Apple Watch naysayers remind me of something....

[Rogifan]

...what people said about the iPhone when it launched. I'm sure the same type of quotes exist for the iPad too.

http://macdailynews.com/2014/09/16/...-a-student-in-their-first-trimester/#comments

• “Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail…. Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits… When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.” – Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006

• “The economics of something like [an Apple iPhone] aren’t that compelling.” – Rod Bare, Morningstar analyst, December 08, 2006

• “Apple will launch a mobile phone in January, and it will become available during 2007. It will be a lovely bit of kit, a pleasure to behold, and its limited functionality will be easy to access and use. The Apple phone will be exclusive to one of the major networks in each territory and some customers will switch networks just to get it, but not as many as had been hoped. As customers start to realise that the competition offers better functionality at a lower price, by negotiating a better subsidy, sales will stagnate. After a year a new version will be launched, but it will lack the innovation of the first and quickly vanish. The only question remaining is if, when the iPod phone fails, it will take the iPod with it.” – Bill Ray, The Register, December 26, 2006

• “I am pretty skeptical. I don’t think [iPhone] will meet the fantastic predictions I have been reading. For starters, while Apple basically established the market for portable music players, the phone market is already established, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake the phone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.” – Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, January 11, 2007

• “iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, January 13, 2007

• “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007

• “[Apple's iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007

• “The iPhone’s willful disregard of the global handset market will come back to haunt Apple.” –Tero Kuittinen, RealMoney.com, January 18, 2007

• “I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone… I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful)… So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.” – Richard Sprague, Microsoft Senior Marketing Director, January 18, 2007

• “Consumers are not used to paying another couple hundred bucks more just because Apple makes a cool product. Some fans will buy [iPhone], but for the rest of us it’s a hard pill to swallow just to have the coolest thing.” – Neil Strother, NPD Group analyst, January 22, 2007

• “There’s an old saying — stick to your knitting — and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting… I think people overreacted to it — there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it.” – Greg Winn, Telstra’s operations chief, February 15, 2007

• “I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007

• “Even if [the iPhone] is opened up to third parties, it is difficult to see how the installed base of iPhones can reach the level where it becomes a truly attractive service platform for operator and developer investment.” – Tony Cripps, Ovum Service Manager for Mobile User Experience, March 14, 2007

• “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007

• “The iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.” – Gundeep Hora, CoolTechZone Editor-in-Chief, April 02, 2007

• Motorola’s then-Chairman and then-CEO Ed Zander said his company was ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out the following month. “How do you deal with that?” Zander was asked at the Software 2007 conference. Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?” – Ed Zander, May 10, 2007

• “What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.” – Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, May 21, 2007

• “[Apple should sell 7.9 million iPhones in 2008]… Apple’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year is optimistic.” – Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein Research analyst, February 22, 2008

• “Microsoft, with Windows Mobile/ActiveSync, Nokia with Intellisync, and Motorola with Good Technology have all fared poorly in the enterprise. We have no reason to expect otherwise from Apple.” – Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams analyst, March 07, 2008

• “We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008

• “[iPhone] just doesn’t matter anymore. There are now alternatives to the iPhone, which has been introduced everywhere else in the world. It’s no longer a novelty.” – Eamon Hoey, Hoey and Associates, April 30, 2008

 

[StoneJack]

I am wondering why these experts failed to see something special in iPhone? Perhaps the software, iOS and apps?

 

[bbeagle]

I am wondering why these experts failed to see something special in iPhone? Perhaps the software, iOS and apps?

Either the 'experts' were competitors, who wanted to keep the status quo - or people who understood the old paradigm and couldn't see how different the product really was.

Many people looked at things like 'no physical keyboard' and immediately looked no further. They didn't understand the positives of it - only the negatives. Plus, they didn't WANT to change, they liked things the way they were.

The Apple Watch is similar - nobody will open their minds to what it can do, instead they're looking at the shortcomings, like 'must be paired with an iphone', 'nobody wears watches anymore unless for fashion' and other nonsense.

