Oh, wait, without noting it, Fortune just changed the headline to “Did Steve Jobs spin the NY Times?” (The original still shows up via Google.)
Lie. Spin. Whatever. Who doesn’t do either to The New York Times? It’s certainly no crime. Let’s be real: The way we read it, the thing is full of lies, half-truths, and spin.
Here’s the story: Jobs told the Times, “Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine. We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”
But, Elmer-Dewiit reports, “But according to AppleInsider’s Kasper Jade, citing unnamed sources familiar with Apple’s decision making process, that’s simple not true… It was a bad part, not cost or marketing considerations, that kept the camera off the iPod touches introduced this week.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: To us, it seems obvious that Jobs was spinning and that iPod touch was supposed to get a camera (third-party cases were made for 3rd-gen touches with camera holes in them, for crying out loud), but, hey, it didn’t make the cut. As CEO, Jobs can’t really come out and say: “The cameras didn’t work, but they’re coming” or he’d freeze the important holiday shopping market for iPod touches. Duh.
Where’s the “lie?”
Here are Jobs’ words, broken down into sentences with our parenthetical assessments:
• Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. (Could be true)
• Was it an iPhone without the phone? (A simple question)
• Was it a pocket computer? (A simple question)
• What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine. (True as long as at least 2 or more customers told Apple as much)
• We started to market it that way, and it just took off. (True)
• And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. (True)
• So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. (Could be true)
• We don’t need to add new stuff. (Opinion of one of the greatest marketers and product developers of all time)
• We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it. (Opinion of one of the greatest marketers and product developers of all time)
So, Jobs simply said what he had to say, but there’s no lie in his words – which is probably why Fortune changed their headline so quickly.
If indeed it was a “bad part” then Apple decided some time ago to forego the camera in this latest iteration of the touch. Why do I think this? Well, unless there is a hole in the back of the Touch case where the camera lens should be then the decision to not do a camera would have to have been made in time to change the back case on the camera. But if it was just a “bad part” it would seem that there would have been time to correct it before production and still get it in the camera. So why would I believe “unnamed sources” over Steve Jobs, particularly without out knowing how accurate they have been in the past.
Great Jobs defense team. But, the fact remains…
Touch has no camera. iPhone has a minimalist camera. Why can’t Touch have at least a minimalist camera?
Truth that hurts is that this is so un-Apple. Steve’s absence anybody?
You gotta understand the way these PC guys think, otherwise your explanation isn’t addressing the points that they care about.
To their mind, they have purchased equivalent or greater computing power than your dandy nancyboy “looks nice” machine. Kind of like painting speed stripes on a Segway.
But people don’t ride Segways, and they don’t drive Ladas. I mean, yeah, you can drive a Lada across America. How many movies have been made about driving across America in a Lada?
It’s about the experience, and the iPhone took the Mac and shoved it into people’s faces. This, fantastic, awesome, fscking phone is a Mac. Now go and bloody buy one!
Someone lied to a newspaper? I’m shocked, simply SHOCKED!
@ TT,
Oh, you little South Carolinian rascals are just so darn cute.
It’s my guess that the company due to supply the iPod touch camera had major QA issues, as was reported in an earlier MDN article, and also from a conversation I had with someone close to the project a month ago.
I believe the company in question was fired and replaced recently by Omnivision. This, from Aug 27:
http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2009/08/omnivision-wins-next-gen-ipod-orders.html
I believe the only reason why the touch was simply untouch is because of the tablet having a camera. Apple is focusing on games to make a diference that the tablet is a real macbook and not a big iPod touch.
“Oh, you little South Carolinian rascals are just so darn cute.”
*AUTOREPLY*: TowerTone is currently out of the office and will respond upon his return from a hiking trip.
It seems clear to me that this concerns intentional product differentiation. Sure they might have had the idea for a time to add the camera to the Touch, but that would have made the rationale for a nano purchase less compelling. So they rejected that idea, at least for now. Simple.
@TowerTone
Now that’s funny!!!
Cheers!
The Times lies/spins to it’s readers.
In this case, where’s the downside?
Come on!
A lot of concept hardware never sees the light of day. The iPod touch with a camera is just the latest in a very long list.
There is a big difference between the CEO of a company lying about their own products without making false claims (eg. Steve Jobs) and the CEO of a company lying about other companies’ products to try to undercut the competition (eg. Steve Ballmer and his comments about the iPhone being the most expensive phone on the market, among countless of his other blatant lies).
Wow! That’s a sentence that William Faulkner would be proud of!
And you wonder why Apple management (and U.S. Presidents) are hesitant in talking to the press.
If you are looking for a lie, check out what Steve Ballmer said about the iPhone when it first came out.
Jobs returns and finds there are problems with the camera in the iPod touch and says, “Why did we want one in there to begin with?” He tells the staff, “This is really a gaming platform anyway, and we can have a lower price on it. Tell the supplier, they blew it, we are not going to put any effort into design changes for what has turned out primarily to be a gaming platform.” From his point of view, he is probably telling the truth.
I think the people who are upset that there’s no “new” camera touch need a reality check. The rumor sites are, in all honesty, wrong more often than they are right.
I think the reality that people need to face is this: There isn’t camera iPod Touch. The “faulty camera” just isn’t believable, as it doesn’t make sense to use anything other than the camera in the iPhone 3GS. (Common parts = cheaper, and is a much lower-risk “known” quality as far as availability and reliability goes.)
