“The moment everyone has been waiting for is nearly here. Tomorrow, Apple will hold a media event where we will see the largest iPhone reveal since the company launched the phone 10 years ago,” Bill Maurer writes for Seeking Alpha. “As expectations continue to climb with the stock near its all-time highs, the only thing I am certain of this week is that Apple will disappoint someone (and perhaps many).”
“No, I am not here today to be an Apple bear or detail some doom and gloom scenario for the company and the stock. That’s reserved for the big market players who think that Apple could take down the whole market this week,” Maurer writes. “Tuesday’s event just isn’t long enough for Apple to unveil as many items as some are hoping for. Last year’s event lasted just under two hours, with some previous revels being even shorter than that… When we get to the point where consumers/investors are expecting dozens of sparkling new announcements, it only increases the chance that more and more will be disappointed.”
“The day that Apple unveils the new phone is the worst trading period for the stock when looking at times surrounding these iPhone events. Of the 10 major iPhone launches (excluding the SE for this argument), the stock has declined seven of those 10 days,” Maurer writes. “So as we are in the final stage of the countdown to Apple’s biggest iPhone event in history, I can guarantee that there will be some level of disappointment. This isn’t meant to be an Apple bear take, it’s just a given because there are such high expectations and so many different items that are expected to be covered in just a two hour or so event. If management waits to cover things like Apple TV and the HomePod, for example, for another event perhaps next month, there will be a ton of complaints.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As is typical, when Apple doesn’t introduce a transporter, everything that they do unveil will be met with a “meh,” as the hoi polloi often fail to see revolutions even when they’re detailed right in front of their faces. For example:
• “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007
• “I am pretty skeptical. I don’t think [iPhone] will meet the fantastic predictions I have been reading. For starters, while Apple basically established the market for portable music players, the phone market is already established, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake the phone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.” – Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, January 11, 2007
• “I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007
I think he’s sort of right, the list is long and they’ve got 2 hours, unless Tim decides to skip all the ad videos, and the status reports.. how do you fit in new iPhones, IOS11, and all the rest in the time allotted.. and if they do move ATV etc to another presentation down the road, and further delay the shipping of it and other things, it just causes disappointment.
Here’s an idea!
Apple goes through the entire, long list of new Fall products in one long, Long, LONG presentation.
It ends with everyone begging for mercy followed by TechTard JournalCysts ranting on and on about how awful Apple is for making us suffer.
Cry baby cry
Make your mother sigh
She’s old enough to know better.
So cry baby cry. 😥
I was a fan of Steve Jobs and the Steve Jobs Apple. Apple has changed in recent years. They are solely focused on mobile/iOS, simplicity, and the average user. There is nothing wrong with that decision; it has just led me to other platforms instead given Apple, no longer meets my needs. I miss the Steve Jobs Apple, and, Steve Jobs himself. Apple has, in a way, become the big brother that Steve detested so long ago.
correct.
blah blah blah – what a load of turds.
@ gav: with nothing to refute the correct assertions Bryan made, why did you bother posting your juvenile little remark?
Simplicity has always been Apple’s focus, from the first Macintosh.
Apple did become a big brother, but it is difficult to argue that the title is attributed with the same meaning it was to IBM in the 80s, or to MS in the 90s.
All I want from Apple is a Mac UI that doesn’t look like an extraterrestrial circus poster with badly drawn symbols where we used to have icons.
My world sports an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPhone SE. They are my tools, and soon, I think a Homepod will fill my home with sounds.
I may or may not be an ‘average’ user, but I sure like simplicity of use.
It is unclear what your “needs” are, how Apple is failing to meet them, or what other platforms you are now using. You failed to elaborate in your gripe, making it difficult to gain any value from it.
I agree that Apple has changed. To some extent, this is the product of corporate size – a massive company tends to be less nimble, has to serve a large consumer base and ship products in huge volumes (thus constraining innovation to some degree), and has to be a bit more formal and rigid in terms of organization and processes. This transition was already occurring in the final years before Jobs’ death. But Apple’s growth explosion mostly happened later.
Now to the crux of the situation…can Apple do better in serving professionals and technophiles of various types as well as the “average” consumer? The answer is clearly, ‘yes.’ Apple has the resources to develop cutting-edge pro machines and tools in parallel to continuing the evolution of the iPhone, iPad, and other devices. Based on announcements this year regarding the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro, I think that Apple has seen the light and will steer back closer to the desired path. But only time will tell. Until then, I guess that people can keep on griping.
Agreed, KingMel, each of our needs vary slightly, so what makes one person happy may not necessarily do the same for the next.
However, thus said … the demographics of the Apple customer tend to be us “older guys” (although as young as age 35), which with a Household income of $100K+ pretty much translates into having a bit more discretionary income too. And from this perspective, it means that we’re still holding on to our “tried and true” paradigm of the desktop Mac as the center of our IT ecosystem … even if we don’t necessarily realize that the center has shifted (problem is, is that perception is reality, even if the perception is wrong).
Nevertheless, what that means is where’s the love for the desktop Mac?
True, we’ve heard promises of the ‘iMac Pro’ coming … although at five large, its more than what most of us spent for our first car (or two, combined).
