod brand for one, second, it changes how the phone itself works to make it easy. Finally, it, like the razr and the
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The interface is novel as all hell. Have you seen it in operation? Compared to ordinary cell phones, it's the Second Coming. In particular, the browser experience is quite novel. I have a Nokia 770, and while browsing is adequate, the zoom in/out features are definitely not as good as the iPhone. Before I s
Zonk Strikes Again! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Funny)
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Readers to Editors: Stop Posting Dvorak Articles! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Readers to Editors: Stop Posting Dvorak Article (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft - Should get out of the operating systems business and start a chain of chicken finger restaurants.
Oracle - Relational databases are just a fad, they should diversify into concrete.
Apple - Should just liquidate the company and payout the sharholders (oops - Michael Dell beat me to that one).
Hooters - Is there a Hooters O/S in the works? It should be built on BSD with a Linux Kernel,
Linux - Who would ever use a non-Unix Unix clone? It'll never make it in the server market. Trovalds should build an aquarium.
Google - Who needs search? I already have everything worth reading bookmarked.
Gartner - They're always soo right about the future, they should publish lottery numbers.
Amazon - No one will ever get that Amazon sells books, they should sell snakes, large bugs and other things found in the actual Amazon.
NASA - Should use string cheese to build the world's first space elevator.
Doctors - From now on they should only operate on the healthy, where survival is much more likely.
Viagra - Should exclusively market itself on the Internet using spam.
and finally!!!
Slashdot - Nerds don't care about news. I bet they don't get any postings or hits.
This way I can drive my advertising revenue up and get quoted a lot, even if I'm bizarrly and outrageously mistaken.
Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Informative)
Chickens don't have fingers.
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Apple's core competency is human-machine interaction. The thing they do better than anybody else is user interface. Apple sees an opportunity to improve the user experience for phones, and is betting they can leverage their expertise to improve a pretty lousy situation.
Are they right? Don't know. But it's NOT similar to Oracle starting to sell concrete.
Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I don't know about that... have you ever USED Oracle?
:-)
Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does Slashdot actually post an article that is classified to the "wave-off-wave-off" department? We all know people are going to think Dvorak is ridiculous flame bate, and we all know most of us aren't going to bother reading his garbage. What's the point of rewarding Dvorak with web traffic from Slashdot?
Dvorak's predictions about the tech industry, and especially Apple, are about as accurate as Dick Cheney's predictions about the war in Iraq.
Write a Dvorak filter, put a post-it note on your monitor, do something. By linking to his work you're indirectly paying him to be a tool.
Christ, if you're going to post John Dvorak articles, you might as well start posting V1AgRA spam that you get in your email.
Re:Apple just markets products. (Score:5, Funny)
Why, John! I didn't know you posted on Slashdot!
Suddenly it all makes sense. All the trolls, the bad arguments, the poor attempts at putting Apple down. It was you the whole time, wasn't it? Oh John, you're such a kidder!
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Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! (Score:5, Funny)
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The problem is that the stuff you're learning is just risk management. It doesn't tell you if there is a payoff at the end of the tunnel or not. Generally speaking, high risk can mean high reward. And that's what Apple is trying for. They're attempting to attack an underrepresented portion of the cell phone market by leveraging their existing brand value. If Apple is successful, they could end up in a Blue Ocean situation
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http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details.j sp?globalObjectId=130 [motorola.com]
You'll notice that the United States is not on that list. :)
3G (Score:3, Interesting)
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I agree though, the iPhone lacking 3G was definitely a big hit in my opinion. Most of the major cities have Cingular's flavor of
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Give me an iTon (Score:2)
Re:Give me an iTon (Score:4, Funny)
It's what was left out that counts. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just pack it full of features" is a very easy and lazy way to define products. Add too much detail and you gunk up the UI. It is way harder and more important to figure out what to leave out to make it easier to use and "cleaner" for the target user base. There are huge numbers of features that could have been added to ipod, but some of its appeal comes from relative simplicity.
iPhone does not need huge numbers of features to be successful. So long as it does the functions that the target audience expects, it should do well.
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Oh good... (Score:4, Funny)
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It does have wireless though.
My idea for a cell phone. Someone steal it (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude...where's my car? (Score:2)
This will also be handy for spying on cheating significant others/spouses, teenagers, slacker employees, etc.
Will it be able to tell you where it is when you lose it?
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http://chronicleroad.com/ [chronicleroad.com]
OMG! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait. JOHN Dvorak? Nevermind.
Dvorak Economic Model (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Get it posted on slashdot to flame contreversy
3) Get eyeballs on published work
4) Profit
Re:Dvorak Economic Model (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dvorak Economic Model (Score:5, Funny)
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- John
Just ask Bono! (Score:5, Funny)
Calling your bluff (Score:5, Informative)
According to this blog [blogspot.com], Azerbaijan is actually a good place to get an iPod, compared to the surrounding countries.
