“The half-life of excitement levels surrounding Apple events is now measured in minutes,” Gary Cutlack writes for TechRadar. “People go from joyous sobbing to complete disinterest in the time it takes to compose and edit a cynical tweet.”
“The latest Apple launch followed the format we’ve come to know and expect of big technology showcases, with months of leaks telling us exactly what to expect, before, about three minutes after the event, the world shrugs and gets on with its business,” Cutlack writes. “This week saw Apple use its latest gathering to reveal the new, slightly thinner iPad Air, about which Apple seemed most keen to talk about the reduction in bezel size. Men in shirts also droned on about Haswell-powered MacBook Pros, plus, in a pretty brave move for the money-loving tech giant, it announced plans to take its Garageband music software into the ‘freemium’ world and release the actually-really-free OS X Mavericks update.”
Cutlack writes, “But, after the usual bit of teatime live-tweeting excitement, everyone soon got back to discussing more important matters, like when Kyle and Gavin’s GarageBand album will be released. Apple hardware may still sell like the clappers to the mainstream buyer, but the cynical internet population seems to be over its Apple keynote obsession.”
Cutlack writes, “And as tends to happen when people dissect Apple’s present-day performances, the workmanlike nature of the streamed presentation naturally had many yearning for some hot Steve action. DavGreg summarised the Jobs-for-sainthood feeling with his comment: ‘The millionaires we saw on stage the other day are all smart guys with many talents, but I think not one has the fire in the belly and clarity of vision of Steve Jobs.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s face it, Tim Cook has all the stage presence of a cardboard cutout.
As we’ve written many times before:
Tim Cook should seriously consider trying to convincing Jony Ive do Apple’s keynote presentations or, at the very least, participate in a significant fashion (live, not via video).
We know Jony can perform live and he’s mesmerizing when he does.
Have Jony onstage during Apple events and all of these silly “Where’s the excitement?”, “Should Tim Cook remain as Apple CEO?” and “Where are Apple’s innovations?” questions will evaporate immediately. Cook would be Apple CEO for as long as he wished. Where Apple is currently missing Steve Jobs the most is in the charisma department on-stage.
Failing that, pile on the Federighi; at least we can have a few laughs instead of just constantly missing Steve.
After watching every keynote since Steve returned I totally agree that these are unnecessary and might start to become a source of satire more than anything else. Maybe soon Apple would get more publicity by making most of their announcements through the site and reserve the big presentations for uniquely different thinking. Sort of Announcement Airs (web site only) and Announcement Pros (hosted at the sweet new auditorium in Cupertino). Agree that most in the audience of these keynotes, apart from the Apple engineers, are useless sarcastic tech commentators who contribute nothing but negativity.
The bad attitude toward Apple:
“Entertain Me Or I Will Insult You!”
the money-loving tech giant…
the cynical internet population seems to be over its Apple keynote obsession…
as tends to happen when people dissect Apple’s present-day performances…
the workmanlike nature of the streamed presentation naturally had many yearning for some hot Steve action…
not one has the fire in the belly and clarity of vision of Steve Jobs…
IOW: These are Hollywood-style reporters who require ENTERTAINMENT or they have nothing good to say about Apple.
HEY: Steve Jobs is D E A D . Move on.
HEY: Apple’s core has always been INVENTION. Inventors are NOT entertainers. Get over it. Jony Ive is NOT an entertainer. Jony Ive is NOT a marketing guy. Putting an entertainer into the position of CEO is NEVER a good idea. It’s plain old Marketing-As-Management, which is guaranteed to kill any invention oriented company.
Technology invention is BORING to marketing oriented people. Technology invention is BORING to Hollywood reporters.
That’s not going to change. Get used to it.
Should Apple find someone more entertaining that Phil Schiller to show off the marketing aspects of Apple products? SURE! Why not! – But never make such a person the CEO unless they have that extremely rare quality of being able to comprehend BOTH marketing AND invention. That’s what Steve Jobs had and what is exceedingly rare in today’s world of business.
I’d very much enjoy all the analcysts to face the dilemma of finding actual LEADERS in business rather than focusing on the brain dead issue of: ENTERTAIN ME!
Lest we forget: Many, if not most of Steve Jobs keynotes where quickly dismissed the next day as not being as good as his others, or not being interesting, or how he looked too thin, etc. Even the good ones were criticized because his “reality distortion field” made them seem good when really he had nothing impressive to show off. Criticizing Apple is literally a business, and plenty of sock puppets go to work for the competition instantly afterward each keynote to spread bullshit. They did when Jobs was running the keynotes, and they do it now. I see little change in the general tone.
Obviously, Jobs was great at them, but he also invented a lot of showman techniques that have been widely adopted, both by Apple and other tech companies, so most of the surprise it gone.
Overal, I think Cook is getting better and better. I also notice they are injecting a little more geek humor, which I think is new and works pretty good. Particularly for a geek audience.
