Tim Leberecht, in a Matter/Anti-Matter blog post, asks whether Apple's "shock and awe" approach to product announcements is a dinosaur in a Web 2.0 world. I think there are a couple of other points worth making for perspective on this.
First, Apple has shifted dramatically from purely relying on big announcements at big events. It used to be, until just a few years ago, that Apple really only had two times each year that it made major hardware announcements: Macworld expos in San Francisco and New York. The developers conference was used for software announcements. Between them was pretty much a desert.
Today, Apple makes announcements throughout the year, sometimes at other shows like the NAB. This has allowed the company to spread the much larger quantity of announcements around, and makes the Macworld announcements more focused. It surely also makes managing the larger product pipeline easier.
So while the expo is still the highpoint of the year, it is not fair to characterize it as Apple only having two real opportunities per year to make announcements and news, as Frank Shaw does. While the other venues are not as big as the mass-market-oriented Macworld, they are geared toward their niche audiences with appropriate announcements. And besides, two major events a year is one more than many consumer electronics companies have, which put all their eggs in CES....
Second, Apple has become much better about spreading the word through other means than the expos. Starting with the iconic Think Different and iPod campaigns, Apple has reinvigorated its advertising efforts with large infusions of cash and creativity. And the Apple Stores have been very successful at attracting new customers and maintaining interest for existing Mac users.
As Mr. Shaw puts it: "But I'm a huge believer in the value of ongoing communication, to the right audiences, about the topics they care most about, in a regular, sustained way." It seems to me that with the stores, advertising, and targeted product announcements, this is exactly what Apple is doing.
Lastly, let's also think about how Apple itself builds up excitement before Macworld. Aside from occasional teasers that are void of any information (such as the last one, "something is in the air"), it pretty much does nothing. It is famously tough on clamping down on leaks, and only sporadically gives previews to select journalists like David Pogue.
Ninety-nine percent of the excitement and momentum is generated by the user base, the media, the blogosphere, essentially doing Apple's work for it. Most companies would kill for that kind of free publicity. If the announcements don't live up to the hype, that's not because Apple itself has controlled what the hype should be about, but because Apple has an enviable track record of blockbuster announcements.
LAS VEGAS--Lots of companies here are touting green design and environmental thinking, though in some cases it seemed more sloganeering than anything very deep. Here are just a few samples from the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show:
Among other things, Nokia was showing off their reduced packaging (50 percent smaller; most of their phones now shipping in it; have saved them $150 million to boot)
HP had a large area of their booth dedicated to their environmental efforts, and like Nokia had several people on hand who could talk knowledgeably about it.
There's still a long way to go on this issue, though, as can plainly be seen by looking at the sheer quantity of stuff at the show. And those massive plasma TVs look fantastic, but they sure gobble energy like there's no tomorrow. Not to mention the fact that most of what's being shown here will be obsolete (and non-upgradable) this time next year, if not sooner.
Here are just a fraction of the shipping crates stacked outside one of the convention halls that were used to bring everything to the middle of the desert. Remember that closing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? It's like that.
At the Consumer Electronics Show, Hitachi is demo'ing a product called Starboard that is a multi-touch interface at a very large scale. You can use it to control a regular PC, and they've also got some custom apps for it. One of those is shown in the video.
What's interesting is that this is a projected interface, so it's untethered from the need to have a touch-sensitive LCD. This allows it to scale very large relatively inexpensively. They were also showing a wall-size version.
The projector in both cases was a very short throw Hitachi model that could produce an amazingly good image from an extreme angle. For the one in the video, the projector lens was maybe a foot above the surface, perched top-center of the image. Yet the image was completely distortion free and perfectly rectangular and about 4 feet across. Same thing with the one on the wall, which was an even more extreme example.
Lasonic Boomboxes
LG's booth at CES is gigantic, it just goes on and on including every CE gadget under the sun. It's classily decked out with designer furniture and glossy white and black plastic and glass everywhere (kind of like their products actually). They are definitely using design as their ticket into the big leagues (and presumably bigger margins), a great example of using design to pull up a brand.
This is small-d design though, for the most part - very nicely executed styling and materials and finishes, but broadly speaking they are styling treatments of existing form-factors, not real re-thinking of the broader user experience. Nothing wrong with that, of course, not every product is a paradigm buster, but it would be nice to see them stretch a bit more.
LG's booth
Another 'neighborhood' of the booth
LG is partnering with audiophile maven Mark Levinson
Very nice large plasma, but fingerprint-y
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