Apple is no longer a premium brand

For decades, Apple was perceived a premium brand with premium products. Products that just worked – with price tags fanatics aspired to. Ironically, Apple’s most successful products – the iPhone and iPad – have completely removed the brand cache.

At a glance – I can tell if a laptop is the latest MacBook Air. There’s still some value – if only in status – of having a the latest Apple laptop. Over the years Apple’s product designers have done a fantastic job of differentiating each generation from the next. Switching up curves and edges, black with silver, sparse with sparser. With each change, wallets were joyfully opened.

Unfortunately, all the iOS products look nearly identical. So nearly exactly alike that the significant only difference between the new and the old iPad is weight and thickness. Apple as status symbol is gone.

If a $117 iPhone 4 from WalMart can be mistaken for a $399 iPhone 4S at a glance – there’s little reason social reason to pay an additional $300. Conversely, everyone will have a $117 iPhone 4.

All children are above average.

The existence Android only makes it worse. Android, like Microsoft Windows never was a premium product. Without a great deal of spit and polish – it will never be a premium product – no matter the sexy hardware around it.

This means there’s a significant void in the status symbol gadget market.

Today, I only see one thing likely to fill that void:

The absence of a gadgets.

We may have quickly reached the point we signal our status by our realtime dis-connection.

Additional point: Cricket offers pre-paid, unlimited iPhone for $55/mn

Unbuttoned

a couple things I’ve written on the subject of third party buttons littering the web:

from 2010

“In my experience, customer preferences move faster than website refresh schedules – so by the time the ‘Facebook Like’ button is integrated in a useful manner – the visitors changed their preference.”

from 2006

“Once I’ve decided on where I’m doing my bookmarking and where I’m aggregating my feeds and set up the pre-requisite accounts – all of the other badges are irrelevant, noisy, and ignore the fact that most of those places have bookmarklets. If I haven’t set up one yet – it’s the paradox of choice.”

Open Loop #0 – But No Shoes

Drinking beer with our right brain. Introducing Open Loop. Being compelled. Thinking Fast and Slow. The time that Jamie deleted all of his nginx configuration files.

Notes & Links:

It’s Also an Issue for Me.

“The things I did because I was excited and wanted them to exist in reality have never let me down and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them” – Neil Gaiman

While I’ve never read anything by Neil Gaiman – I feel a strong kinship towards him (of course I’ve seen his Dr. Who episode). One of my college housemates was an unbelievably huge fan. So huge he would immediately notify the entire house of Neil Gaiman sightings (not terribly unlikely where I went to school).

There are times, even 15 years in, that I still consider myself an artist. That I also feel some camaraderie for those choosing a career as an artist. This commencement speech from Neil Gaiman was one of those times.

Elsewhere:

“I don’t see programming as a job, I see it as a creative act.” – Dave Winer

Short Term’s the Same Too

“In long-term, facebook will be the next AOL. Think about it.” – Stewie

I’ll even say Facebook is Aol in the short term.

  • Both are frequently confused for the internet.
  • Both very rigid, ad-subsidized publishing platforms.
  • Both pay their writers nearly nothing in exchange for a promise of exposure and more efficient publishing tools.

In Aol’s hay day (circa 2000), it acquired Time Warner (awkward). From a media publishing & distribution standpoint a merger sorta kinda makes sense (if you squint). Nine years later – they divorced. A blink in publishing, a generation online.

For Facebook to truly be analogous to Aol, Facebook needs a similar balls out acquisition.

There’s not a lot of candidates.

  1. Someone with a long, established history in cameras and other portable hardware (so not Opera).
  2. Someone without a great deal of cache or presence with Facebook’s target audience (so not Apple).
  3. Even better if they’ve got a huge stable of actors, musicians, and other creative assets that might be attractive to Facebook’s target audience (so not Samsung).
  4. Someone with declining revenues (so not Disney)

How about – Sony?