Random Thoughts from Macworld
I stopped by Macworld last week to check out one of the year’s most anticipated conferences (plus it is just two blocks away). The star of the show–the iPhone–was just that … a star. Sitting in a six-foot high glass case, slowly rotating and basking in the adoring gaze of several hundred people crowded around it, THE gadget of 2007 was an inanimate rock star. Onlookers ooh’d and aah’d, took pictures with their camera phones (a picture of a phone on a phone?), and got as close as the protective glass case would let them. It was hard not to. I still squeezed my way to the front and gave it a long, longing look – even after making fun of all the other gawking geeks.
It’s hard to say if the iPhone is going to be a game-changing product. From a never-having-actually-touched-it perspective, it certainly has the potential to be a monumental innovation. The user interface – using no buttons and a touch-screen keyboard – will certainly give cell phone manufacturers pause, as will the way the iPhone revolutionizes Internet browsing. The latter, actually, may be the iPhone’s best innovation, creating a experience that combines the familiarity of using a traditional browser with the practicality of the iPhone’s sideways flip solution that makes text and graphics on the Web actually big enough to read.
The hard part for Apple will likely be extracting $599 and a two-year cell phone contract from Cingular out of consumers. And those facts – especially the tie with Cingular, an almost universally panned service provider – may be a constant millstone around the iPhone’s neck. Blogger Paul Kedrosky also gave five flaws that Apple may want to address.
• If the iPhone was the star of the show, the iPod was the respected character actor – you know, the one who carries the movie on its shoulders but constantly gets second billing in favor of the flashy, more sexy star? The convention floor was dominated by iPod accessories – covers, cases, headphones, cord wranglers, straps, plug-ins, pull-outs … you name it, someone was trying to hawk it. Follow the basic conscripts of supply-and-demand capitalism and that’ll give you a good idea of just how omnipotent the iPod has become.
• Schwag. It was everywhere. From the inane – a weird boomerang thing that you tie your headphone cord around (are dangling cords actually a problem?) – to the excessive – free hot dogs at another company’s booth – people were giving it away. It’s a tradeshow ritual to gather as much free stuff as possible, throw it in a bag and then never look at it again, but does any of this actually work? Sorry Vakaadoo, but you wasted money by giving me a cord organizer, because I’d have never looked at it again if I wasn’t writing this. And I’m afraid to tell Glance.net that its hot dog giveaway probably didn’t raise brand awareness.
If you want to give away something that will turn passersby into potential customer, try something useful like a pen. I’ve looked at Eagle Memory’s name probably 100 times since Macworld, thanks to the slick, titanium-colored pen I swiped from the booth. Pens are boring, but gimmicks are trite … and I have to use pens.
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