We know you’re all sick of our fawning over the iPhone, so in the interest of something different, we bring you Mike Elgan’s rundown of how the iPhone announcement was less than picture-perfect. He’s totally unbiased, as the former editor of Windows Magazine. In sum, Mike lists the screwups of his Steveness as:
• Made us expect too much
• Made Wall Street expect too much
• Gave Samsung, LG, Motorola, etc. a six-month heads up
• Undercut Apple TV buzz
• Possibly, if not probably, undermined current iPod sales
• Turned Cisco negotiations into a trainwreck
We don’t agree on much, especially the 6-month lead up, since Steve chose to hit the launch button before submitting the phone to the FCC’s leaktastic process of approval. And the Cisco negotiations? Despite the money, we’re pretty sure that Apple sees Cisco’s money/attention grab as a road bump on the way to selling all 10 million of the handsets in the first year. But…
some of Elgan’s points are well-reasoned. As we said, it just gets a little shakier when he speculates that the rush to announce the iPhone was sparked by a combination of the imminent arrival of the LG KE850 and investigations into the stock-option backdating scandal. He’s not wrong, per se, but there were definitely other, bigger factors going into the announcement. Whether you agree or disagree, it’s an article worth checking out.
https://gizmodo.com/lg-ke850-sports-a-touchscreen-interface-222110
How Steve Jobs blew his iPhone keynote [ComputerWorld via Slashdot]
