Financial Times: Dell and Microsoft can never hope to attain Apple’s Mac aura
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - 04:23 PM EST"Steve Jobs must be the ultimate corporate showman. Whatever else you might say about him – and as I am sharing a city (San Francisco) with the world’s leading Apple nuts here for Macworld, I’m keeping it complimentary – he knows how to play an audience. His key note at the Moscone Centre was one part political party convention speech, one part rock concert and one part evangelical church service," Ben Hunt writes for The Financial Times.
"There were product announcements, cool new adverts, an extraordinary special appearance by Paul Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, and demonstrations of some genuinely great-looking new software)," Hunt writes. "There was also – in complete contrast to Bill Gates at Consumer Electronics Show last week – a great deal of charisma and even evidence of a well-developed sense of humour (some of which was even self-deprecatory). Of particular note on this front was a demonstration of Apple’s new podcast-composition software in which Mr Jobs recorded his spoof Super Secret Apple Rumours cast in which he revealed the next iPod: 'An 8lb giant with a 10 inch screen.'"
"And boy did the faithful lap it up. One early moment of note was the announcement of an FM radio accessory for iPods, a fairly simple piece of technology. Or so you might have believed, but such was the collective intake of breath when a working shot of said accessory flashed up on screen you’d have thought he’d revealed the bones of Jesus on stage," Hunt writes. "But all of this is a major part of the Apple story. There is undeniable street credibility in the simple act of pulling out a Mac computer on a train or in the airport lounge, instant accessibility to an exclusive club of tech elitists. For all of Dell’s flexible pricing and Microsoft’s market dominance, they can never hope to attain this. It’s born in part, of course, in fabulous design. In part in great software and another part in market-defining products."
Full article here.
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aboot time apple get the recognition they long deserved