A Tiny Worm in the old Apple?
I really like and admire Apple products, but I’m nearly always too cheap to buy one of them.
The exception is my iPod, which I do love, even though I rarely use it. And even though, 6 months into my “new” laptop, I still haven’t loaded up iTunes and thus, haven’t bothered to add a couple of my recent CD’s to. Oh, well, maybe before my next drive up to Syracuse, which is when my iPod comes in handy.
So I’m not jumping for joy over this weekend’s “son of iPhone” fiasco, in which there were both activation problems for all those eager Apple-pickers itching to get their hands on the iPhone 3G, and upgrade problems for older iPhoners (of whom my Opinionated friend John Whiteside was one).
But for the folks in Redmond, this has to be the gleeful equivalent of seeing the teacher’s pet, straight-A Miss Priss of grade 8 flub a question she’d been wildly waving her hand to answer. (”I’m sorry, Mary, but John F. Kennedy is not the first American-born saint.”) Or of seeing the snottiest Joe Cool amble out of the men’s room trailing half a roll of toilet paper behind him.
Apple hasn’t said anything yet - and it seems that they’ve pretty much resolved their activation and upgrade problems. (Some lingering technical questions remain.) And they are, of course, right to spend time solving the problem, rather than absolving themselves.
But there’s now a tiny little worm in their rosy brand, and they do have some damage to repair.
John seemed to have anticipated this in a recent post on Apple that dealt with how much you can get away with if you have a really strong brand.
It remains to be seen how they’ll recover from this little rot spot, but their products are so good. Their customers so loyal. Their brand so strong. They’ll probably get through it just fine.
Meanwhile, I’m guessing that the real life podgy Microsoft guy in the Hush Puppies and “Dad” jacket is having a little chortle at the expense of the cool young hipster in the tee-shirt.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.
I think the opening weekend glitches were overblown given the magnitude of what they did: 1 million iPhones sold and activated and 10 Million iPhone apps downloaded. That’s simply astounding to me. I can’t think of any product launch that even comes close.
I really don’t think there’s any glee in Redmond- this is a new computing platform and it has no use for Microsoft products whatsoever.