Monthly Archives: July 2008

Say What You Want, Apple’s Not so Great At Launching Its Products

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Okay folks, let’s be honest here. By now you know I really like Apple products. I’ll go to the mat arguing OS X is one of the best operating systems around, and far surpasses Vista. Nothing in the mp3 world can match the iPod. All that said, Apple doesn’t seem to know how to launch products very well. At least not since I’ve started riding the Apple wave.

If I didn’t know any better I would think Apple didn’t learn anything from the lauch of iPhone 1.0 last year around this time. If they did I wonder why they’re launch with they’re encountering problems with iPhone 2.0 on their iTunes site.

Add to that the problems with MobileMe’s launch yesterday and today and you know what I’m talking about. I have yet to experience something positive with MobileMe. It’s up, then it’s down. It’s up again, then it’s down again. It’s been a very Twitter like experience.

We Macophiles may snicker at Vista now and again (and rightfully so!), but the Windows folks now have something to tease us about. This is pretty ridiculous.

The crew in Cupertino know how to produce some fantastic stuff. It looks good AND runs great, which is darn hard to pull of for most. Nevertheless, when it comes to launching them we users are bound to suffer from an iFlu for at least a few days before things are as they should be. Let’s hope they come up with some medicine  soon so I can actually write something positive about MobileMe. :|

UPDATE: It’s late Saturday morning, Central European Time (CET), and things in the MobileMe world are still sporatic at best. It’s now to the point of being quite annoying. They are definitely giving Twitter a run in the annoyance category. Apple has, IMHO, failed miserably to successfully launch MobileMe. Lucky for them the press seems to love all things Apple, so they’ll receive the usual mercy. Nevertheless, they’ve got some serious making up to do in my eyes, and I’m not the typcial love-Mac-no-matter-what, MacBreak Weekly-swallowed-the-Kool-Aid type.

iExpensive

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It looks like folks from other countries are just as shocked by the prices offered by their countries’ providers as I am with Telia. Take for example Italy.

According to thisarticle in Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter (aka DN) (Swedish only), customers are not pleased with either offer from the country’s two iPhone vendors Vodaphone and Telecom Italia. The cheapest subscription package from Telecom Italia last week, Starter, offers users 1 GB of data traffic for 30 euros (47 US dollars, 280 Swedish kronor) per month, but users must pay per minute and per SMS prices. Vodafone remained silent then, but not Italian customers who took to the blogoshpere to vent their frustrations.

Now Vodafone is throwing its hat into the ring with three different private and one business subscription package. The cheapest private package is 59 euros (92 US dollars, 550 Swedish kronor), which includes 400 minutes of voice, 400 SMS messages, and 600MB of data traffic – with the possibility of an even cheaper rate for folks who are already Vodafone customers.

Italian business magazine Nore Il Sore 24 Ore says Vodafone may soon offer their fixed customers a monthly fee package of 9 euros (14 US dollars, 85 Swedish kronor), which if combined with their Freestyle subscription should bring the total cost down to a monthly total of 114 euros (180 US dollars, 1077 Swedish kronor). This includes 600 MB of data, but customers have to pay for each voice call and every SMS. Customers are rightly outraged. I don’t care how you slice it, that’s a lot of money.

One could take solace in knowing that providers from another nation are taking their customers to the cleaners as well. After all misery loves company, right? No. I’m not one of those types. I feel just as sorry and frustrated for the Italians who have to deal with this situation as I do us folks in Sweden. True capitalist that I am, I’ll sit back and watch the market handle things, and I’m more patient than I’ve ever been now. Though I live in Sweden, I stilldon’t have a 3G account yet because they’re simply too expensive. I was hoping the iPhone would bring me into the 3G world, but that’s not likely to happen any time soon. I stand firm on not even considering an iPhone via Telia. Truth be told, I’m now pondering, if only just, an iPod Touch. It’s pretty much the iPhone without the phone, and now comes in a hefty 32 GB size, which is the minimum amount of space I need on an iPod. And as the father of a beautiful 5 month-old little girl, I’m not at all ready to give up the fantastic digital cameraon my Nokia N95. The tipping point for me could be MobileMe. If it works half as good as the “Guided Tour” on Apple’s web site I’ll start saving for an iPod Touch right away. Until then I’ll just hope consumers react negatively to the high prices, allowing the market to correct the current offers from the providers.

Here’s to hoping all savvy European users rightly hold back on purchasing a 3G iPhone until providers wise up. ;)

(A hearty hat-tip to Elvis for the DN article.)

Laterz.

Apple Lands Its Largest European Corporate Client

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Apple is on the march. I don’t know who the lucky salesperson was to land the deal with German newspaper publisher Axel Springer, but it’s quite the deal. Big enough to be called the largest corporate European, and will involve 12,000 PCs. That’s no small sale. Congratulations to Apple on this and may they continue to march right on into the corporate world.

By the way, who do you think Apple’s #1 corporate customer is? Apparently it’s Google. For all of my Windows-defending friends out there, that’s something to think about. The company that searches out the best talent and spoils their employees with the best that’s offered relies on Macs. It makes all the sense in the world to me. ;)

Something to Consider

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I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people make fun of Germans. More often than not the joke involves a horrible German accent and an association with Nazism done in very poor taste. It’s one of the most unfair and weakest attempts at humor I know of.

What does one do when one is born into such a situation? We have no control over the circumstances we’re born into. I know more than a few Germans, all of who are fantastic folks who I’m honored and blessed to know. I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine them being associated with Nazism.

All that said, I wasn’t at all surprised to read this article about a German man ripping the head off of the wax figure of Adolf Hitler during it’s premier at the Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in Berlin. I can only imagine the rage the poor guy must’ve felt when he saw the wax figure of the man who pretty much brought a curse down upon his entire nation. I can only imagine…

Making fun of people over something they have no control over is definitely worth pausing over. It’s something to consider.