“By most measures, Apple Computer Inc.’s Steve Jobs famous unveilings in front of staunch loyalists would be a tough act to follow. Imagine then, going head-to-head with the legendary CEO. That’s what Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc. and a legend himself, was up against Tuesday,” May Wong reports for The Associated Press.
“The two influential leaders delivered keynotes simultaneously — Jobs at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco and Dell at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,” Wong reports.
Wong reports, “The auditorium hosting Jobs’ keynote held 4,000 people and still wasn’t large enough. Given the sold-out crowd, many more were sitting cross-legged and kneeling in the aisles with rapt attention as Jobs, always the consummate showman, joked with the audience and debuted a highly anticipated cell phone and set-top box, which he called ‘revolutionary.’ The ballroom hosting Dell’s keynote also had a capacity of 4,000 people but was barely half full.”
Wong reports, “As a co-founder of Apple, Jobs has always been considered a leader of a cult of sorts, a loyal group of Macintosh fans, and anyone in his presence is subject to his ‘reality distortion field.’ Windows-based PC users, on the other hand, are typically not as fanatical about their machines.”
MacDailyNews Take: There is a reason for that and everybody, including May Wong, knows it- even if they won’t report it.
Wong continues, “Dell, meanwhile, introduced a new environmental ‘Plant a Tree for Me’ program in which it offered to plant a tree for every PC sold.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yawn. How, uh, obsequious of him; in a non-riveting, yet totally transparent sort of way. Joining Greenpeace, Mikey? Care to contribute a little something or have you already? Hey, when’s the next Apple Store picket?
Wong continues, “In an interview after his speech, Dell said he wasn’t worried about his company’s news getting overshadowed by the media attention for Apple. ‘I think our announcements are going to get the recognition they deserve,’ he said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly. Crickets chirping.
Wong continues, “The two trade shows are booked years in advance. CES typically begins the first week of January, and Macworld the second week. Often in the past, the tail end of CES coincides with the beginning of Macworld. But this year, Jobs’ opening keynote landed on the second day of CES.”
“Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, said the organization decided many years ago to start pushing down the opening date of CES to allow its thousands of exhibitors more breathing room following the New Year,” Wong reports. “Shapiro said the association has invited Jobs to deliver a keynote at CES in the past. ‘Steve Jobs turned it down,’ Shapiro said, ‘but he said he’d be happy to come if we change the date.'”
Full article here.
Let’s see: attend a keynote presented by some dime-a-dozen Windows-centric box assembler or a keynote by the man who defined the personal computer industry and who is rapidly taking over the CE industry? What a tough choice.
So, every day is Arbor Day at Dell? Kudos, Mikey. Now get back to work kissing your market share buh-bye while figuring out how you’re going to sell the company and give the money back to the shareholders.
Related article:
Total eclipse of Michael Dell happens next Tuesday – January 04, 2007
Seriously. What did Dull talk about? Hmm? His iPod clone? His other “new” products?
Time to sell Dell and give the money back to the shareholders – so they can buy AAPL while it’s still only double figures!
Speaking of which, is this the first Stevenote where the stock has actually gone up?
One other little tidbit I found out in reading articles about CES:
IT’S NOT OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC!!!
Anyone who’s registered for a conference session can attend Steve’s Keynote, and for only $45 you can experience all the joys of the Exhibit Hall…while at CES you evidently have to be a media or industry bigwig to find out what the Next Big Thang is.
For those wondering…
Apple Market Cap: 79.54B
Dell Market Cap: 59.83B
You got to be kidding right Plant a tree for me . Your know how much paper Dell company use. They can’t plant enough tree to supply them. You need a form for this and that , you need to sign this form to just to get in the place. You need to forms to dam near do everything at Dell and they want to start a dum program like plant a tree for every PC we buy.
This company really don’t have a clue about anything do they ? Do they know how much energy it take to make plastic and metal?
WHAY A BOTTOMFEEDER
I tried to watch the CES Keynote, but it requires Windows Media Player. I could see the video, but wasn’t getting any sound. Crappy experience to say the least.
Not only did Steve Jobs eclipse Michael Dell, he eclipsed the entire CES. I just watched the keynote in QuickTime, and he did an amazing presentation.
I was watching G4 TV’s Attack of the Show program. The two regular hosts were at CES reporting on that show. But all they could talk about for the first 15 minutes of the program was iPhone. And they are doing a special report on iPhone on tomorrow’s show, apparently.
Great job to all the web sites doing the blow-by-blow updates during the keynote.
I also went to the Expo in the afternoon, and I saw the iPhone prototype. There were only two on display in glass encased rotating displays. The person doing the hourly exhibit hall stage presentation had one. And Steve Jobs has one. It’s even more impressive in person.
