‘Fool me once, shame on you…’
13th January 2011
Cringely doesn’t like Steve Jobs much.
Apple has a long history of milking early adopters. Even the crappy products (remember the Newton? the Mac Cube?) would sell a few hundred thousand units to the faithful before those faithful learned the sad truth. But just as they were learning that truth, along would come Steve Jobs (okay, not in the case of the Newton, but generally) gleefully proffering the real fantastic product people had been expecting months before. Then those same early adopters, reenergized, would buy all over again, whether it was an iMac, iPod, MacBook, iPhone, whatever. Why should we think this week’s Verizon iPhone announcement is any different?
On the other hand, those of us who own Apple stock take comfort that there are millions of people out there who regularly drink the Apple Kool-Aide, and ponder the classic business adage, ‘Never give a sucker an even break.’
Why are we smiling? Take a look.
For the record: I do not own an iPhone, nor do I have any intention to get one.