Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate
Macsimum News: Apple's hits and misses in '07
It's January, and you know what that means: lists.Macsimum News has identified Apple's greatest hits and misses from the last 12 months. There are no surprises at the top of the list: The iPhone, the aluminum iMac (though the lack of a non-glossy screen is a "miss"), iLife (minus iMovie '08....more on that in a minute) and the iPod lineup.
iMovie '08 was listed as a "miss," and I agree. While I've grown to like this version of iMovie - it's extremely simple to use - I want the missing features back. I can only guess that Apple hopes I miss them enough to buy Final Cut Express.
Other misses include the AppleTV (I haven't used one, so I can't speak to it) the lack of new Cinema Displays and meager Mac Pro updates. I hope we'll see the latter at Macworld '08.
Of course, the fun of a list like this is picking it apart like a holiday turkey. What's your opinion? What was Apple's biggest hit and worst failure or 2007?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Fritz Laurel said 7:16AM on 1-02-2008
Biggest hit: iPhone
Biggest failure: gouging early iPhone adopters
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Think Adrian said 8:18AM on 1-02-2008
You mean by lowering the price? Get over it.
PSM said 8:38AM on 1-02-2008
Seriously. $600 is within the normal price range of an unsubsidized smartphone (which I'm not saying the iPhone is, but I see why it would cost the same). IMO it's the people who are buying it now who are getting a steal, probably because Apple had to lower the price to tap into the market of feature phone users they really wanted, who probably weren't even aware that there are phones that cost that much.
Tom said 7:52AM on 1-02-2008
What the hell is with the flood of big black connect comments?
Racism thords me.
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Willux said 8:03AM on 1-02-2008
I dislike how the Apple TV always gets listed as a failure for apple, i have owned one now for about 6 months and since obtaining it i have not used, purchased or even looked at a DVD. On this front alone steve succeeded in simplifying my Media experience.
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Skeezle said 3:22PM on 1-02-2008
I predict that 2008 will be the year for Apple TV.
There will be a revamped Apple TV introduced this month. It will have more features (the ones everyone has been asking for) and a few other things that weren't expected. They will announce this with the iTunes movie rentals announcement.
Expect an advertising frenzy for it as well.
But again, just my prediction!
Drupa said 11:35AM on 1-02-2008
The thing is a paperweight. I am shocked that some folks find this thing useful. It outputs at 720i for crying out loud! I guess if you still have a CRT TV, this is acceptable but for the folks living in 2008 - it simply does not compete!
Mo said 3:49PM on 1-02-2008
I concur. My AppleTV rocks. It may “only” do 720p, but given that DVD content is a lower resolution than that, it works just dandy for me. Moreover, unless you watch TV from the same distance that you use your MacBook, I'd defy anybody to notice the difference at a normal screen size (i.e., less than 32").
Mine's hooked up (via HDMI to DVI) to a Dell widescreen monitor, which thanks to its many inputs is our TV. The DVD player's connected, but I doubt it's going to get much use in 2008.
PSM said 8:31AM on 1-02-2008
Biggest miss for me came in around Sept/Oct when Apple started cracking down on iPhone hacking and unlocking -- it wasn't so much the fact that the hacks broke, but what they said about it, followed quickly by their introduction of their ringtone policy. Their stance on user freedom sounded like everything that made me leave Microsoft for the Mac platform many years ago. Dare I say they surpassed even Microsoft and started acting like a wireless carrier. Of course they quickly retracted from a lot of those positions, but for a while I really felt betrayed and was embarrassed to have been such a vocal supporter of a company that would act that way.
I don't actually have an iPhone, so it was only important to me in a philosophical way. In fact when I bought a new phone right after that, I got a Windows Mobile phone instead because I TRUSTED MICROSOFT MORE to let me use it as I saw fit.
That's what I'm going to remember about Apple in 2007. I think maybe they just went through a phase and are over it now, but it's sort of like when a friend does something really nasty to you, and you forgive them but you know your friendship will never be quite the same.
