iOS alarm clock bug - strike two: not the kind of emotional experience Apple was shooting for

Everyone keeps touting the "emotional experience" of the iOS and Apple products in general. In light of that point of view, which I think is definitely accurate (if you ignore the fact that it is a pleasant 'emotional' experience to own something that is 'cool.') Apple should be firing someone over this Alarm clock bug fiasco. There have been a number of major iOS controversies: (1) AntennaGate, (2) the White iPhone4, (3) AT&T's crummy service, (4) children making in-app purchases by mistake, (5) App store developer woes and more.

This is a different kind of problem.

When people wake up late, when you make your customers look sloppy or delinquent, you create a lot of bad brand-karma. In this case iOS is solely responsible for causing its users to look bad. That's the exact opposite of the emotional experience Apple is going for. When you carry around an iPhone they want you to look good.

Now, the fact that it happened once was a royal screwup, but hey, today we live in a beta world. Failing twice just means that Apple doesn't care. They've used up a lot of their credit with this mess. They're extremely lucky that much of their largest markets are on holiday January First, and that's the only thing they have going for them with this problem.

Whoever let this happen twice is going to hang at Apple, and if Apple doesn't get it right this time, if they strike out on this super-simple super-basic iOS core functionality -- then they will lose a lot of credibility.

For the doubters: One important side consideration is that the younger demographic will care a lot less about this screwup, but the younger demographic is also the most fickle. It's the older demographic that will power the iOS market ahead of the Android market, and it's the older demographic that has the most money to spend. If that older demographic moves away from iOS because they can't rely on it, then that's a loss Apple will not be able to recoup and it could actually turn this into a Windows vs. Mac repeat.


Apple's secret weapon  is that iOS actually makes computing easier for the larger and older and richer demographic. I can't emphasize enough that this is the demographic they are screwing over by breaking basic alarm clock functionality. If they lock this demographic into iOS, which they're doing, they've secured their short term future and can focus on dominating the long term mobile market.

Another crazy Apple Prediction: Channels

I thought about this a while back and never posted it (nice to know I censor myself sometimes?) because I didn't think it ultimately very likely, but I'll put it out there because it isn't unthinkable, and if it were to happen, I could point to this post and say: "See? I thought this might happen" -- more or less exactly what I did with Antennagate which I all but predicted a month before the iPhone4 release. 

One of the reasons Apple may be holding back on subscription services is that they may want to make a major play for bundling various media into channels: Rather than subscribing to the NYTimes, you could subscribe to "US leading newspapers" and get the NYTimes, WSJ, Washington Times, for one low price, kind of like an album, or in cable television lingo, a channel.

What's cool is that with Apple's iTunes store being multi-media, the channels could include books, podcasts, apps, music, movies and tv in a single channel. 

They could have a Parenthood channel, a SciFi channel, a Self-Help (Lifehacker?) channel, a Cooking channel, a Gaming channel, a Womens channel, a MAKE channel, etc etc.

I don't know that they could ever quite pull it off, or whether they could pull it off in a way that would be advantageous to them, but think of the customer lock-in that could achieve. Sure Android might have all the same popular apps, but you can't purchase them for one low price along with related TV/Music/books/podcasts/magazine/newspapers etc.

Steve Jobs could very well usurp Howard Stern for the title King of All Media.

The Beatles were only a test..

Apple is priming itself as the premier release channel.

Any time they do something to draw attention the entire wired world joins in and gives it to them. Whether it's negative or positive Apple has proven they can draw more attention than any other Technology OR Media company.

The Beatles was the first time they called everyone together for a pow-wow about something so insignificant.

It's just Apple proving they are the ideal staging ground for releasing anything you would like to create the ultimate media frenzy. Apple is pointing out to anyone who may have doubted, they are so cool that if they want, when they release new content to the iTunes store, they can have everyone hold their breath for twenty-four hours. Even if everyone has already heard or seen that content before!

That's what this was. Apple's flexing its cool.

AT&T's early upgrade eligibility

What if it isn't just AT&T being a nice guy? What if before the end of 2010 Apple announces support of another wireless carrier? Was AT&T trying to lock-in as many people as possible ahead of the alleged Apple announcement coming this fall?

Really at this point, what's in it for Apple to limit the iPhone to a single carrier? It's not like they're trying to preserve the good user experience.. The only possible reason is that at this point, they can't keep up with the demand for users from just a single carrier.. (unless that's a frustrating marketing ploy)

Who benefits? I'm not sure its the user

I personally would've preferred to see Microsoft+Facebook square off opposite Apple+Google.

The way I see it, Google are engineers, Apple are artists. Yes Apple does good engineering work, and Google can produce nice UI, but I'm talking about when they're playing to their strengths.

Watching Google and Apple duke it out makes me sad that I can't have them both in one awesome product. Think about the integration and synching of the cloud with the simple elegance and usability of iPhoneOS.

If we need some industry bad-guy to spurr ingenuity and innovation, couldn't it have been Microsoft and/or Facebook?

I don't want to have to choose between Apple and Google. I want to see their products integrate smoothly.

In the end, I'll probably have to go the route of iPad + Android smartphone. But I'd rather have fully integrated google services on iPhone.

Maybe I should count my blessings that Microsoft wasn't invited to this party? Now how do we make Facebook irrelevant?

[I guess Twitter gets to be the kid who's always picked last.]