“Analysts for Merrill Lynch are the latest to express a lack of fanfare over Apple Computer’s new product introductions and are unconvinced that the company’s announcements were substantial enough to merit an invitational media event,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider. “Overall, the analyst was not overly impressed with the company’s new products, of which many believe combined for a lackluster media event. ‘We wonder if the announcements were substantial enough to merit an invitational media event and suspect Apple needs to be judicious if it expects to continue to convert journalists into marketing instruments with its aura of secrecy,’ Farmer wrote.”
Full article here.
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The venue for the announcement was small, the “Town Hall” of the Apple campus, their large meeting room. It was the overblown hype form rumor sites, speculators, prognosticators, and the thousands of mindless trolls with obviously no life that are the ones at fault.
It was a modest announcement about equally modest products available TODAY. The features on, both, the Mac mini and the iPod HiFi are rather incredible for their class and size.
It is absolutely wrong to blame Steve Jobs for not producing the spectacular media event or Star Trek-like products that reside only in the minds of those completely devoid of a real life and with too much access to the media and/or internet.
Steve, the products are awesome. Thank you for staying far ahead of the herd. When Americans think of themselves as an innovative country, they all are imagining Apple products.
Merrill Lynch is right. Here in the Netherlands no national newspaper printed anything about the dumb event.
Keep in mind this is about lowering expectations to increase future WOW factor.
Don’t think Apple and SJ don’t know what they are doing. They have proven to be masters at it. Hats off to them.
C’mon April 1st!!!
MW country-as in”when will be get iTMS tv shows in my country?? (Canada)”
MACBILL is a bit OTT but not completely misguided.
The boombox and ipod covers are press-release stuff unless Apple are going to show the next step or two in the evolution process.
The Mac mini intel is somewhere between press-release stuff and a demo opportunity because it could open up streaming movies around the house – but still needs the tivo bit. I’d have thought an element of a 30th Aniversary event -if there is to be one being only a few weeks away would have done.
Apple HAD all the buzz.
This event was designed for the term “buzzkill”
Too bad for them.
And they did’nt pull any products from this. People said that about Macworld too. The invitations came out only a week before.
At best, this was a public relations stumble.
the funny thing is this IS huge, its just you have to understand technology to get it…
which the analysts don’t of course…
streaming video….
Now i just heard on Twit, my Dvorak saying that would be AWESOME, but it’s way to far out to do. he said that was still a few years out
Apple just did it, this is Airport Express Video. It’s a Mac mini.
as soon as you guys figure out how cool this is, you’ll say.. ah $100 and I can get all this media from all the PC’s in my house/office/small building
and i don’t even need a big HD on the mac mini cuz im just streaming no actual storage.. the mini can just be a dvd player.. occasionally being turned on to do a word file or sth..
I’m with Mike, FrontRow with Bonjour is HUGE and I’m surprised Steve didn’t spend more time playing it up.
My fiance is addicted to Desperate Housewives and Lost – she downloads every episode. I’m addicted to the Office and download every episode. For me to catch up on Lost or DH I have to disconnect my computer and connect her computer to our LCD.
It’s awesome that, once I get a new mini, I can keep that connected all the monitor all the time and watch or listen to my files or her files.
Now we just need higher quality video….
Yeah, this announcement was a dud, just like the first iPod announcement, when all the world said, “What the hell is Apple doing building a mp3 player? THAT’S their big new thing?”
Well, everyone was SO right back then, so I guess the Mac mini and iPod Hi-Fi are about to change the world as we know it.
lbuschjr:
“Yeah, this announcement was a dud, just like the first iPod announcement, when all the world said, “What the hell is Apple doing building a mp3 player? THAT’S their big new thing?”
Well, everyone was SO right back then, so I guess the Mac mini and iPod Hi-Fi are about to change the world as we know it.”
Apple does not have a good track record with the speakers that they’ve branded. (Unlike the iPod, which was unprecendented. BTW, the iPod did not become the phenomenon that it is today until they made a Windows version of iTunes.) Hopefully, these will turn out to be a real good deal.