It'd be interesting to see old news articles in the late 1800s/early 1900s when the pocket watch was around and the wristwatch came out. This is so similar to me. Eventually, cell phones will go the same way. Everyone will eventually want to wear their communication device on their wrist instead of in their pocket when the technology gets here. (For example, the small size can be magnified to a hologram/projector above the watch that is much larger - IBM showed something like this a few years ago)

 

[5105973]

From the dismay over how thin the IPhone is vs. lost battery capacity, I think a lot of people fail to grasp the bigger picture in what Apple is trying to achieve. Apple doesn't look at these devices and think "cell phone," "watch"; they are thinking wearable tech that will give us the capability to interact with and control our environment (and I don't mean the freaking weather) to an extent some of us are only beginning to imagine, short of turning us into cyborgs. These are interfaces rendered in familiar forms but they've come so far from what phones and watches are, I'm shocked that so many people fail to see it.

I'm 48, I remember what it's like to be on a college campus and look for a phone booth to call someone to meet for a study group. I remember if I wanted to know the weather, I had to check a newspaper or call weather on a phone or watch the news. If I saw a weird looking bug and wanted to know what it was, that meant a trip to the library. Now all the things I want or need or ways to communicate are in a flat little piece of metal and glass and circuitry in my pocket. Soon much of that will be on my wrist. I'll have access to climate controls for my house. I'll be able to pay at stores by waving my wrist at a scanner. All these actions that used to take so much time and energy and resources to accomplish I can now do within a minute or two with a device that's almost always with me. Working in tandem, the phone form factor and the watch form factor will produce an interesting synergy and I can't wait to see where it takes us...well those of us who buy into it, that is.

I think so many people are blasé because they take so much for granted and are so short sighted. They don't realize how far we've come and how much of that is thanks in part to Apple and overall big vision, which is so rare in business.

The way news is reported and spread through instantaneous first person reports via social media is something that still amazes me. I'm remember an era when we heard it through Walter Cronkite at dinner time. I don't take anything for granted and I can see the forest AND the trees.

 

[Cashmonee]

Nearly half of your quotes come from the time before the iPhone was announced. No one had any idea they were going to announce what they did.

The post announcement quotes are mainly from click-baiters (Dvorak), and competitors (MS, Moto). A couple are from analysts, who are more often wrong than right.

And then there is the last one, which is actually correct. The iPhone doesn't matter anymore. It's now one of 5 or 6 really great phones that stand together. It hasn't been a trendsetter or really head and shoulders above the rest in years. I say this as someone who has owned every iPhone, and will continue to buy them.

My recollection of the sentiment at the time was that the iPhone had a lot of missing features, but that it was clear what the potential was. And by the time the 3G rolled out, it was obvious what had happened.

Watch on the other hand isn't really any different than all of the other smartwatches available. It does nothing to differentiate itself. I don't believe trying to compare the iPhone, iPad, or iPod with the watch is appropriate. It's not making much of a splash. At least not a positive one. Outside of Apple-centric communities, it has mostly been met with a collective, meh. It's a "me too!" product, where clearly the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were not.

 

[solo118]

...what people said about the iPhone when it launched. I'm sure the same type of quotes exist for the iPad too.

http://macdailynews.com/2014/09/16/...-a-student-in-their-first-trimester/#comments

• “Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail…. Sales for the phone will skyrocket initially. However, things will calm down, and the Apple phone will take its place on the shelves with the random video cameras, cell phones, wireless routers and other would-be hits… When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players. Unfortunately for Apple, problems like that don’t exist in the handset business. Cell phones aren’t clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good.” – Michael Kanellos, CNET, December 07, 2006

• “The economics of something like [an Apple iPhone] aren’t that compelling.” – Rod Bare, Morningstar analyst, December 08, 2006

• “Apple will launch a mobile phone in January, and it will become available during 2007. It will be a lovely bit of kit, a pleasure to behold, and its limited functionality will be easy to access and use. The Apple phone will be exclusive to one of the major networks in each territory and some customers will switch networks just to get it, but not as many as had been hoped. As customers start to realise that the competition offers better functionality at a lower price, by negotiating a better subsidy, sales will stagnate. After a year a new version will be launched, but it will lack the innovation of the first and quickly vanish. The only question remaining is if, when the iPod phone fails, it will take the iPod with it.” – Bill Ray, The Register, December 26, 2006

