Hey Apple, you get NEXT week!
January 8th, 2008 by Jeremy ToemanDid a quick scan on Techmeme this morning for interesting CES news. Guess what I see?
Apple decided to announce new servers today. I call this a lame move.
Last year, Apple dominated CES without even being there with their iPhone announcements. This, in my opinion, was fair game, since CEA scheduled the conference to overlap with MacWorld.
However this year there’s no schedule conflict. And the PR guys and marketing team there know this, and they also know that by issuing virtually ANY news (Mac servers? really? do they exist?) they are going to get prominent coverage. In other words, they did this intentionally to steal any limelight from the thousands (yes THOUSANDS) of companies spending HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars at CES.
This is a lame move akin to a bully stealing some lunch money. Lame, and unnecessary. And in case anyone’s forgotten, I actually like Apple now. Well, maybe just a little bit less.
UPDATE: okay, 20 comments later, I get it, you don’t agree. that’s fine, and some of you raise some good points. but no need for the personal attacks, that’s lamer than lame!
January 8th, 2008 at 9:36 am
“This is a lame move akin to a bully stealing some lunch money.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. I suppose you can look on matters that way. It just emphasizes how far ahead Apple projects its plans, how globally it thinks – no other company does such a good job.
I think Steve Jobs is just getting the fluff out the way early to leave enough time in the keynote to talk about the really good stuff. I also just ordered my new Mac Pro, so I fully approve of the early announcement
January 8th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Jeremy, lay off the caffeine, or drink some more, or something. Sheesh, talk about lame-o rants.
And by the way, the main announcement wasn’t about *servers*, but about plain-old desktop computers like the kind used by plenty of professionals in science, content creation and the like.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Lame move? Bully stealing lunch money? You don’t seem to understand the ways of the world that well. You are suggesting Apple needs to wait their turn? If anyone is lame, it’s you.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Apple’s announcement was obviously awaiting Intel’s announcement yesterday. And if this simple press release generates more interest than CES, I don’t think I’d blame that on Apple. By the way, can someone at CES find out if the Mac Pros are on display in the Intel booth?
Now if Apple was holding a press gathering to trumpet this, that’d be something worth complaining about…
January 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Macintosh Pros are used more by businesses than consumers. Therefore, the announcements of new Macintosh Pros and Xserves takes very little, if anything, from CES.
Also, MacWorld nowadays has very few of the people who really care about Macintosh Pros. It’s a more consumer-oriented show. So I’m not surprised that Apple announced the Mac Pros outside of MacWorld.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I think that is unfair. Top end desktops is not really what CES is all about, and I think that Apple released this product information in good faith: precisely because they must have no space for it next week at MacWorld.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:07 am
They introduced upgraded Mac Pros and Xserves. And I think when you see what they introduced next week you will see why they did this ahead of time. It has nothing to do with CES and everything to do with a new line of consumer desktops in the middle price range. They want the news to be about the new line not about upgraded Pro models.
I have NO insider information I own NO Apple stock This is just my opinion
January 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] the CES disruptor Ahh, you gotta love the Apple PR team. They weren’t willing to keep quiet during CES week and announced a new [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Apple breaking in and stealing gear at CES would be the equivalent of stealing your lunch money.
This announcement is the equivalent of the cool kid wowing the class with his homemade crossbow when you’ve been working all week on your little chemical volcano.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:14 am
So I guess you’re saying that Apple should have participated in CES? Or is it that you view the tech space as a dichotomy, one part being Apple and the other everyone else? Interestingly, many of the CES announcements related to Apple products, like the JVC TVs that have built-in iPod docks. Nothing wrong with that, right? It’s just Apple itself that shouldn’t announce anything this week, even if it’s something not important enough to make the cut for inclusion in MacWorld SF. I don’t know, but I think you might be making much more an issue of this than it is — after all, Apple just issued a press release, but they didn’t place it at the top of techmeme. We did.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am
That’s how marketing works. It’s strategic. If Apple’s announcement supersedes some of the announcements at CES those firms need to produce more compelling products. To be frank, you’re basically arguing for collusion.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Apple’s announcements today have nothing to do with “stealing” from CES. And what if they did? That’s life in the Big City. If the CES product announcements were more interesting, *they* would be at the top of Techmeme.