Similarly, the promises of un-screwing-up the Mac Pro ‘trashcan’ is so far just empty “damage control”, without a single peep since April – – and therein lies the rub with a chunk of us customers being “old guys” — we’re working jobs like “Project Manager” and aren’t stupid: we know that a single meeting with the press doesn’t magically solve years of apathy and inattention. The lack of a real deadline, or any real assurances for the mini…the silence is deafening, and the prospects of having to wait until 2019 is damn insulting: the PowerMac G4 “Yikes!” was a six month crash project back when Apple wasn’t rolling in dough…
…and Apple’s current level of **profits** equates to a free cash flow that could be used to hire 400 Man-Years per _day_. Which means all claims of “lack of resources to do both” are extreme & profound bunk: they aren’t kicking posteriors and taking names is because they don’t _want_ to.
And when a customer realizes that their money is no longer wanted, they become disenchanted…
Apple have made a number of troubling missteps in the last several years. For the first few missteps, I crossed my fingers and hoped they’d learn from them. After the next few, I defended them like a good little fangirl. When the number of missteps reached double digits, I dropped out of the ranks of apologists. It’s like errors in Baseball: they are correlated with losing — poor fielding increases opponents’ scoring opportunities and decreases team morale, which can spiral out of any manager’s control. I used to like Eddy Cue, but now I think he should be traded. That GM leak points to a cancer in the clubhouse, and it could be Cue, or Ive, or even Cook — Firstwhatever has suggested that a non-liberal activist Apple employee did the deed, and we should admit that he could be right. These days, more and more people feel empowered to act (with tacit permission from some higher authority) to undermine their employer, their team, their country, anybody at all who pisses them off.
They can definitely serve the professional better. The problem is, they let the consumer side take the lead and those hardware restrictions filter down to the “pro” computers.
I’d be shocked if we ever saw a new mac with anything resembling PCI cards. They have set the course and all future professional machines will likely be a variation of the trash can but slightly more open to upgrade. They will likely give the Mac Pro the same treatment they have FCP: they’ll tell the professional that you don’t know what you need until we show it to you. And naturally people will be unhappy and the PC vs Mac wars will continue.
Conversely the author could have come up with Apple impressing someone, possibly many. The stock drop after a major announcement is nothing new, happens all the time, just as the stock keeps climbing and climbing, slowly but surely.
It used to be much worse. Yes, some people will be disappointed. They are expecting the moon and the stars, but Apple is only planning on the moon and hasn’t even heard the rumor about the stars.
Just introduce a Transporter? I want a replicating machine and warp drive too! It’s the least they could do. Right?
I want a self-driving replicator with warp drive. Is that too much to ask? And if so, how long until some comments claims some tiny company did that years ago and apple is just copying?
I’m a little more interested in learning about the place the event is taking place tomorrow
Feature-wise I think we’ll be mostly satisfied. We’ll see what the pricing looks like. It wouldn’t shock me to see a $1500 iPhone, well above expectations due to component price and short supply.
History’s path says a short term stock drop likely, but assuming the SLEW of products in-line/on-line for Christmas, there will be records broken for Q1/18, imo. Very notable new iPh, new ATV, much more developed new Apple Watch, AirPods and Home Pod are all desirable & “easy” to give Christmas gifts. Backed by this line up are “ready” laptop, iMac and iPad possibilities. It’s been a decade since such depth. If only the pro-desk top and mac mini’s were ready. The operations “genius” has stumbled A LOT during his tenure, but this is a punch that’s a good answer for the stumbles.
No word on HomePod last week, maybe we can expect another event in October?
Apple doesn’t unveil a new Apple TV. Big deal. Unit sales volume is so low that Apple doesn’t report them.
Apple doesn’t unveil a new Apple Watch. Big deal. Unit sales volume is so low that Apple doesn’t report them.
Both items (among many others) revenue are included in a product category (Other Products) that only represent 16% of Apple’s revenue.
iPhone accounts for 57% of Apple’s revenue. The number of consumers interested in Apple TV and Apple Watch are dwarfed by the number of consumers interested in the iPhone.
Maurer’s piece addresses his need for revenue, not anything factual.
16% of 215 billion dollars is $34,400,000,000.00. That is not exactly pocket change. Apple would only be required to report the watch and TV as a separate revenue segments if they exceeded 10% of revenue, profits, or assets. In my world, “failure” isn’t measured by not earning $21B annually.
Leaks, leaks, leaks.
I do not see these as leaks, I see them as teasers.
iOS 11 has all these new capabilities and tomorrow we find out how they all work together. I am even more interested in what is going to happen tomorrow.
I’m not trying to be a pompous a**hole . . . I’m just a pompous a**hole!
–Bill Maurer
Are those eff-tards quoted above still employed?
MDN using only quotes from 2007 when iPhone was absolutely new to the world has impact but not also including some quotes from the following years to present weakens the point MDN is making.
@MDN Editor:
The link to Matthew Lynn’s article is not working. Also, the article appears to have been removed from the Bloomberg News website. However, so that we all can revel in Mr. Lynn’s idiotic predictions forever, it has been archived:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130114220900/https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRelVKWbMAv0
Any chance someone at MDN could contact Mr. Lynn and ask him to clarify his remarks? After all, he does still purport himself to be a “financial expert”.
Shit, they haven’t announced anything yet and the comments are already full of disappointment. You can make some people happy sometimes…
It’s all about
M A N I P U L A T I O N
Let’s watch and laugh.
I’m buying a new MacBook Pro, new iPhone, and new iPad this week. There, take that. My wallet.
*yawn* 🍎🐻🐂💩 FUD filler.
Apparently, human behavior dictates DRaMa around every stock at some point in the year. Same thing when I worked at Eastman Kodak. 😛 I could count on it.
Without the expectation of disappointment some people just wouldn’t be happy.
It is S.A. fer’ cryin’ out loud. That digital rag is as reliable and predictable as Eddie Zabitskie and Colin Gillis.