Thank God for John C. Dvorak (Score:5, Funny)
Vacation (Score:3, Insightful)
More advice for Apple (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More advice for Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
While a 2% share of the entire world's PCs wouldn't suggest much of a reason to target Macs for software development, having 8% of the active US installed base certainly does.
Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer market's installed base, where Apple choses to compete. Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.
In education, Apple has a 23% share of all new sales in the US, and around 15% in Europe. (Walk around a college campus and tell me how many Macs you see. Now realize that Macs are probably going to be their platform of choice going forward.)
NPD just reported figures that report Apple took 10% of January's billion dollar laptop sales in the retail channels it monitors; recall that NPD only reports on big box retailers, not Apple Stores or any online sales.
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple's 2% of the PC market doesn't seem so small anymore.
Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft's total $3.4 billion in profit.
Yeah, Apple's a non-payer alright...
Apple already reinventing the iPhone (Score:4, Funny)
Unless the company has several new models in the pipeline to release after the original offering, he says, they're likely to fail.
Good thing Apple is already working hard [theonion.com] to make sure the iPhone is laughably obsolete upon release.
I can think of a couple people who will buy one (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and probably 3 out of ten iPod owners who think it would be cool to have their iPod and phone all in one.
And then there are the people who just have to have latest gadget.
Let's see, that adds up to...Dvorak being wrong again and again and again.
I'm not a Mac devotee, but even I can see that the iPhone has "cool" written all over it. People love having the hot new thing. The Razr is one example in the phone industry. The Prius is another in the auto industry. Hell, I even want an iPhone and I'm still using a cell-phone about the size of a brick. I think it was invented in 1983. I already own an iPod, but I want the iPhone too.
Remember, Dvorak prefers incendiary commentary over researched ideas.
The RAZR... (Score:2)
Sure, everyone had to have one, myself included, but I have yet to meet a person that's owned one for any length of time and actually liked it.
The RAZRs were riddled with OS problems, bad voice quality, permanent dust under the screen, etc.
They were cool looking though.
As for me wanting an iPhone? I don't think so. I still prefer to have real buttons to press. It'll be interesting to see if Apple can sway enough people to prefer a total touch-screen experience
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Wow, talk about the exception proving the rule. You do know that Motorola is getting its lunch-money stolen right now, right? That it's totally failed to produce a follow-up phone near the success of the Razr? That it's losing market share and will likely declare a Q2 loss? That Carl Ichan appears to be accumulating a stake (not always a good thing for the takeover target)?
I agree that the iPhone will be a hot commodi
Defining the market (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has the brand recognition and design abilities to redefine the mobile phone market. Dvorak's assumption is that nothing every changes. But he forgets that Apple often seems to know what people want before they even know they want it.
Re:Defining the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Defining the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does Dvorak get posted here? (Score:5, Funny)
(-99,000) Troll
The credentials speak for themselves (Score:5, Funny)
He'll probably eat his words! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am confident that the iPhone will be a success. Apple has been VERY good at seeing it's niche and developing the ideal product to fill that void. Once they have filled the niche, they are even better at attracting users who don't NEED the product by showing them a clean, functional, and enjoyable user experience that isn't offered by the competitors.
I am slowly becoming an Apple fanboy, and I hate to admit that. But when I compare their competitors products, I can rarely find a single one that so thoroughly meets it's customers expectations. Sure there are better music players than the iPod, better computers than the Mac, better STB's than the AppleTV, better media management apps than iTunes, and so on... but find one company that produces these products in such a way that they work as well together.
My family has recently become a Mac family, and I will get and iPhone for my wife and I because my experiences with other smart phones have all been mediocre at best, and I imagine that the iPhone will "just work" with my Mac. I could make anything work, given enough time, but the griping my wife will do when it doesn't "just work" isn't worth the cost savings. So I'll happily over pay for the iPhone.
Powerful advice (Score:4, Insightful)
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"because JD told us to."
Just had to correct that before a grammar Nazi put me in a "concentration" camp for my lack of focus during proof reading.
Wow, this man is so brilliant (Score:5, Funny)
I can't understand why Apple haven't hired him yet. I mean, does there exist anyone that can beat his predictions, except perhaps Nostradamus?
Had the major companies listened to everything Dvorak says, they would have been rich by now!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Apple is not going to fail thats not what I'm saying. I just think its too early to say if t
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And I don't see any reason you can't have the features that marketing loves (camera, streaming video, whatever crap they want to
Dvorak underestimates consumers (Score:2, Troll)
As opposed to?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think, in reality, *most* people you see who own multiple Apple products do so because they were impressed with the first one, and saw the benefits of owning hardware that inter-operates well. (The "bonjour" sharing capabilities of OS X on a LAN can't be fully realized if you only own one OS X based Mac, for example.)
And in fact, Mac fans seem to be quite preoccupied with building and arguing over lists of the "top 10" or "top 20" worst Apple products of all time. Even the biggest Mac zealots will usually admit that Apple's Performa 6x00 line in the 90's was garbage, for example.
