Has Apple Lost Its Cool? Its Chief Says No

[wodin]

Has Apple Lost Its Cool? Its Chief Says No


Of course he does!

[Ripplinger]

Honestly, I've never understood the lemming appeal to Apple products. Ugly lacquered white, even white earbuds!, more expensive than other products, and you put up with the ugly factor and the price to be locked into their own iSystem formats.

Apple never had any "cool" to me. I've never owned any Apple product and never will.

[BeccaPrice]

well, I'm very fond of my ipod nano 5th gen. Unfortunately, in my opinion, every successive generation has been lesser and lesser; rather than getting better, they seem to be devolving. I don't know what I"m going to do when this one dies.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

20 minutes gets you 150 miles at the superstations.
(Restroom stop, get a drink, stretch legs, car recharged.)
The network is under construction. NY to LA will be possible by late 2013.
http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Impressive if it really works that way, not only if it's not too hot, the charger isn't too busy, Venus isn't in the 12th house...
One similarity between Apple and Tesla seems to be that deferential journalists seem to be willing to discard standard testing procedures when testing their products.
No performance testing in Laguna Seca on a hot day, no quick dash with the car fully loaded with staff and equipment to an attractive location that's a couple of hundred miles away.
Woe betide a journalist who simply treats it as a normal car like that journalist who parked it outside his hotel on a cold night and stranded with it without power the next day. As a result he was berated and called a cheat by the very Elon Musk himself.

As to Apple: part of their declining appeal (if that really is so) may be down to their design that may have reached a stage where Apple has to take a radical new course to show something really new. How "cool" can a company be whose products are the darlings of middle aged people wearing business suits?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

well, I'm very fond of my ipod nano 5th gen. Unfortunately, in my opinion, every successive generation has been lesser and lesser; rather than getting better, they seem to be devolving. I don't know what I"m going to do when this one dies.

Sansa Clip Zip

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Woe betide a journalist who simply treats it as a normal car like that journalist who parked it outside his hotel on a cold night and stranded with it without power the next day. As a result he was berated and called a cheat by the very Elon Musk himself.

Uh, you do realize the guy was lying in his "review"?
That the car's black box logs proved he was lying and the NYT had to issue one of their non-apologgy apologies for his "bad judgment"?

All devices come with restrictions and instruction manuals and he did what he was expressly warned not to as if the manual was lying.

I'm not about to buy a Tesla myself but until the next generation of batteries get to market in 5-10 years, Tesla is the state of the art for electric cars as both Toyota and Mercedes have acknowleged. Nobody does it better and it is a really hard job to even try; just ask Fisker.

Apple's situation is simpler: for years now they've been relying on brand loyalty and media hype to paper over the compromises in their products. It's not that the products are bad but that like everybody else's they have limitations and constraints they have been pretending don't exist.

Well, the media isn't carrying water for them anymore; instead they have declared open season on Apple and the slightest glitch is being blown out of proportion. Bad as this is, there is worse to come: when they get so tired they stop covering it.

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." Oscar Wilde.

[Fbone]

I think Tesla's model S has an ugly interior. That 17 inch screen is too large.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I think Tesla's model S has an ugly interior. That 17 inch screen is too large.

Oddly enough:

The Model S has the dashboard Apple would have designed, with just two visible physical buttons, for the hazard lights and to release the glove-box door. Every other function that isn’t handled by steering-column stalks, from climate to radio to navigation to cell-phone and internet connectivity, is concentrated in a huge touch-sensitive flat-panel display in the center of the dash. It’s as if the whole car is run off an iPad glued to the dash.

(From the Car and Driver review:http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/...t-ride-reviews)

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Sansa Clip Zip

only if I don't have to use Window's gawd-awful music management interface.

I actually *like* iTunes. I can get it to do what I want it to do with little fuss, and it manages my music and audiobooks nicely. I just hate the iPod Nano 6th and 7th generations.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Uh, you do realize the guy was lying in his "review"?
That the car's black box logs proved he was lying and the NYT had to issue one of their non-apology apologies for his "bad judgment"?

The Times prints clear-cut corrections almost every day. In this case, their position is that no correction was warranted. It's true that the public editor, who speaks for herself, printed a mildly critical column.

As for calling the Times writer a liar, here is another POV:

http://techland.time.com/2013/02/26/...#ixzz2VCaSHVP7

Here’s his explanation for that half-a-mile jaunt:

So much for open and shut books. In his post, [Tesla executive Elon] Musk didn’t explain the event happened at night, nor do most readers have the faintest idea what it’s like to go hunting for one of Tesla’s new Supercharger hookups in the dark. And Broder’s explanation resonates with me: As a recent first-time diesel owner, I’ve probably driven at least as far around various truck stops looking for proper-sized diesel pumps (the nozzles, that is) when I travel between Michigan and Iowa or Minnesota.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Which is surely correct?
A virus is something that spreads itself. That is part of the definition.

The point is that by stating 'no viruses exist in the wild' the impression is given that browsing on the Mac is safe and no security software is required. However, malware, adware and spyware can be just as unfortunate to encounter and security software is helpful here.

Graham

[fjtorres]

Testing a product outside its documented operating environment to see what failure modes it exhibits is fine...if done openly. Hiding the fact that you went outside the lines and pretending the failure was to be expected during normal operation is lying by omission at a minimum.
Expecting a passionate techie like Musk *not* to blow up at that kind of representation is a lot like expecting the media *not* to cover a sneeze in the Apple campus. Anybody who's been around the block at least once knows better.

Overeaction is a way of life with both.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Uh, you do realize the guy was lying in his "review"?
That the car's black box logs proved he was lying and the NYT had to issue one of their non-apologgy apologies for his "bad judgment"?

All devices come with restrictions and instruction manuals and he did what he was expressly warned not to as if the manual was lying.

I'm not about to buy a Tesla myself but until the next generation of batteries get to market in 5-10 years, Tesla is the state of the art for electric cars as both Toyota and Mercedes have acknowleged. Nobody does it better and it is a really hard job to even try; just ask Fisker.

Apple's situation is simpler: for years now they've been relying on brand loyalty and media hype to paper over the compromises in their products. It's not that the products are bad but that like everybody else's they have limitations and constraints they have been pretending don't exist.

Well, the media isn't carrying water for them anymore; instead they have declared open season on Apple and the slightest glitch is being blown out of proportion. Bad as this is, there is worse to come: when they get so tired they stop covering it.

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." Oscar Wilde.

This for the last decade or so since the Ipod Jobs the showman was able to market Apple products amazingly. Anything Apple was huge news and they did not have to promote their product apart from just releasing them the news media did it for them.
Now that is not the case they are no longer getting free publicity and have to stay in the news by releasing tidbits about their new products like the iwatch etc as they see other companies getting the lime light. When Apple took the mobile and tech world by storm many of the statements etc from MIcrosoft, BlackBerry & Nokia sounded like sour grapes. Now many of Apple statement sound like sour grapes to me.

[OldMan80]

I think Samsung is kicking Apples BUTT.. Big Time..

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

well, I'm very fond of my ipod nano 5th gen. Unfortunately, in my opinion, every successive generation has been lesser and lesser; rather than getting better, they seem to be devolving. I don't know what I"m going to do when this one dies.

Pick up a Zune on eBay.