I still don’t understand why Apple couldn’t have provided a separate iPod-oriented device with the touchscreen technology. I wouldn’t mind the added thickness for the hard drive. I was ready to order it no questions asked, no reviews, no real-life photos. I was going to order it as soon as it appeared on the Apple store online.
You really let me down, Steve. I want that thing so bad and have absolutely no use for most of its functions. And 8gb isn’t even half my music collection.
Now that Apple Computer seems to have reached an agreement with the Beatles;
(a) Apple was finally able to drop the Computer from its name;
as it no longer has to keep its trademark distinctly separate from
the Beatles Apple Corp. Now the Beatles are Apple Corp. and are
happy to coexist with Apple Inc.
(b) Steve Jobs was finally able to play Beatles songs in his iPhone
demo — which makes the arrival of the Beatles music catalog to
the iTunes store a likely near term event;
The delay in the release of the iPhone is probably related to the
fact that it runs Leopard which is not coming out until the 2nd
quarter, it seems.
And probably no new major hardware announcement until Intel
releases its new Santa Rosa Chipset also in 2Q07 — which is
probably needed to support some of Apple’s next generation
hardware technology. In fact Leopard may be needed to drive
Santa Rosa motherboard technology forward, which may also
be why Leopard has to wait before it’s released to the wild, no?
“I still don’t understand why Apple couldn’t have provided a separate iPod-oriented device with the touchscreen technolgy.”
They will, believe me. The introduced iPhone is a high-end all-in-one thingy, not a product for the masses. We will see a widescreen, touchscreen true video iPod later this year, but only Jobs knows when.
(BTW, I’d rather call the iPhone the MacPhone, MacPod, or MacMobile or something like that. The phone is just one aspect in it. Guess the name iPhone was already so entrenched in the public mind that they decided to go with it.)
I hope you’re right, Switched. Just waited so long now but I guess a few more months won’t hurt.
A Click Wheel doesn’t seem so fancy now that Steve introduced Multi-Touch.
Planting a tree for every computer sold is GOOD.
1. Yesterday was a day for DELL to bury bad news – he knew it, he had nothing to offer and it has been duly buried.
2.When it comes to plant a tree for a PC – good idea. Bury the PC in a landfill( having environmentally disposd of the bad bits) and plant a tree on top !!
Plant a tree. That’s it? Just change the subject and appeal to mom and apple pie — no pun intended — to divert people’s attention from the abject failure of Dell to create interesting products. What’s next , whale petting?
Plant a tree?
As long as those trees are Apple trees…
Down Under I have not seen a single television report on anything about the CES, yet every TV news buletin on each network I have switched to today has given a broad and positive report on the iPhone. Love it.
Dells’s and Microsoft’s BS will fertilize the Apple trees. The lazy and dull giants of PC-dom are still stumbling around in the 20th century, Apple has leapt into the 21st century and has set the standard…again. Just wait till Apple’s releases the next models with more features and lower cost. Eventually, the novelty will wear off and these devices will gradually become the ubiquitous appliance or tool Apple expects them to be. Nothing will speak to the success of Apple as the iPhone’s commonality. Apple expects 1% of marketshare, hardly. Conservatively, I see Apple grabbing more than 4% of North America, Europe, and Asia marketshare in 3 years.
This quote from Dell gets me “I think our announcements are going to get the recognition they deserve,” ya know what, I agree – cause this is the 1st thing I have seen about Dell’s keynote and I can’t begin to count how much I seen read about the Iphone. My 9 year old niece told me Regis and Kelly were talking about it (yesterday), how they did that I don’t know.
Dell? What’s a “Dell”?
Poor Mike. Look at what he has to look forward to: A new product cycle with Vista. Whoopdee Doo. A gaming machine that looks like a Walk/Don’t Walk sign. Wow, truly stunning. Planting trees… maybe he should concentrate on something he might be good at, like digging holes.
Personal computing took a giant leap yesterday, and he won’t be able to participate in it at all. All he can do is beg at the doors of Redmond for another bucket of band-aids to run his hacked-together commodity trash. His company can NEVER build anything like this.
No one can.
The desktop war, we lost.
The laptop war, we’re holing our own.
The handheld war… well, I think it might already be over.
=)
-c
MW: ‘reported’ (but not remembered)
Dell panders to Greenpeace, and probably funding them to attack Apple.
What a nightmare for Michael Dell..after it all started so well.
“I think our announcements are going to get the recognition they deserve.”
Yawn.
Look at the bright side. Michael has thrilled coma patients everywhere.
How can you tell? Exactly.
Dell and Greenpeace…..mediocrity deserves each other. One used the other as a destrcutive tool to spread FUD about Apple. Greenpeace lets itself be used because they get cahs (and probably free computers) to fund their ‘soon to be obsolete’ cell phones.
Plant a tree…what a load of crap. It would work better that for every Dell switcher to Mac, one plants a tree. We will save both the earth and a poor hapless PC user.