I don’t mind MacMost being labeled as a “fanboy” site. I am an Apple fan. But it doesn’t mean I think everything the company does it right. Here are five things I think Apple should do differently.
1. The iPhone should be on more carriers. They shouldn’t have an exclusive deal with AT&T. We should have all the major mobile companies in the U.S. and elsewhere competing to give us the best price and service. The bottom line would be more iPhone sales and happier iPhone owners.
2. MobileMe should be free and better. The price of admission for MobileMe should be simply owning a Mac or an iPhone. And MobileMe should have features like Blogger, FaceBook and Flickr. MobileMe as an Apple-only social network would be a huge hit and would drive Mac sales like crazy.
3. The iTunes store should ban DRM. Apple should use its market-leading position to put an end to DRM. I’ve been buying music exclusively on CD and at DRM-free sites like Amazon. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
4. New versions of Mac OS X should have an upgrade price. Paying full ticket price to upgrade isn’t reasonable.
5. Make Apple TV more useful by making rentals good for 36 hours and adding some basic RSS-reading Web-browsing functionality. Add a BluRay/DVD player to it for $100 more. To make it really great, add DVR functions.
Five Things Apple Is Doing Wrong
Comments: 4 Responses to “Five Things Apple Is Doing Wrong”
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1. The iPhone should be on more carriers. They shouldn’t have an exclusive deal with AT&T.
---I'm sure Apple would love that, but any casual observer knows that Apple couldn't get the other carriers to sign on. This is not Apple's doing, but the work of a crappy bunch of service providers.
2. MobileMe should be free and better. The price of admission for MobileMe should be simply owning a Mac or an iPhone. And MobileMe should have features like Blogger, FaceBook and Flickr. MobileMe as an Apple-only social network would be a huge hit and would drive Mac sales like crazy.
--- Yes, MobileMe should be cheaper and better, but I can't imagine Apple ever making it free again. I'd rather they integrate with other established social sites instead of making another failed walled off garden.
Also, We don't need another crappy social networking site.
3. The iTunes store should ban DRM.
--- Oh, jeez. Again, Apple has NO control over this. The money grubbing studios wanted DRM and would not sign with Apple without it. The fact that Amazon sells non DRMed music is not an indicator of wrongdoing on Apple's part. Amazon got those non DRM deals only after Apple's marketshare of online music became so large and AFTER Apple began the push for DRM free music.
4. New versions of Mac OS X should have an upgrade price. Paying full ticket price to upgrade isn’t reasonable.
--- This is too broad to pin down. Yes, we get LOTS of free upgrades from Apple. We also get obscenely cheap software in other areas. It's still cheaper than Windows. We may yet see Apple push this down lower. I'd appreciate it.
5. Make Apple TV more useful by making rentals good for 36 hours and adding some basic RSS-reading Web-browsing functionality. Add a BluRay/DVD player to it for $100 more. To make it really great, add DVR functions.
--- Rental times will likely change only after the whole online rental business grows to need it. This isn't wrong, it's just the current pricing scheme. Competition will be the deciding factor in time limits.
We'll likely see a few more features added, but I don't think that Apple's going to slink into trying to create a lame Web TV type device.
BluRay is just dumb and I still don't understand the appeal. It's too costly and defeats the purpose of the Apple TV, which is to push purchases from the Mac.
The price for a new version of Mac OS X is the upgrade price you can only put leopard on a mac that has had a version of OSX on it before
"The price for a new version of Mac OS X is the upgrade price you can only put leopard on a mac that has had a version of OS X on it before"
This is patently FALSE.
Apple only once created an upgrade disk. That was the disk given away at Comp USA and sold through Apple for 19.95. It was the 10.0 update.
Apple has NEVER created an "update" version to be sold. Every copy has been a FULL copy of OS X. I know because I've purchased every version and the option for a full erase and install has always been present.
This type of misinformation is just sloppy and lazy.
1.
In the Netherlands, Apple also has an exlusive deal with just ONE carrier: T-Mobile. But here in the Netherlands, we don't really care. We just buy the iPhone in a country where you can buy it simlock-free, we take it home and we put in our SIM-card.
Problem solved, and it's not against the law...
2.
I totally agree to that. You shouldn't be paying for MobileMe - it's the internet life of your Mac, and that thing was expensive enough already :|
3.
That's already happening right now...
4.
I like that idea, but they should then require the people who want to get an upgrade disc, to take the receipt from the purchase of their Mac with them, so the sales person at the desk can verify that they own a Mac.
5.
Okay, let's change that idea a little bit. I would say:
Make the Apple TV more useful by making rentals good for 24 hours of re-viewing, and adding a simple RSS reader and WebKit-based webbrowser, so you can browse the web on your TV. Also, they could add something like a weather widget to it, so you can see what the weather will be that day. Maybe it's nice to make it somewhat like the (I thought it was) WeatherBug-program which is pre-installed on the Wii-consoles. Also add DVR functionality, and the functionality to burn DVD's from your recorded shows through your Mac.
I dropped the BluRay/DVD player, and I dropped the very long rental time (I changed it to 24hrs).
The reason for this is, just as Fred states, that a BluRay or DVD-player would definately defeat the purpose of the Apple TV, which is to push purchases and files from the Mac to your TV.
You should think the Apple TV to be some kind of media center. I mean: who does NOT have a DVD-player right now? So why would you want to incorporate a DVD-player into the Apple TV then?
These were my thoughts on this article. Thanks for sharing it with us!
- Daan Berg.