I swear the idea coes along the lines of this:
It’d be neat if Apple did exactly what I want them to do – be it a tablet, a new newton, Blu-ray, Apple TV with a DVR (and/or blu-ray), what have you.
Then you hype it up, generating traffic and getting ad revenue. People get excited and join in on the circle-jerk. Then when it isn’t released, the rumor site proclaims that there’s really a secret problem, just to attempt to keep credibility.
My prediction: There won’t be an Apple tablet for a long, long time, if ever. Larger screens mean exponentially more pixels, which in turn means exponentially more CPU/GPU power to drive them – meaning larger batteries and more weight. By the time you’re done, you have something slightly thinner than a MacBook Air, and nothing to protect the screen from damage. (At least you can close the lid on the MacBook Air)
There are two problems with this story:
1) Someone intimately involved with the issue speaks on record. A blogger cites unnamed sources. The blogger and his unnamed source is treated as more credible.
2) As many people have pointed out, buy a new touch, take it apart, and look for camera connections on the circuit board. It’s not hard to do research in this case. You should also take apart an iPhone to make sure the two devices don’t share a board.
@TowerTone
“You LIE!!!….ooops, did I say that out loud? Sorry.”
Hey, now you can ask people to donate!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
So Jobs did the Times’ work for it. So what?
@ MDN
> third-party cases were made for 3rd-gen touches with camera holes in them, for crying out loud…
There were also cases made for a supposed “iPhone nano” product, and that never materialized either. Apple often leak false information. They sometimes even spread false information internally to find out where leaks are coming from.
Also, it is very possible that this revision of iPod touch was supposed to get a video camera originally, back before Steve Jobs was on medical leave (when he was probably “distracted”). That would be the commonsense decision, since iPod touch is iPhone minus the phone, right? Then, during his recovery from surgery, when he was thinking more clearly, he realized that giving the iPod touch a video/still camera and video editing software (at this time) would significantly cannibalize sales of his company’s (by far) most profitable product, iPhone. Apple probably makes more up front profit from selling one iPhone (including subsidy payment) than five $199 8G iPod touches. So he made the tactical decision to remove the camera this time around.
This malfunctioning parts rumor is also something that indirectly helps Apple, even if the decision to drop the camera (or to not have one there in the first place) was 100% deliberate. They probably wanted the more critical and well-informed in the public and media (such as MDN and its readers) to believe that Apple would certainly have produced an iPod touch with a camera, but they were victims of “bad parts” from their supplier. Even if it makes Apple look bad, that is actually a better story than Apple intentionally reducing the iPod touch’s capability to increase profit from iPhone. But Apple does this type of product differentiation all the time; look at the lack of desktop Mac (with no built-in display) between Mac mini and Mac Pro – they want customers to buy a laptop Mac or an iMac (or move way up to a Mac Pro), where there is more profit.
For the typical customer, it’s just an opportunity for an Apple Store sales pitch… Customer is looking at an iPod touch. Sales person casually informs customer that for the same price as that 8GB iPod touch, they can get a faster 16GB iPhone, and it even has a built-in video camera. Oh, and it will replace your clunky old mobile phone too. Some customer decides to get an iPhone instead, and some will still get the iPod touch. Every customer who opts for the iPhone is a big bonus for Apple.
Therefore, they state publicly that the lack of camera is exactly as planned, and that IS the real TRUTH. However, they plant this rumor, the LIE, and the media report it as the actual TRUTH (Apple is guilty of “spinning”). The public is always ready for another conspiracy theory. Perfect… Apple masterfully manipulates the media as usual.
“Did Steve Jobs lie to the NY Times?”
Probably, and they were ticked……and then they remembered that they love and reward lying.
alright, I’ll throw in my two pesos-
Supply chain. If the China deal is as big as imagined, not to mention the rest of the world, they might have decided to keep production as high as possible for iPhones until it stabilizes, then they can ramp up for the added craziness that will be the iPod Touch/Camera.
Meanwhile, those crumbs they threw in the form of the Nano update are pretty nice.
Keep in mind, I don’t believe they were worrying about someone buying a Touch instead of an iPhone, but that the company is geared towards the Global iPhone Take-over, and they don’t want to take their eye off the puck….
According to people I know at Apple it was not a bad part. The 32 and 64 GB iPods were never designed with a camera. The iPod design team did add a Camera to a copy of the prototype drawings for internal Apple security that they planted for a suspected secrets leaker to kind. They did the same thing with a copy of the iPod Nano but they removed the camera from the Nano and made the screen even a big larger.
The nano camera information didn’t come from with-in Apple it came from a case maker that accidently leaked the information when some posted the wrong on their website.
Everyone Claimed the Case picture had been Shopped because the information from within Apple that would know said that the Nano was too small for a camera. Everyone just assumed the iPod touch would have a camera.
I would guess based on my sources that the 8GB iPod touch will be replaced by a new 16GB iPod touch with the faster CPU and a still and Video Camera will come out in January of 2010 as planned. This Time frame will show Apple how the consumer is spending and how well the iPod nano with a Camera is doing.
I’m wondering if the new liver had some sci-fi movie affect Steve’s ability to contain how big Apple has become.
And… I’m guessing the $199 model was never supposed to have a camera in the first place. The higher end ones are clearly new models with new processors… the 8 GB: old model kept around to hit the price. If so, truly NOT lying. A feature not making the cut in new models because of technical issues… NO business with any sanity would reveal that.
If I’m right, when cameras do come, the $199 model won’t get one. Guessing further: Next year, this year’s $299 model will be the new $199 model and the current $199 will get dropped.