News Bites: Tech Secrets, Retail Lies, and an Unhappy Consumer
For this week’s News Bites, I’m doing a semi-rant on news, although, I’m not quite ranting about news because I’m mostly responding to the tech buzz Apple generates, a lot of which shows up in financial press blogs.
Screw it — I’ll just make this an open letter to Apple. Feel free to chime in.
Apple,
I cannot keep up with you. You spark more rumors than Miley Cyrus.
I need a new computer, and I’m not one of your customers who can afford to replace mine every time you update a model. But you keep updating your damn models every 6 months! When the hell should I buy my computer?
It’s not like I can count on your retail store for advice. I went into an Apple store last week to look at the MacBook Pro. I told your kinda slow, socially-awkward twinkie employee that I’ve read it’s headed for a major re-design this summer, and if I’m going to fork over $2,000 of my hard-earned money, I’d like to make sure I’m not getting a soon-to-be obsolete design.
He didn’t look so slow anymore. He bold-face lied to me and said, ‘œThose are just rumors. There’s no telling when they’ll change the design.’
I’ve worked in retail, Apple. I know you’re supposed lie to customer’s face like you believe it’s the truth. But c’mon! This is a $2,000+ purchase, not an unflattering V-neck sweater.
I know sometimes you start discounting products before they get replaced by a new model. You’re apparently doing that with 2.5G iPhones now that the 3Gs are coming. But why the secrecy with laptops?
I’ll be happy to give you my money. I love your computers. Just help me and other loyal customers with a little more transparency. I’m sure there will be plenty of people who will snatch up the outgoing models if you discount them.
Celebrities may think it’s cute to keep us guessing about whether or not they’re married, pregnant or in rehab, but you’re no celebrity, Apple. Please come clean about your product launches. Our livelihoods depend on it.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Concerned Customer
Am I alone in this, or are you readers annoyed by Apple too?
I don’t agree. Here’s why:
1. For competitive reasons, companies don’t disclose plans for product upgrades. It would be strategically unwise.
2. Knowing something about Apple and its employees, I can pretty much guarantee you that an employee at an Apple store is not privy to information about upcoming products. Apple is notoriously secretive about its product strategy; see this story in Wired magazine for some background.
3. When companies upgrade their products, they don’t expect you to replace the laptop you bought six months ago. Most likely, the laptop you buy today will work just fine a year or two from now. If it continues to do the work that you bought it for, there’s no reason to replace it.
Though you can’t expect Apple to give out information about upcoming products — doing so just hurts demand for the current inventory — there are Web sites that track rumors about upcoming products. Since Apple’s developers’ conference is coming up this month, you can probably expect some new products to be introduced. But I don’t personally think it’s reasonable to expect Apple to publish product road maps for its customers. It doesn’t know how technology will evolve, what chip availability will be, how pricing will fluctuate, how products will perform in QA tests, etc.
I’d agree with you jostarbuck if I owned shares of Apple. Their strategy keeps people buying.
But as a consumer, I believe there’s a legitimate frustration with constant upgrades. And my frustration in particular is about a major redesign.
Not the best analogy, but at least the auto industry has a reliable timeline of when a car gets a makeover. Some auto manufacturers aren’t so secretive about their new lines.
The design of the MacBook Pro has changed little since 2003. Five years tech time since then, and with no mention of a redesign, that’s like keeping mum for 20 years.
Speaking as a long-time Mac user and as a shareholder…
This is the price of having a cutting-edge computer company; but we also benefit from getting better value and features IMHO. Your computer won’t magically stop working once a new model comes out, and there’s always a better model around the corner. If I want the computer, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been too long since the last update, I’d go for it.
But if you want some help in guessing when the next new model will be coming out, MacRumors has a page with all of Apple’s products, showing how much time has passed between updates and whethr or not they recommend buying now or waiting: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
As a classic early adopter I can tell you that newer is not necessarily better. I’m always the first to buy a new technology (cell phones, laptops, mp3 players, etc)out of my groups of friends. The first incarnation of a product generally goes through rigorous QC testing, the later incarnations not so much. Every product I have has lasted me 10+ years with no problems or breakdowns. When I talk to friends who get new phones every year or new laptops every couple of years (or any other tech device) all I hear are complaints about how they have to send it in for repairs, it’s not working or what have you. People should worry less about having the newest model of something and more about having the highest quality model of something.
Well, if Apple would stop guarding the redesign of the MacBook Pro like it were some national security secret, I’d be an early adopter too — of the new model!
Haven’t MacBooks and MacBook Pros only been around for a couple years (they were iBooks and PowerBooks before that). If you’re arguing that the MacBook Pro isn’t significantly different from a PowerBook… I’d disagree. But that’s neither here nor there. I’ll just echo everyone else’s sentiments that as long as it does what you need it to do, it’s probably not that big a deal. Yeah, it’s always a little annoying, but you do pay a premium for getting the latest and greatest. If it’s a significant upgrade over your current computer, then you’re gonna love it regardless.
Ugh, that was a minute wasted reading something that had nothing to do with the headline… Guess what? All tech companies update their products every few months, that’s been going on since the 80s. Guess what? Everyone knows how secretive (paranoid?) Apple is about everything. Guess what? Most of the people working at Apple stores, BestBuys etc are high school/college punks that don’t really know much about technology, they are just there to sell you stuff, not to answer your questions – that’s what the internet is for :).
Ugh, another minute wasted leaving this comment.
Sorry, but this kind of POINTLESS rants is NOT what I expect from this personal finance blog.
Worrying about potential “obsolescence” of a computer doing what you ask it to do is pretty much just consumer lust. Pick the computer to do what you want it to do. Use it until it doesn’t do what you want. Then replace it.
Dima, you are welcome to disagree, but you could at least provide a rational argument like everyone else has. The only message your comment communicates is that you’re having a bad day and you’re taking it out on a blog post — that’s the kind of comment you find on Yahoo!, not on this blog. There is a point to my post. You simply don’t like it, and you’re being nasty about it instead of challenging my conclusion with reasoned statements. I expected to get some heat for commenting about Apple with less than effusive words of adoration, but your reaction is rather extreme, to put it nicely.
Trent, you busted me. I am guilty of technolust. I want the latest and greatest. I know that my computer won’t stop working once there’s a new model released. However, I’m quite disciplined about how I spend and save my money, and if there’s only one indulgence I can have, I’d like for it to be my computer. After all, I spend most of my day on it.