It Just Works, Except When It Doesn't
Neat blog entry by John Markoff of the New York Times about why Apple’s current blunders aren’t remarkable. In a lot of ways, he’s probably right. MobileMe, a mildly buggy notebook, and numerous troubles with the iPhone 3G are not Apple’s first mistakes. So why is it being talked about so much? It’s because of the bullshit cult of “It Just Works.”
Somehow over the last few years Apple PR (with the help of bloggers and Digg) has convinced a large portion of the population that their products are next to godliness. Anyone who knows a large number of Apple users knows this is total b.s. They’re certainly not low-quality products, and are probably better built than most crap you buy from Dell, but they have enough problems that they’re probably not going to be winning dependability awards. User satisfaction, perhaps, but good old-fashioned build quality, no.
Apple’s own PR has made their failures seem remarkable, even though in reality they aren’t, by building up so much hype about their lack of failures. So even though the current ones are minor setbacks for the company, people take it as a sign of impending doom, which it isn’t. It’s probably had little or no effect on sales.
Despite everyone quoting TechCrunch’s sourceless sales total of 6 million for the 3G model (which I’ll believe when I see it in an earnings report) as if it were fact, we don’t really know how many phones they’ve moved so far. But however many it is, the demand doesn’t really seem to be suffering. They’ve definitely sold somewhere north of a million in almost no time at all.
And despite grumbling about MobileMe, or Airs that can’t seem to stay connected to the net, or iPhones that can’t go for ten minutes without being recharged, everyone who owns one of those products will keep on using it and buy the next one. People buy Apple products for a lot of reasons, and quality is only one of them, and often not the biggest. Most people who own any Apple product beyond an iPod wouldn’t switch to Windows if Steve Jobs personally ruptured their left testicle with baseball bat. A few lost emails aren’t going to do anything.
So these blunders will have no lasting effect. Nonetheless I’m thinking about short-term shorting AAPL (or at least buying some puts) only because I think the market is reacting to phony sourceless sales figures, and underestimating Android. Thoughts?
August 28, 2008 at 6:14 pm
They eventually dropped the “It Just Works” slogan for their Xserve because it became such an embarrassment.
I think at one point, Macs probably were pretty close to the “just works” level of quality. But for whatever reason (my theory: cost to be competitive) that quality has dropped. Their lower quality of hardware is especially notable compared to when everything was the 'best' on the inside: Maxtor's quality hard drives, all running at 7200 RPM. But when the consumer is looking at “SIZE!” and you have to compete against 4200 RPM drives with a higher AFR, it's harder.
I really see Apple doing what Dell did (and Gateway before them): A high quality product gets degraded because of market pressures. Gateway used to build a phenomenal product (when it was Gateway 2000) and started bringing the suck. Dell came in and was delivering superb machines, but the quality is decreasing.
And so goes Apple.
August 28, 2008 at 7:35 pm
To a large extent I don't blame them. They've made their products a lifestyle choice, and their marketing/design aesthetic have ensured that even with lower quality, their customers will be happier with their products than the alternative. Build quality isn't their differentiation point, so why not go a little lower and pad the margins?