Apple Watch Shows Signs of Familiar Path to Success
Farhad Manjoo writing for the New York Times sums up exactly how I’ve felt about pundits criticizing the Apple Watch so early on:
Asking if the Apple Watch will become a hit or a flop is a bit like asking if my 2-year-old daughter is destined to go to Yale or to jail. Interested parties can speculate on the basis of thin evidence — she learned to walk pretty early, though on the other hand, she still thinks cats say “bow wow” — but youth is inherently unpredictable, and anyone venturing a long-term forecast based on short-term performance runs the risk of looking quite silly.
In the years to come, if the Apple Watch does become another hit Apple product, then guys like Mark Wilson will honestly end up looking stupid and ignorant, not silly.
As I pointed out yesterday, almost every major Apple product since the year 2000 has gone through a similar path, yet somehow the same people manage to figure a way to write some of the dumbest stuff I’ve ever read.
Seriously, just look back and you’ll see how each time Apple puts out a new product category tech pundits argue that it’s either too expensive, not revolutionary enough, or lacks important features. Here’s three examples:
With the iPod, user “The BrownFury” on Slashdot famously wrote “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”
With the iPhone, someone by the name of Matthew Lynn said that “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.”
With the iPad, pundits were maybe the loudest we’ve seen with Seeking Alpha writing a piece titled Why the iPad Will Flop in which he said “Tablet computers didn’t flop when HP was making them because HP lacked vision or creativity; they flopped because tablets were a bad idea.”
Yea… HP didn’t lack vision. OKAY!
Seriously, how do these guys get jobs writing about technology in the first place? How do you hire someone who is willing to call a device a flop so soon? As Manjoo points out, it’s simply way too early. Hasn’t Apple proven that time and time again?
I guess the phrase “history repeats itself” continues to hold up. Pundits will continue to say dumb things and it’s likely that Apple will have a pretty successful product with the Apple Watch. It won’t be easy and it will take some important improvements for that to happen, but hey, I wouldn’t bet against them. Not yet.