And as to #5, “MacWorld nowadays has very few of the people who really care about Macintosh Pros. It’s a more consumer-oriented show.” You couldn’t be more wrong – not only in the spelling of the show (it’s “Macworld” – no capital “W”) but Expo will have *thousands* of people using MacPros who are ecstatic over today’s announcements and hundreds of MacIT guys (there’s a whole conference track at Expo dedicated to them) who are looking with great interest at the server announcements.
The agony and ecstasy of Macworld Expo is that it is a show for *everyone* in the Mac Community.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Maybe other companies should spend that money on building better products and then people would pay attention to them.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Aw. Diddums.
Maybe the thousands of companies at CES should spend hundreds of millions of dollars on making products that people care about instead.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Apple usually introduces new machines whenever the chip supply is solid.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am
How can it be Apple’s fault that them releasing new machines, is more interesting than a whole industry presenting all their new stuff?
If Dell where to release new machines, they would get close to no media coverage. Nothing unfair at all, it is just a glaring example of how uninteresting pretty close to every other tech company is.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Monkey boy!
January 8th, 2008 at 10:55 am
It’s completely unfair that this blog post took me away from reading about CES. Don’t you have enough already? The humanity!
January 8th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Apple’s great at the pre-launch. Get people excited enough that they write about what they think will happen, and then launch officially so they write about the same thing again. Pure genius!
As well, if what Apple is doing overshadows what happens at CES, that’s life – it ain’t always fair despite how much money you spend going to a trade show.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Hmm. Clever blogger steals flow by posting an anti-Apple rant ahead of Macworld. And I like Jeremy. Very much.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Let’s put it into perspective; CES is 40% real, tangible, products and 60% product mock-ups and vaporware. Macworld Expo is 85% real, tangible products and 15% vaporware. Also, why should someone have to choose between CES and Macworld? I think this is the best of both worlds.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Jeremy:
Sorry, this isn’t Apple trying to steal thunder from CES. This is Apple saying that a major processor upgrade for their top machines isn’t worthy of a slot at MacWorld.
Here’s my take: http://channelingdesign.tumblr.com/post/23299037
-Will
January 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
This is hardly an “anti-Apple rant”; it came across as a little tongue-in-cheek, and in any case, it *is* unusual for Apple to be making an announcement about new systems a week before MacWorld. I don’t know that it really steals thunder from CES, but let’s not pretend that people at Apple are sitting around going, “Oh, CES? That’s this week? We didn’t know that. Pure coincidence!”
At any rate, one can’t help but wonder what Apple *is* going to announce at MacWorld now that hasn’t been revealed — and I’d say it’s a safe bet that getting people asking that question was the real reason for this. My suspicion is that computers are going to take a backseat at the keynote again, and this is a way to forestall complaints that Apple is downplaying the computer business.
One could make a case that Apple should be making iPod/iTunes announcements *at* CES and saving MacWorld for, you know, Mac announcements, but that hasn’t been the way they’ve been playing it for a while.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
@Mark:
“Get people excited enough that they write about what they think will happen, and then launch officially so they write about the same thing again. Pure genius!”
If Steve Jobs spends more than 2 minutes talking about the updated Mac Pros, it’s a sign some other product got cut at the last minute. Once again, this means *something more important* displaced the 8-core news.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
While you’re moping, maybe you could write a post on how the New Hampshire presidential primary diverts attention, too?
If CES can’t get any interesting products, I don’t see why they deserve guaranteed coverage and exclusive publicity.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
hey jeremy, the one thing that’s lame here is you, your small mind. In fact it’s so lame you have to say you like Apple to cover it. I actually can’t believe your writing sounds that childish, grow up your mind a bit to see a bigger picture, most people who pay attention to Apple can immediately say wow with the annoucements, “wow’ because it’s so obvious that it certainly has something more powerful (than the PowerMac & Xserves announced today) in store comes the 15th. Truth is Apple doesnt have to steal thunder from CES because there’s none there. Get it now?
January 8th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
If CES can be completely overshadowed by Apple releasing two incremental product updates… Whose fault is that?
Maybe if someone besides Apple was showing cool new products, they wouldn’t have this problem.
CES is unimportant. There’s no reason for Apple to delay a product announcement just because some trade show is going on.
-jcr
January 8th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
anonymous – thanks for your valuable contribution, especially in doing it anonymously. well done sir.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Give the guy a break. It’s amusing that an Apple press release(s) can cause so much havoc. Someone deserves a raise.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Actually Watts, Apple did the same thing last year and updated one of their models incrementally a week before Macworld. Obviously it would have got swamped with the iPhone news had it been announced at Macworld. Same thing here.