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Tom's Hardware on the iPhone
- Thread starter Lord Blackadder
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That was what a lot of people said about the iPod when it was launched in 2001 for $399.00
$399.00 in 2001 (adjust for inflation) equals $454.20 in 2006.
You know how well it sold at that price, so I'm not sure I agree with your point that "a $499 iPod/phone is overpriced for most people".
People said the exact same thing about the iPod though....too expensive, competing in a low-volume, high-end category. What the iPod did was grow that market by orders of magnitude. And that's what Apple hopes the iPhone will do IMHO.
I don't understand the "useless for business" thing either. I think Apple is banking on their touchscreen beating out the keyboard that other smart phones use. As far as UMPCs go, it's cheap and trades features for the best possible UI (assuming it works as advertised). Samsung's Q1B is much more featureful on paper but the iPhone is half as expensive, much less clumsy and probably much easier to use. It also has a great deal of potential as far as adding feature in the future goes, either as product revisions or third party add-ons.
I think the iPhone could be the next iPod for Apple.
I don't understand the "useless for business" thing either. I think Apple is banking on their touchscreen beating out the keyboard that other smart phones use. As far as UMPCs go, it's cheap and trades features for the best possible UI (assuming it works as advertised). Samsung's Q1B is much more featureful on paper but the iPhone is half as expensive, much less clumsy and probably much easier to use. It also has a great deal of potential as far as adding feature in the future goes, either as product revisions or third party add-ons.
I think the iPhone could be the next iPod for Apple.
Wait.... Tom's Hardware publishes articles by Rob Enderle?
Seriously, the guy's an asshat. He's blissfully wrong about everything he writes about - Linux, Apple... hell, the stuff he writes about Microsoft is wrong most of the time too.
Tom's Hardware just went waaaay down in my opinion. I don't have a problem at all with criticism of any tech product or company, but I do demand a certain amount of quality in the tech journalism I read. Any site that'll publish Enderle with a straight face aren't doing their due diligence.
Ars Technica, on the other hand, do excellent Apple coverage from a tech perspective.
Seriously, the guy's an asshat. He's blissfully wrong about everything he writes about - Linux, Apple... hell, the stuff he writes about Microsoft is wrong most of the time too.
Tom's Hardware just went waaaay down in my opinion. I don't have a problem at all with criticism of any tech product or company, but I do demand a certain amount of quality in the tech journalism I read. Any site that'll publish Enderle with a straight face aren't doing their due diligence.
Ars Technica, on the other hand, do excellent Apple coverage from a tech perspective.
you are right, but ipod was something very 'new' for 2001 and people were willing to pay $399 only because it was so exclusive, not to mention that there wasnt any major competition, look at how it stands today? $249 for 30GB .. not very much and certainly worth the money, had it been $454.20 ...
you know.but yes i do agree with you, iPhone 'will' sell, and sell like crazy, but this certainly doesnt mean that price tag is right.
Don't forget that a cheaper iPhone is almost certain to appear at some point relatively soon.
I still think that a lot of people will be willing to pay the iPhone's asking price, especially when everyone from Paris Hilton to hip-hop stars to politicians will be seen with them come June.
I still think that a lot of people will be willing to pay the iPhone's asking price, especially when everyone from Paris Hilton to hip-hop stars to politicians will be seen with them come June.
But that's just it -- the iPod wasn't a "very new" concept in 2001.
The MP3 market was fairly established, and the major competition was Creative who (along with Archos) already had hard-drive based MP3 players (with bigger drives and more features than the iPod) on the market.
What set the iPod apart are the same things that could potentially stand the iPhone apart: a great physical design, a great user interface, an overall better experience than other devices, and a lot of marketing.
My problem with the article is that he basically credits Microsoft, IBM, and Linux (of all people) with the majority credit of the innovation of the iPhone. Its kind of like well 20 years ago some one did something like that and there is no innovation in the world article. I just don't like that. I used to be a regular Tom's hardware reader too.
One thing that I won't dispute is that Apple is offering little, if anything, substantially new in the iPhone. What they are doing is taking a concept that's been around for a long time and making it work substantially better, breaking it into the mainstream. Convergence.
Agreed, except for a review of the Mac Mini that seemed so bizarrely positive (for Tom's Hardware, anyway) that I kept wondering if it was serious...
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/02/16/apple_mac_mini/
They're more of a gaming fanboy site really, because Windows is where it's at for gaming. Otherwise I might expect to see more articles on Linux boxes there.
Tom's are keen on small form factor (SFF) PCs for some strange reason.
I think they're just tired of seeing large-cased desktop PCs, and also the small ones are easier to take to LAN parties.
They were already used to SFF pcs being more expensive (and slower) than the normal PCs, with one of the smaller, nicer, more popular ones (Shuttle) being really expensive. So they were already over the sticker shock of the Mac Mini.
Finding the Mac Mini is 1/10th the size of a Shuttle, far quieter (another big thing for them) and with a far lower power consumption really blew their socks off
I like a lot of the SFF PCs out there, but Apple simply defined the SFF with the Mini. Most PC enthusiasts just can't accept a machine without an upgradeable video card and PCI clots. I can sympathize with that to a certain extent (I'm a huge video card snob), but in the case of the Mini I'm willing to trade the slots for compactness.
As a snob, naturally you disain and exclude PCI clots (especially French ones) from your PC parties?
Well, I should also mention that I'm a pretty lousy video card snob, since I still run AGP and by best cards are the Radeon X850XT in my PC and the GeForce 6800GT in my G4 tower, so hardly new stuff, though more than capable.
PCI video cards, <sniff> not so much (dissmissive wave of hand).
PCI video cards, <sniff> not so much (dissmissive wave of hand).
No doubt. Apple HAD to make an announcement in order to control how the story was gonna get spun. Let's face it, marketing is a big part of consumer electronics.
But Apple is also keeping a lot of cards close to its vest. They've announce just enough detail to generate buzz, let consumers plan ahead, and preempt any leaked/public information from the FCC approval process. But Apple is obsessive about keeping secrets from its competitors. No way Apple doesn't have any other WOW surprise features up its sleeves.
Spent a few days with the guys from Tom's, and Kyle from [H], we ended up spending most of the time shaking our head from left to right when listeing to the guys from Tom's. They lost all credibility quite a while back now.
I like Ars, but they can be Apple bias (and report too much Apple stuff) at time even for my liking. Bias is always difficult to point out especially when its not heavy.
I would say that Ars is definitely Apple-biased - they cover Apple news very heavily, although I would say that they have a pro-Apple bias but not an anti-PC bias. Tom's on the other hand, is very hesitant to give Apple a fair shake and gleefully reports any legal entanglements involving Apple.