Apple Wal-Mart? Ping!
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Posted on 12/06/2009 8:17:05 AM PST by Star Traveler
Gib Bassett - 1:43 pm on December 5, 2009
Yesterday I came across an article on CNET titled, “In mobile, do developers or consumers matter most?” and immediately thought, “Who cares what developers think, at least the ones who want to make money?”
The article describes the oft-cited displeasure that developers have with Apple and its policies, and how it may cause defections to other platforms. Yet the article also says this about the iPhone:
“…for most consumers, their mobile device of choice is a lifestyle decision, a personal, ever-present extension of themselves…”
With the exception of the words “mobile devices,” this statement could apply equally to the clothes a consumer buys, car they drive or restaurant they frequent. For those products, does it really matter what their makers think as opposed to what consumers want? That seems like a question that answers itself when you consider as well that products require distribution channels.
The “developer versus Apple” debate so pervasive right now is missing the big picture; most developers drawn to mobile come from traditional b-to-b development organizations where for years they have become accustomed to a model “all about them,” more or less. When taken into the realm of consumer marketing, that is a dangerous point of view for anyone interested in creating successful mobile applications.
The situation reminds me of Walmart’s long-standing reputation as being difficult with its suppliers, squeezing ever smaller margins from them in exchange for access to millions of consumers.
With Apple’s App Store expected to grow three fold in 2010 to 300,000 applications, the iPhone will remain the go to platform for marketers despite the emergence of Google’s Android. When you consider the reported difficulties developers are having with Android and projections of perhaps 70,000 Android Apps in 2010, the situation isn’t likely to change.
Marketers would be wise to align themselves with mobile application developers who recognize success means taking on the perspective of the mobile customer. Such firms are more likely to possess both the technical expertise and distribution channel know how necessary to build apps that stand out from the crowd.
Apple's iPhone On Its Way To Becoming The Microsoft Windows Of Mobile
After 15-years of being a PC guy, I’m making the migration to Apple over the past two-years.
Now with a wife and kids, I find the Mac/Apple platform so much easier to work with.
Do I understand how to handle a PC? Sure. But spend 5 hours rebuilding your PC every six-months because your kids picked up a bad PC virus while at a children’s game site and you tend to lose your patience. Or spending hours trying to synch a third party MP3 player with a PC. Then you move to Itunes and an I-pod and it all works flawlessly.
If you can afford the 30% premium on Apple stuff, you’ll make it up in saved time in the years ahead.
There are a lot of programmers on this site, and I know quite a few others personally, and I’ve seldom seen a profession where there’s an across the board dislike for the end user like there is in programming. I’ve worked in retail with appliances and vehicles, the newspaper industry, fast food restaurants as a teenager, in education, and at all levels of emergency services. While there are a few bad apples in each of those professions that dislike customers, with programmers it seems to be the normal attitude.
I find this particularly true with the in house people supporting enterprise applications. I suspect this is because the people who make hiring and firing decisions are too far up the food chain to have to use the applications that the daily workers have to use.
In my current job, the IT people don’t care whether a computer works or not, unless it belongs to the school president or one of the deans.
No, I go with the expectation of getting greater value for my money.
There are a lot of programmers on this site, and I know quite a few others personally, and I’ve seldom seen a profession where there’s an across the board dislike for the end user like there is in programming. I’ve worked in retail with appliances and vehicles, the newspaper industry, fast food restaurants as a teenager, in education, and at all levels of emergency services. While there are a few bad apples in each of those professions that dislike customers, with programmers it seems to be the normal attitude.
LOL... oh so true for the geeks and programmers... for the most part..
Most of them wouldn't know "marketing" if it hit them in the face with "normal people" and consumers...
They know geek stuff and programming, but it's a good thing for Apple that the "geeks don't run the store"... or Apple would have never been so successful with designing, developing, manufacturing and marketing its excellent products...
For the most part, use a geek to fix something -- that's all right. But if you listen to a geek for what works for the consumer -- you're as crazy as that geek... LOL...
hmm, i go to Walmart to save money. I don't think anyone has every gone into the apple store with the expectations of saving money.
Oh... you better believe it... :-)
There was a tech article that I posted a while back that said Microsoft was trying to get developers over to its "store" and develop there and charge more money that the developers are at the Applie iPhone store because it said the apps were too cheapthere and that the developers needed to make more money... LOL...
No really, they said that... :-)
So, right off the bat, we see that the apps are cheaper at the Apple iPhone store and developers "compete" with each other there.
On the other hand, if we listen to Microsoft and the way they want to do their store, they want applications for around $25 when the Apple iPhone store is giving away a ton of free apps and so many others for $1 and $2 and so on...
AND, when I consider how much money I've saved on no viruses and not having to fix stuff there on the Macintosh for what amounts to over 100,000 or more on the Windows platform -- I see a real big savings there. Heck, the anti-virus companies are "starving to death" trying to sell Macintosh users their anti-virus programs.
And furthermore, when I look at the $99 price tag on the iPhone, I figure that someone who can't do the $99 for a phone probably doesn't need one anyway, because that's nothing in this market that the iPhone is in.
Nope, I see a lot of saving of money here with the iPhone... for the consumers...
I'd waste hours on those Windows problems. Even now, we have a WinXP machine, fully antivirus'd/anti-malware'd/firewalled, whose job it is to just sit there and serve our VOIP to the house. It does nothing else: no browsing, no email. Its screen is even shut off. It sits behind a hardware firewall, too. And yet, recently I discovered it'd picked up a Trojan, all by its self. How the hell?
Eventually everyone will understand about the Macintosh and the Mac OS X -- it's great...
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The situation reminds me of Walmart's long-standing reputation as being difficult with its suppliers, squeezing ever smaller margins from them in exchange for access to millions of consumers.There's some crap out there about Apple's purported screwing around with NAND memory suppliers.
There's some crap out there about Apple's purported screwing around with NAND memory suppliers.
Yeah, I saw that. It seemed sort of a stretch to me.
Nice Apple.
;^)
"Yep, but vaguely familiar"... (He says as he flicks his eyes to the upper left...) '-)
This is an exact parallel to the 1970s, with GM versus the Asian makes. Think about the usual arguments the Apple-haters post, substitute GM for “Microsoft” or “Windows” and “Toyota” for “Mac” or “Apple”, and you’re looking at the same arguments and insults from the 1970s.
With, I think, the same behavior on Microsoft’s part as GM showed. And with the same end result.
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.”
That pretty sums up the phenomena.
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.”
That pretty sums up the phenomena.
As far as programmer attitudes, that does sum it up well. Working as I do now in education, I don't expect students coming in to understand career paths, financing options for their careers, the best order of classes, or even which classes are necessary. My function is to guide students through those choices, lay out their options, and note the challenges, risks and rewards of each career choice. My function is NOT to call them idiots and claim that their issues are a result of them being too stupid to function properly.
If these people already knew everything they needed to know, they wouldn't need me.
(many) Programmers begin with the premise that their customers are idiots, and that the programmer has no responsibility for anything other than writing code.
I wonder what a programmer thinks when he takes his car to the shop and the mechanic calls him and idiot for not being able to change his own serpentine belt.
Many programmers enter into the field because they're not comfortable dealing with other people, but they are comfortable crunching numbers. I think this may be one of the reasons the interface in many programs is so poorly thought out.
thank you. It's an homage. A derivative work. very derivative. ;^)>
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