Apple didn’t even post a tease for the event on it’s site. It sent out an e-mail invite to the press and hosted it on campus in Cupertino. The folks doing all the vamping and pimping were bloggers and the press. How is that Apple’s fault?
Magic Word TRUE
i completely agree with Daniel-san. Apple has been overhyped lately (look at what people were predicitng), and could not keep coming out with such ground-breaking products at the rate that people wanted them.
Steve set up this event just to get people’s eyes off apple for a while, and all the excitement building up to this announcement only helped him pull this off. So i guess thank you to all of the rumor sites for their out of proportion predictions. However, be prepared for a big product role-out coming in april that will truly amaze you, especially after this relatively uninteresting announcement.
and please…SHUT UP…some of you people are idiots and have no idea what you’re talking about. Steve, and the many people helping him at apple, are much, MUCH smarter than any of you and know exactly what they’re doing
The event may not have impressed the dimwits, but the significance is huge. We are seeing some key parts of the architecture of Apple’s home electronics/home entertainment business. It is innovative to the core. It makes it easy for customers to enjoy their entertainment without having to be experts in everything – or anything for that matter. Most analysts are anal-ists and MR apparently belong to the latter group. Streaming content from the user’s LAN wirelessly, Bonjour, Front Row, a Mac Mini that can handle HDTV and Dolby 5.1 sound, playlists, means to hook up an iPod, …. What the hell does it take to see the significance?
I guess this is just an example of casting pearls before the swine. I don’t depend on analysts. So I just smile, because I’ve got a bunch of stock in AAPL. My main worries are anti trust suits instigated by the losers and Steve Jobs’ health.
Last time I checked>
Ditto.
It truly beggars belief that so-called “serious” analysts believed that Apple were going to launch what would be a paradigm-shifting movie download service from a minor event in Infinite Loop’s Town Hall.
If/When such an event happens, I would expect Apple to announce it from a mass audience venue like the Moscone Center or – perhaps more likely – the Kodak Theatre in LA.
I was hoping there was more to this announcement and that iPod Hi-Fi and iPod Boombox were two separate products. For all we know, they still might be.
I will have to agree.
Apple, consider yourself scolded!!
Now don’t do it again.
Now for April 1st you will need to announce a 30th aniversary special edition iPod loaded with Britney Spears and Pink in a naykid oil wrestling contest.
I have been waiting for the next Apple big thing ever since I got my TiBook a few years back – and there hasn’t been one. Just lots of small incremental evolutions of its products.
Errr John… not sure what universe you’ve been living in but is sure isn’t the same as mine. Since the TiBook (I still use mine too and still love it to death) Apple has launched more blockbusting products than in its entire history.
In fact, all this fuss here is over the fact that they have been so gobsmackingly good at it that everyone wants more – about every 8 weeks preferably..!
this is why I love joy of tech, just check out their latest comic
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/794.html
everybody needs to calm the hell down, just because you have wet dreams of what rumor sites say apple is going to release doesn’t mean it is going to
If the iPod nano leather case would have been only $29 instead of $99, I would say sure this event was not worth it.
But at $99 for a piece of “Italian” cow leather and announced at special event – wow – just shows what Apple thinks of its gulllible customers and fawning press.
Steve: “Shoot, I could announce Apple is selling fried dog turds and the press and macfanboy sites would have an orgy for weeks before the unveiling of iTurd trying to figure out what new product I have cooked up.”
(Wonder why this stuff wasn´t announced at Macworld and said it will be delivered around the time the first new laptops are deliverd.)
The mini media center has provoked about as much interest as the iPod when it was first unveiled (i.e. little). Will it have a similar impact on the world?
Oh, and having the event at their own on-campus town hall was low-key enough. As has been said before, it’s the media and rumor mill that blew it out of all proportion.
CNet news has video clips of the mac mini and ipod hifi introductions. Steve Jobs must have the flu, because his voice was scratchy and he was generally lethargic. You can’t get a bunch of reporters excited about your products if you project the exicted feelings of a rock.
That being said, big waste of an event for lackluster products. There are already many fancy cases and ipod stereos on the market. And the mac mini is the forgotten bastard child of the mac universe that no one really cares about anyways (at least until they actually add a tv tuner).