Hard to believe they could be better in any way that would materially effect their sales.
thay are millioners, but when comes to seeing the future they are clueless dingdongs, and is shows
The best thing Steve Jobs did was his performance on stage. Christ MDN has Tim Cook love like you can’t believe. Tim Cook is “NO” Steve Jobs. The performance last week was about as exciting as a boardroom presentation. Phil Schiller and Tim Cook are horrible presenters. Their presentations make Steve Ballmer look exciting. Enough with the “Look at hour profit margins and features”. We get that crap from Microsoft. If Apple is going to be anywhere near magical again we need a different leader. Right now we have an operations guy and a marketer leading the company. I believe someone famous made a comment about a CEO being a sales guy. Remember who that is? Apple needs to be magical if not then they are no different than anyone else. What is most disturbing is there is “nothing” Apple is releasing these days we don’t already know about. The surprises are long gone. At least we have MDN painting kettles black for us.
Funny thing about exciting and memorable Keynotes – they only happen when a transformative new device is released. iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. All of those were startling leaps forward (yes, in most cases there had been previous iterations, most notable for being so unmemorable that only tech geeks even vaguely recall them). BTW, this is not some “Apple isn’t innovating” thing. Such devices just do not come around very often. They are fairly rare. Apple is one of the very few companies that has been able to do it consistently, so the bar is set very high for them. I enjoyed the Keynote this year and I think Apple is pushing their technologies ahead very well. It didn’t hit anything other than good notes. It just didn’t have “one more thing”.
I think there are a few issues here. Nowadays everyone is watching Apple much closer than they did before. People are keep expecting something huge every time which just isn’t realistic. Also because people are constantly watching Apple and their keynotes they able to see and somewhat accurately predict whats going come next. People have also figured out some of Apples trends and know where to look to know when something will happen. IE large fed ex shipments, Apple employee black out dates, Apple job listings etc etc. Many of things can’t really be hidden.
Another issue is leaks. Specifically leaks from China and the supply chain. With all the regular leaks of hardware people know almost exactly whats going to happen at the next event. While people where expecting a new Mac Pro nearly everything about it was a surprise. Probably because it was produced entirely in the US. No leaky Chinese supply chain to spill the beans. Did anyone else notice that?
With much of the surprise of the events taken away they just become more like informative briefings and not the surprise product announcement. People just want to know what does it do? how much does it cost? and when can i get one?
My personal opinion is that the keynotes are fine. People often want to knock Apple’s (Tim Cooks) keynotes but don’t say what can be better. usually.
Great comment. Too bad it’s way at the bottom of page 2.
A few more trends that indicate product launches:
Cell phone carrier employee black out dates. That’s not even within the company. Good luck keeping that a secret.
Amazon and other reseller stock levels, not to mention people phoning 1000’s of Apple stores to verify stock levels and then blogging it 2 seconds later.
Part of the problem, as already pointed out, is that leaks are the worst they’ve ever been. There are generally no surprises. That said, some facts have to be faced.
• I don’t worry about Apple as a company without Jobs, but the excitement factor of keynotes will never be the same.
• Craig Federighi may be the best presenter they have. I like watching him. He seems to have the right presence, humor, and he runs with the jokes about his hair.
Apple’s product announcements have come to be more about the show than the products to everybody but Apple.
Why would Apple give a fat damn about a critique like this? The product introductions introduce the products. No other company on the planet is held up to this weird “showmanship” standard. And frankly, the only reason Apple is held to this bizarre standard is because of a rose-colored rear-view mirror of Steve Jobs doing presentations.
The linked article seems to want entertainment at which products are introduced. I prefer product introductions that are easy to watch. The entertainment value shouldn’t need to exceed that.
I agree that Jony Ive would be a great presenter, but I think Tim Cook is a steadying presence who has enormous value also.
If there was free beer, I’d wangle an invite somehow.
I felt that all the presenters were under time pressure to get through their pieces. There was significantly more content in this announcement than other recent ones. The result? Stumbling over words/phrases and some rather factual spec. lists for products which had to have them to indicate what was “new” or “better”. The pace of the day was rather “one speed” and a fairly fast speed at that. There was little cadence. For instance, there seemed to be little time to dwell on the tech. barriers which had to be conquered in the design and manufacture of the remarkable iPad Air. For me it was the best bit of the day. So good that now I’m not sure whether my next iPad will be a mini or an Air !
So ……………… it was a great event in terms of volume of content, but some of it was difficult to make interesting, especially in the time available.
This was ridiculous and, as always, MDN is over the top.
Tim Cook was fine.
The products are fine.
Apple is fine.
Even “AAPL” is… fine.
Could not disagree with you more. Yawn inducing and a bit xenophobic.
A product announcements is only as good as the product itself, eg. show me an amazing product and watch me being amazed …
1 or 2 jokes is ok, but I think it was too much.
Why? Because there was only one January 2007, that’s why.
Over half the people I know do not care for iOS7. That’s an unprecedented number! 100% of the same people loved iOS6. You can spin it any way you want, iOS7 has failed to wow people. Admit it! It’s a feminine design that feels a lot cheaper than previous OS’s. Tim Cook must go! A complete yawner as CEO!