Back in 2000, during Apple Computer’s big comeback, I bought a 400 MHz Apple G4 computer. One week after receiving my new computer, and paying top dollar for it, the summer Macworld Expo arrived, with the announcement from smiling Steve Jobs of new, faster, cheaper computers than my one-week old obsolete G4.
Four years later, older and wiser, I was determined not to repeat the same mistake with the Apple iPod. I’ve waited for three months for the summer Macworld Expo (July 12 to July 15, 2004) to arrive before taking the plunge with an iPod. The day after the Expo ended, with no new product announcement in sight, I finally order a 15 GB third generation Apple iPod for $299.
It arrived on Tuesday (July 20), the day after the new 4th generation iPod was released! My obsolete 15 GB iPod, still in the shrink wrap, is now selling on Amazon.com for $50 less than I paid for it. I could have got a new 4th gen 20 GB iPod for what I just paid for my obsolete piece of shit. FUCK!!! :mad:
Hey Apple, I love your stuff, but would it be so fucking hard to give people a heads up when product cycles are being upgraded?! The auto industry actually announces when the new models are going to be available. Sure, some people may hold off on a purchase, but do you really want to piss off your customers this way?!
Well c’mon guys; the point here is not that the new technology is bad, it’s that they kept it secret (as Apple are wont to do, and with good reason) so that robby missed out on the shiny new technology. Which is a perfectly reasonable complaint. Have a heart, buying funky electronic toys can be a heartbreaking business…
rjung, congratulations by the way; you beat my bet by 4 posts.
If it’s still in the shrink wrap and if the tech upgrade is really so overwhelming that You Simply Must Have It, then return the one you have for a refund and order the new one instead.
You’re a little behind in your info, robby. Apple has been going out of its way not to announce new products at Expos. People caught on that Apple was using the expos to announce product revs, and so sales would tank in the weeks leading up to one. Many of the recent new products, including the iPod, the white iBooks and the iTunes Music Store, were announced at dedicated launch events with little advance notice.
Furthermore, the summer Macworld show is dead as far as Apple is concerned. They’re not keen to do two big events a year anyway, and once their vendor moved the show to Boston, Apple officially wanted nothing to do with it and refused to exhibit. Waiting for Macworld Boston unfortunately didn’t do you any good.
There are two events where Apple still regularly debuts new products: Macworld San Francisco in early January, and the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. If you’re heavily into audio/video, they also usually announce something at NAB.
Unfortunately, I didn’t buy actually it from Amazon.com; that’s just the first place I happened to see the price plummet. I bought the iPod from MobilePlanet, which isn’t even selling the 15 GB iPod anymore. From their return policy:
I could sell it on eBay for a loss, but with the price drop from lack of demand, I’d be out at least $100 from what I paid last week.
Finally, my rant is not about progress and new technology. It’s about the secrecy, which is a conscious business decision on their part. Yes, they can continue to sell the old products for full price up to the instant before the new ones become available, at the expense of pissing off these customers. Would it be so much to ask for them to announce the impending arrival of the new product a week or a month before becoming available, rather than this big surprise party shit? Apple actually gave Newsweek an exclusive story on the new iPod to coincide with their big announcement. My beef is that this announcement was delayed until the day the new units were available and begain to ship!
If they announced the new model a month in advance, the consumer could decide whether or not they wanted to wait the month, or could purchase the old model if they absolutely couldn’t wait. I’m sure the old model would continue to sell to the latter type of people, and nobody gets caught unaware.
my first computer was an apple IIc. a couple of weeks after i bought it, apple debuted the apple IIgs. a month or so later, they stopped supporting the apple IIc, and software for it started to disappear from the shelves. three months later, i owned a dead platform with no way to upgrade, no available software and two years to go on my installment contract.
not long after that, i purchased my first pc, and never looked back.
The new iPod has an improved software interface and is the only model that will run the latest iPod software, has the new clickwheel “buttons”, is slightly thinner, sells for $100 cheaper (for the upgraded 20 GB and 40 GB models; the 15 GB model was discontinued), and…
…wait for it…
has 50% longer batter life (12 hours vs. 8 hours).
Not that I’m bitter about this or anything… :smack:
It still works, right? You’ve got music you can burn to it and then listen to, right?
Then it’s not obsolete. An atari 2600 is obsolete, as you can’t get new games for it. You can still use it, yes, but not buy new things for it.
Yes, it sucks that you didn’t get the newest and best, and maybe you spent a little more than you needed to. Tough. You’ve still got a perfectly functional ipod that will continue to be supported by Apple until the new brain implanted mp3 player is introduced.
Bookmark this page and visit it whenever you’re thinking about purchasing an Apple product. Then you’ll be able to tell if it will be updated soon, or at least how long it’s been since an update.
Oh, by the way, I received my G4/450 about a month before that same announcement. I figure even if I had the extra 50 MHz or whatever, I’d still have an outdated, slow computer today, so I’m okay.
I feel a perverse need to point out that many people make do with machines that others consider hopelessly obsolete. I was using an IIc well into the early '90’s, well after many folks considered the Apple II a dead platform–and there are still Apple II and Amiga diehards around. I’ve never bought a new computer; for that matter, I’ve never bought a computer that was less than five or six years old. My motto: buy used, and let somebody else take the hit in depreciation. Everybody says that computers become “obsolete” very rapidly. I say, it ain’t obsolete until I say it’s obsolete!
