The “Our Customers are Stupid” Strategy

For the past couple of years, Apple has been a major driving force in the computer industry, pushing out sleek, high-performance Powerbooks and the ubiquitous iPods (seriously, everyone has one now). Recently though, Apple has started to bore me. At first, the company stealthily released the iPod and after a few months and a few redesigns it exponentially rose in popularity. Soon, Steve Jobs started dropping mysterious one-liners in keynote speeches and Apple started hyping up special launch events. Sure, in the beginning it was pretty crazy. The iPod mini, iTunes, those crazy computer-in-a-monitor iMacs… it was ridiculous.

Then things started to get weird. We started to realize that there was a sort of similarity in every launch event — there wasn’t any real innovation being showcased; it was more of a tweaking of a certain product, or even just a small feature addition. It was almost as if while we were drooling over our new 5G Clickwheel iPods, Apple executives were snickering and watching movies on their iPods. At first I thought, okay, the iPod Video is cool, and the Nano is cool, and they just got Intel’s backing so we can expect some cool Macbooks. However, the latest launch event (and a few of them before it) have proved that Apple has been following the “Our Customers are Stupid” strategy, and now everyone’s caught on:

1. Apple unveils Mac Mini except with an INTEL CORE DUO!!

2. Apple unveils the “ipod Hi-Fi”, a gigantic black/white box that you stick your iPod into and it outputs music. God, that’s innovation.

3. Apple shows off their new 1GB Nano model, only $149! Just in case you thought 2GB was too much.

4. Apple recently added Showtime to their iTunes Music Store. Their three hit shows include Sleeper Cell, Weeds, and Fat Actress. Ever heard of em?

5. And finally: Apple is selling leather cases for their iPods for the amazing price of $99.

So now it should be pretty obvious, Apple is sucking the money out of our wallets in return for some boring products. Nevertheless, people will continue saying “whoa, that’s cool” at every launch event and Apple’s going to turn some good profits on their mysterious hype and marketing ploys. Oh well. I’m still looking for that new touchscreen, bluetooth-enabled video iPod. I bet Steve has had that for at least 3 years.

julian Says:

March 6, 2006 at 10:18 pm

hey adi. enjoy your posts in general, and it’s refreshing to see you check apple on their latest “developments.” jeff & i were talking the other day and realize we both unintentionally market for them every chance we get (for example, a guy sitting next to me in a coffeeshop asked me if i liked my powerbook… 30 minutes later he left to make it down to soho before the apple store closed), and concluded it must be some sort of psychopoison coating the keys/clickwheels.

i think you’re right that jobs & co. probably have ipods & machines sitting around the factory that are lightyears ahead of what’s available to the public, and a list of incremental updates that could be released to get to that level (and meanwhile, that level is ever-increasing). expect to see a huge splashy campaign for the bluetooth and then four months later the touchscreen will have its own day.

and how hard would it be to make an ipod-phone? not some shitty motorola with “itunes” & a 64mb memory card, but the real deal. clickwheel for scrolling through your contacts, right?

anyway, hope you’re well. peace.

March 6, 2006 at 10:21 pm

sleeper cell is pretty awesome, though.

distilled Says:

March 13, 2006 at 10:38 pm

Yeah, regardless, I think that Apple definitely has some amazing engineers and industrial designers (i.e. Jonathan Ive) working for them… it’s just interesting that sometimes they’re a little too mysterious about their more mediocre products.

But hey, i’m not one to talk; I would love a powerbook. But if the Origami/UMPC devices are pretty cheap and the second generation ones are a *little* smaller, i’ll probably go for those.

Haven’t seen Sleeper Cell.. I know that Weeds was nominated for a few Golden Globe’s… so I guess I should check em out.

Phil Crosby Says:

March 14, 2006 at 12:45 am

I’m sure Apple doesn’t think their customers are stupid… they just realize that their customers are the 5% of the population susceptible to Jobs’ magic reality distortion beam (it comes out of his forehead), and that they can make just as much money not doing jack as they did innovating. If you think about it, Apple is 5% innovation (more than most companies), and 95% marketing. Their awesome success shows you just how important marketing is — and they truly are the best at it.