• “I am pretty skeptical. I don’t think [iPhone] will meet the fantastic predictions I have been reading. For starters, while Apple basically established the market for portable music players, the phone market is already established, with a number of major brands. Can Apple remake the phone market in its image? Success is far from guaranteed.” – Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, January 11, 2007

• “iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, January 13, 2007

• “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007

• “[Apple's iPhone] is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007

• “The iPhone’s willful disregard of the global handset market will come back to haunt Apple.” –Tero Kuittinen, RealMoney.com, January 18, 2007

• “I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone… I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful)… So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.” – Richard Sprague, Microsoft Senior Marketing Director, January 18, 2007

• “Consumers are not used to paying another couple hundred bucks more just because Apple makes a cool product. Some fans will buy [iPhone], but for the rest of us it’s a hard pill to swallow just to have the coolest thing.” – Neil Strother, NPD Group analyst, January 22, 2007

• “There’s an old saying — stick to your knitting — and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting… I think people overreacted to it — there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it.” – Greg Winn, Telstra’s operations chief, February 15, 2007

• “I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007

• “Even if [the iPhone] is opened up to third parties, it is difficult to see how the installed base of iPhones can reach the level where it becomes a truly attractive service platform for operator and developer investment.” – Tony Cripps, Ovum Service Manager for Mobile User Experience, March 14, 2007

• “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007

• “The iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.” – Gundeep Hora, CoolTechZone Editor-in-Chief, April 02, 2007

• Motorola’s then-Chairman and then-CEO Ed Zander said his company was ready for competition from Apple’s iPhone, due out the following month. “How do you deal with that?” Zander was asked at the Software 2007 conference. Zander quickly retorted, “How do they deal with us?” – Ed Zander, May 10, 2007

• “What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.” – Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, May 21, 2007

• “[Apple should sell 7.9 million iPhones in 2008]… Apple’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year is optimistic.” – Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein Research analyst, February 22, 2008

• “Microsoft, with Windows Mobile/ActiveSync, Nokia with Intellisync, and Motorola with Good Technology have all fared poorly in the enterprise. We have no reason to expect otherwise from Apple.” – Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams analyst, March 07, 2008

• “We are not at all worried. We think we’ve got the one mobile platform you’ll use for the rest of your life. [Apple] are not going to catch up.” – Scott Rockfeld, Microsoft Mobile Communications Group Product Manager, April 01, 2008

• “[iPhone] just doesn’t matter anymore. There are now alternatives to the iPhone, which has been introduced everywhere else in the world. It’s no longer a novelty.” – Eamon Hoey, Hoey and Associates, April 30, 2008

Steve Job's response:

 

[Rogifan]

Steve Job's response:

Image

And Tim Cook's response re: Watch:

 

[bunnspecial]

It'd be interesting to see old news articles in the late 1800s/early 1900s when the pocket watch was around and the wristwatch came out. This is so similar to me. Eventually, cell phones will go the same way. Everyone will eventually want to wear their communication device on their wrist instead of in their pocket when the technology gets here. (For example, the small size can be magnified to a hologram/projector above the watch that is much larger - IBM showed something like this a few years ago)

I've read a fair number of trade publications from the time...almost overwhelmingly wristwatches were considered "feminine"(although there were exceptions-notably among the aristocracy) until guys started wearing them as a matter of convenience in WWI.

Here's a good repository of articles if you want to explore the topic and don't want to spend the time digging them up

http://forums.watchuseek.com/f11/very-early-wristwatch-articles-1034112.html

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Nearly half of your quotes come from the time before the iPhone was announced. No one had any idea they were going to announce what they did.

It's just as bad as after the announcement of any major product. See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1774633/

 

[Jimmy James]

I have no prediction on the Apple Watch. I genuinely don't know.

Personally, I really wanted an iPhone. I wanted this type of device since the early 2000's and found myself frustrated by the offerings at that time. I've never had a particular desire for a smart watch (although I would enjoy owning one) and that seems to be a general sentiment. I'm not sure this is the iPhone reincarnate but I'll be watching (pun intended) with interest.