What Steve Jobs didn’t say is almost as interesting as what he did
By Sean P. Aune
The excitement is over, the media have all gone home, the Apple Faithful have all gone to buy their new products, so now comes the time to look at what Mr. Jobs didn’t say.
Steve Jobs is a master showman, and he is masterful at the art of distraction, the school of “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” type of speak. While today’s media even was filled with exciting news, there was some oddness both at the event, and on the Apple Store, that got no mention.
While those of you who waited for an iPhone, your patience paid off with dividends. You can now pick up an 8GB Apple phone for the price people were paying on June 29th for a 4GB. The question is: What happened to the 4GB? It’s gone from the store, and there is no mention of it still existing, so it appears to have gone to the great Apple graveyard in the sky.
And speaking of the price drop, one has to wonder “Why so soon?” and “Why?” in general. Apple is not known for price drops no matter how well a device is selling. They will adjust prices with a hardware refresh, but a price drop only 66 days into the life cycle of what is arguably the hottest gadget doesn’t make much sense. And how angry are early adopters? Angry enough that The Unofficial Apple Weblog wrote up an entry on how to do exchanges, get refunds, and even partial credits.
Another product mysteriously disappeared into the ether: The iPod Hi-Fi. Back on February 26th, 2006, Steve Jobs had a media event just for the introduction of the speakers the he hailed as “Home Stereo, Re-invented“, but it appears it was only re-invented for about a year and a half. Clicking to purchase the Hi-Fi now returns the following message:
The item you have selected is currently not available from the Apple Store.
Please note that Apple cannot guarantee availability of any product
While we are used to Mr. Jobs making big announcements about his latest and greatest products, his acknowledgment of products that didn’t live up to expectations, or explaining sudden shifts in pricing strategy, leaves a little to be desired.
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September 15th, 2007
[…] What is going on in Cupertino, CA though? Apple has been taking hit after hit recently. They have effectively lost Universal Music Group from iTunes, NBC jumped ship to Amazon.com’s Unbox service (effectively cutting the possible content for the Apple TV even more), the 20″ iMac is having display issues, the iPod Touch may be having video problems, Mac’s still only accounting for 3% of the computer market, and the iPod Hi-Fi died with a whimper. […]