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Brendan West said 8:55AM on 1-02-2008
But if you understand the nature of the 1.1.1 update, you wouldn't be so hasty to label it as cracking down on hacking. It was a ground-up rewrite of sloppy code Apple pushed out with iPhones so they could get the product _out_ by deadline. Then they rewrote and cleaned the OS. If you noticed, when you upgraded the phone acted like it did when you bought it.
No wonder it broke hacked phones.
Jer said 8:37AM on 1-02-2008
I agree with Willux on the Apple TV. We have a new baby and the Apple TV has been great. Showing the grandparents a slideshow on the big screen along with baby movies is nearly priceless. We've watched movies (from iTunes or moved over from DVD), podcasts, youtube favs, and of course having all of our music available is excellent.
I can see a number of ways to make it even better, but what we have right out of the box is well worth what we paid.
Perhaps the Apple TV detractors are measurbators?(http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm)
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Eideard said 10:45AM on 1-02-2008
Ditto on the AppleTV. Except for whiners who think they need yet another DVR, the critter is satisfying as any other advances in home media.
HDTV is still limited by available content. So is AppleTV. We don't have content providers stampeding into IPTV - well, at least not in the US.
But, my wife and I watch about 8-12 hours a week of downloaded regular programming via AppleTV on the big screen in the living room. It's choice #1 - because of podcasts like Cranky Geeks or Tekzilla or GigaOm - before we switch over to the HiDef DVR and DirecTV.
Hey, we're both geeks.
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tves said 11:39AM on 1-02-2008
I'm sure the ATV is a great product for what it does, but I just need it to play more codecs and VIDEO_TS folders from shares. I swear I'd buy 3-4 if it did this.
I don't need or want live TV from it (especially with the limited remote). I just hate the fact that Itunes only "accepts" Apple formats. I refuse to reformat everything and import it into Itunes. Even if Flip4Mac worked on it that would be great (I'm not sure if that's possible now)
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alfriede said 12:23PM on 1-08-2008
one of the biggest misses, that i've yet to ever see mentioned even once anywhere, is the fact that they came out with these gorgeous new iMacs all pretty in silver and black, yet failed to change the color of the keys on the keyboard to black too! it's the exact same keys as my black macbook has, so wtf??? that's been bugging me since they came out!
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Christina Warren said 5:15PM on 1-02-2008
Biggest Hit - iPhone, natch. I might not be getting one any time soon (cold day in hell and whatnot before AT&T gets my money), but it was undoubtedly THE tech product of 2007 - not just from Apple, but from everybody.
Biggest Miss - I do agree with the Apple TV. I like the idea - I think the idea is superb, I think the execution was severely flawed, and while I have no doubt that plenty of people have it and love it - there was absolutely no compelling reason for me to get one, because unless I hack it to bits - it cannot access any of my non-iTunes or MOV media. That makes it useless, as almost all of my videos are in AVI containers. If I can (and have been able to for over three years) access that information from both of my TiVos, and I can also access my photos, my MP3s, AAC files (not iTunes, but everything else) from TiVo - why should I invest in Apple TV?
That said, an AppleTV and Mac Mini combo is something I would definitely buy.
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Tony said 1:21PM on 1-03-2008
What's sad is that I totally forgot about AppleTV. For a product that had such hype behind it that's a surprise.
The real miss is that the iPhone gobbled up so much dev that it hurt nearly all of the other product lines.
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Chris Schmidt said 12:44PM on 1-07-2008
There is nothing wrong with the AppleTV that a 5mb patch couldn't fix. Let me buy content with it and open it enough to add more QuickTime codecs.
My guess, however, is that they expected to roll out rentals shortly after releasing the ATV but something got held up. I fully expect to see an upgrade in the coming weeks.
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Six said 4:45AM on 1-09-2008
I agree. All of the negative aspects I've noticed with my two Apple TVs are simply software-related and can be fixed with a simple update. There is no need for any hardware changes.
So here's hoping any updates to the product are software only.