Phones vs IPods (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to think though that trying to break into the already pretty mature cel phone market is an entirely different thing.
The market for iPods was largely wide open - most people who bought were moving over from CD or cassette players, and represented a pretty much untapped population.
The iPhone though will have to convince existing cel phone owners to change hardware, and in some case change service providers. That's a much tougher sell, especially when you're charging up front for a phone when most providers offer a phone for "free."
If I were marketing this thing I'd sell it as an upgrade for existing iPod owners, a newer better iPod that just happens to also include a phone.
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Yes it looks sleek. I can justify merging two devices and making something just as functional as the two of them already. But, can I justify $600 for a phone and smaller drive iPod? Seeing how I can get the basic cell phone for free, and a larger iPod for $300...
The iPhone is a nice solution, but I don't know how many people are willing to pay for it.
I really want to say after watching the PS3 crash and burn at $600, I
Shut up... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Zune failed because it tried to copy something that was already on the market, but started with the high end. The opposite would have been better, here, they should have started with really low-end models and worked their way up, because Microsoft wasn't really aiming to establish a new kind of device. The iPhone, on the other hand, is really pushing to try and bring a fairly unique kind of device into the mainstream market place, so they have to start at the top.
There's a reason Dvorak never gets hired for consulting work, he has no idea what goes into a good business strategy. I don't know why we even post his fluff on here any more. I say slashdot just ignore him from now on, and he'll eventually go away.
I'll give him this (Score:3, Interesting)
-Jeff
P.S. The rest of what he said regarding fashion, etc, I have no idea. Personally I think price tag, batteries, memory, calling plan, and the 3G aspect will tell the tale more than fashion. So JD and I may come to the same conclusion, but from completely different logic chains.
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Well, in spite of being Dvorak (Score:4, Insightful)
Who the Hell is Dvorak? (Score:2)
He's been totally wrong about Apple [wikipedia.org] all the time, including such fundamentals of whether people would use a "mouse".
Enough of this clown. Steve Jobs should just take him behind the woodshed and spank him down once and for all.
How many multibillion $ companies did Dvorak run? (Score:2)
mobile phone rant (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to have a phone with large buttons, these can be either raised or sunken buttons, but I want to feel them, I want tactile response, a 'click' sort of feeling. I want to be able to push them without looking, so I want a large enough phone to put these large enough buttons. I want the phone to be made of metal, something that needs a screwdriver to be taken appart, I want it to be waterproof. Better yet it should be able to float, but that's asking too much for something made of metal. In any case I want to be able to drop the f.cking thing into a bucket full of soap water, pull it out after 3 hours and still be able to use it without any problems. I want this phone to have a nice screw on clip, which won't break off. I want this phone to have a power socket, that doesn't break after 3 weeks of use. Not like those f.cking Motorolla power sockets that are completely useless garbage. I want a power socket that can be closed (waterproof, remember?) and the kind that doesn't break even if the power cord is shoved in sideways (well, if there is an attempt, anyway.) I want the battery to last for a month (too much to ask,) ok, if it lasts for 5 days without recharging that would already be a miracle. I want the reception on this phone to be exceptional. I don't want this phone to do anything fancy. I don't want a camera or an mp3 player. However an AM radio would be awesomely appreciated. Not the useless FM radio, but the useful AM, that's where all the best talk shows are in Toronto. I don't want any musical cacophony as a ring tone, I don't care, but a single purpose rotary volume control would be freaking awesome, with a single purpose VERY HARD TO PUSH, BUT A LARGE button to switch from Loud to Soft to Vibrate and back.
I do not mind paying up to $300 for a phone like that. If it has an AM radio, 350. If it has a built in GPS receiver then 500.
No cameras, no mp3s, no fancy programming except for very basic features. I want a freaking phone that works and cannot be easily destroyed. It has to be a quad band so I can take it with me anywhere, and it has to have a detachable SIM card (f.ck you, Telus.)
I can't get anything like this, I may just build my own.
Re:mobile phone rant - skip the power socket (Score:3, Insightful)
well, I go back to the Apple ][ integer days (Score:2)
seriously, folks... when Apple innovates (first one-board computer, first consumer computer, first GUI computer under $40,000, Newton) they either hit or bust. it's the market, dummy.
when Apple has a triumph of vision and packaging (iMac, iPod, OC/X, iPhone) they haven't failed yet. anybody could have pulled the iPhone together. but nobody thought of it.
THAT'S where Apple shines, finding the right packaging and right mix of features.
Dvorak has stirr
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EVERYONE blastesd the iPod when it 1st came out. $399 for a 5Gig MP3 player, when you can get a 128 meg one for $50 at the time? Everyone called the iPod the albatross that will finally sink Apple.
This comes no where close to the negative reception of the iPod from the "experts".
I didn't buy an iPod until the 3rd generation. I suspect I'll do the same with the iPhone, a long with a lot of other people.
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-Rick