apple products "product cycles"

so maybe i'm not a certified applenatics that is why i did not know that apple has certain months when they announce new things or improvements for their products. "product cycles" is what they call it.

But he also pointed out that having to come up with another dazzling show every January—a huge production, starring knock-'em-dead new products every year—was unsustainable. He noted that Apple marches to certain annual product cycles: the holiday season (Novemberish), the educational buying season (late summer), the iPod product cycle (October), the iLife development cycle (usually March), the iPhone cycle (June). January doesn't fit ANY of them.

found the above from a news article from NY Times, click here to read article in full :http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/technology/personaltech/08pogue-email.html?bl&ex=1231563600&en=45ee9cc416dcd0bd&ei=5087%0A

what that means is if you plan to buy an apple product, then perhaps it is best to wait after during the month, above, depending on the product you are thinking of buying. that is true specially if the month you are buying it is very close to that product's product cycle month.

macworld event - applenatics and stevenatics restless and protesting

it's brewing. there is a strong undertow but pretty soon, the closer we get to the macworld event, applenatics, apple product fanatics and stevenatics, steve jobs fanatics will bring it all on the surface. it's an event to watch out for, for very different reasons.

Steve Jobs
The ailing creator of the iPod and iPhone is next to irreplaceable.

For two years I wrote a satirical blog under the persona of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs, and one of the recurring themes was that Jobs is not actually human but in fact is a demigod, the offspring of Zeus and a mortal woman, an immortal figure who uses his extraordinary powers to restore a sense of childlike wonder to the world by creating magical consumer-electronics products like the iPod and iPhone. This is, after all, a CEO who inspires a frightening level of adoration from Apple fanatics. These people think nothing of camping out overnight in freezing cold weather just to attend one of his speeches. No other chief executive is so inextricably linked to his company's brand and products. As one Wall Street analyst put it this year, "Apple is Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs is Apple."

Alas, however, Jobs is all too human, as became evident in June when he appeared at an Apple conference looking frail and gaunt, causing Apple watchers to worry that perhaps Jobs had suffered a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer for which he underwent surgery four years ago. Later, word leaked that Jobs had undergone surgery in the spring. Fears flamed up again in December when Apple announced that he would not give his annual keynote address at the Macworld conference in January. Asked about Jobs's health, an Apple spokesman says that if at some point Jobs were unable to perform his duties as CEO, Apple would make this known.

Jobs cofounded Apple in 1976, got tossed out in 1985 and returned in 1997, when the company was as close to death as a company can get. Since then he has orchestrated one of the greatest turnarounds in corporate history, making Apple into the hottest brand in consumer electronics. At the end of 1997 Apple stock was trading for about three bucks a share. Today those shares trade for $96, after shooting as high as $202 earlier this year. The weak economy might take some wind out of Apple's sails, especially since the company sells mostly to consumers rather than to corporate customers, and because Apple's products are hardly cheap. On the other hand, Apple's customers are fiercely loyal and aren't penny-pinching bargain hunters. They're not likely to start buying Dell computers or Motorola cell phones just to save a few bucks. If anything, they'll just wait a bit longer before upgrading their Apple gear.

Jobs began Apple's turnaround with the 2001 introduction of the iPod, which defined and then dominated the portable-music-player market—and which became central to the resuscitation of Apple's computer line. The Mac, once derided as a toy, today is the best personal computer on the planet, period. And the iPhone is the best smart phone. Nothing else comes close. As of the third quarter of 2008, Apple's iPhone was outselling the Research in MotionBlackBerry, even though the iPhone had been in the market for only 15 months. When measured by revenues, Apple has become the world's third-largest mobile-phone maker, behind Nokia and Samsung. All this is happening just as mobile devices are poised to become the most important omputing platform.

For all this and more, thank Steve Jobs. He's not an engineer. He can't write a line of software code. He is, by most accounts, a terrible manager, prone to tantrums and abusive tirades, almost unbearable to work for. But he is also a genius —a relentless perfectionist with a keen eye for design and a Zen master's sense of which features to leave out. His products are simple, spare and elegant, with the best user interfaces in the world.

Moreover, Apple is not Jobs's only home run. In 1986 he spent $10 million to buy a sad little company that was trying (and mostly failing) to sell specialized, high-end graphics computers. Twenty years later, having renamed the outfit Pixar and turned it into an animation house, he sold it to Disney for $7.4 billion

http://www.newsweek.com/id/176318

life without meaning or steve jobs not on stage at the macworld conference

i both understand and do not understand what the fuzz is about apple's announcement that steve jobs not delivering the keynote address in the coming macworld event.

here's why i understand it. steve jobs in my mind is his generation's most brilliant marketer in the world, bar none. no one man has done what steve jobs has done - he was kicked out the company he has built after he introduced apple computers. he came back to it, but did other things - macbook, ipod, itunes, iphone and back to the mac. all those things have changed not only our digital life but also our real lifestyle. they are not just brilliantly marketed products, they were superior products that not only led the industry the products competed in, it changed it, if it did not create a whole new industry by itself.

that is a very eloquent statement on why many are disappointed that steve jobs will not be at the macworld event. apple is steve jobs and steve jobs is apple. its just not the same if it does not come from the horse's mouth itself. well steve job's mouth.

all those marvelous and life changing products are largely credited to steve jobs.

and that's the part that i don't understand. are we sure that's all of steve job's doing? how sure are we on that? steve jobs must be a superman or some alien working out of cupertino.

when apple announced jobs will not be the keynote speaker, apple stock prices dropped by at least 7%. i don't get that - investors who bought apple stocks are buying into steve jobs and not apple products? that is what they seem to be saying.

it's as if without steve jobs around, all the macs, iphone and ipod will stop working or consumers will stop buying them. it's like telling us what most people bought were not ipods and iphones but a piece of steve jobs. that sounds really sexy and poetic, but come on now!

don't get me wrong. i have long been a fan of steve jobs. on my very first trip to the US many years ago, i had asked my hosts to drive me to their cupertino headquarters and had a picture of myself taken in front of their office. and i have read everything written about steve jobs since then.

but i'm not one who thinks owning an ipod means owning a piece of steve jobs and his absence will remove all meaning on life and apple products. i would love to have steve jobs to live forever and to be at every apple event but the world will not crumble without him.

apple's product, r&d and marketing strategies are so crystal clear that i'll be surprised if they are not written in stone in some sacred mountain. having these strategies and thinking clear and solid ensures apple will thrive as a company for more years to come with or without steve jobs. unless, of course those who will replace jobs don't know how to read and can't think.

macworld will continue to be an event to watch. but it will be for a different reason. this time, it will not be for what jobs will say but it will be for what he will not say and who will say it.

after that event, i'll come back here and talk about what i understand and what i don't understand.