Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
Bleh.... I strongly disagree. Marketing helps with the first sale, but repeat sales are dependent on the quality of the product.
Apple often makes outstanding products and that's a fact. I also feel that the prices, if factoring design and workmenship, are often justified. I just picked up a new 27" i7 iMac, and it's probably the best DT computer I've ever seen.
And the iPhone was a game-changer in many important respects, and most of the industry appears to agree. I switched from HTC (WM6.1 & 6.5) and haven't looked back.
As to iTunes, it is intuitive and it works well. I personally use Windows 7 MCE as a front end, but I can attest, that iTunes is considerably better designed than, say WMP.
I certainly hope the iPAD is as significant as the iPhone. We'll know in a few days.
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If Apple agreed with you then wouldn't they have quit the marketing hype once they launched the product? They didn't, did they? Apparently they don't think that the product can sell itself.
As to intuitive, I don't know-I don't have the money to throw around testing everything to see what's the most intuitive, but I just can't see how the iPhone could be any more intuitive than my Palm. Plus I hate onscreen keyboards. (I used to have a Windows Mobile phone. Version 5, IIRC. Usability sucked compared to Palm, particularly the integration-but then I mostly don't use the Windows software either.)
At the moment, I am using WMP. Previously, I used MM and neither one seemed to have much of a learning curve. (After MM died I switched to WMP because I'd basically already built my library-so it might have had more of a learning curve if I was still building it.)
But the bottom line is, I'm not looking for the *best* there is, I'm looking for something that's *good enough*. Sort of reminds me about the long-distance phone wars. I'd get lots of calls assuring me that such & such a plan could save me huge money on my long distance phone bills-until I told them that my current long distance phone bill averaged about $5/month. Not because I was on a wonderful plan, but because I don't make long-distance phone calls. So really, unless they were offering me free long distance, it wasn't worth my time talking to them. What I had was good enough.
And that's what this reminds me of. iPhone & iTunes might actually be better than what I have-but you won't convince me of it because I won't waste my time & money trying it. What I have is good enough. And not because I've spent a lot of time learning it-oh my, no, hardly had to spend any time learning it-just find my app & follow the installation instructions (could be OTA install, or download to PC & install, or copy CAB to phone & install) then point & click. Boom-app's running. Any learning curve after that depends on the app, not on the platform.
Actually, it's been a while but I think that Palm tried to rely on that 'device will sell itself' strategy. And it worked while it was significantly better than the other devices on the market, but once they caught up, Palm died. Marketing is what makes the difference-personally, I'm convinced of it.