Apple stuff “just works”, huh?
Seemingly taking a hint from Microsoft’s playbook, Apple, Inc seems to have botched the iPhone 2.0 launch so badly that the v1.0 iPhones felt the tremors.
The “it just works” mantra repeated so often by Apple fanboys and fangirls seems to have hit a snag.
Lest we forget that in 1997, Microsoft invested pretty significantly in Apple, when Apple was not exactly on top of its game. A hundred and fifty million dollars at around five and a half bucks a share means Microsoft bought around 27,000,000 shares. Based on current a market cap of $152B and a share price of $172, Apple has around 880,000,000 shares outstanding. If MS still holds the shares it bought in 1997, and given Apple’s June, 2000 2-for-1 split, that means MS owns a healthy 6% of Apple. Not a controlling interest, by any stretch, but certainly a potentially influential interest. I wonder if the push to increase “shareholder value” made the iPhone release a rush-job? Certainly Microsoft has been more interested in increasing “shareholder value” than in putting out quality products… remember the releases of WindowsXP, Windows Vista and Office 2007? All met with cold receptions initially, and each only really took off because “it was the only option”, when Microsoft discontinued availability and/or support for previous generations of those products.
I’m waiting for Apple to come out with the “iDontgetit”… a product to appeal to folks like me who aren’t swayed by slick GUIs or stark industrial design, but are more interested in raw power and functionality.