by bill Palmer
The iPhone 4S with Siri has sold a million units online in twenty-four hours, four million by the end of its first weekend in stores, and several million more by now. Another Apple product, another big seller, another popular hit product. those who don’t get why Apple products tend to do well, a group who are small in number yet somehow manage to control most of the technology related headlines at most publications, are eager to write the 4S off for the same “I don’t get it” reasons: people who buy Apple products are fashionistas, iSheep following the herd, brand-loyal fanboys, Steve Jobs worshippers completing a religious ritual. The people who write these dismissive headlines, it seems, just can’t find anything of value in Apple products. an objective analysis reveals that it’s because they tend to be the kind of geeks who place little to no value on things like usability, practicality, or understandability – precisely, and not coincidentally, the exact same thing the mainstream is looking for. But the iPhone 4S is a different beast. In fact, it’s different because it’s so similar to the last one. an that makes the 4S in a comparatively unique position to demonstrate that it’s Steve Jobs’ consumer centric vision that’s made Apple products so popular with the non-geek majority…
Siri is the headlining feature of the iPhone 4S, and rightly so. It’s easy to use. It’s useful in practical ways. It’s fun, too. But it’s not the primary driver of iPhone 4S sales. instead these record setting sales the 4S is enjoying are based on the fact that, well, Apple came out with a new and better iPhone. The fact that it looks just like the old one means that no one is buying it for fashionista reasons, as the geek headline writers would love to claim. No one’s buying it so they can feel superior or trendy when they’re seen with it in public, as the geeks always posit about Apple users; that’s not possible here, as the 4S is physically indistinguishable from the previous iPhone 4. So why are people buying the iPhone 4S in droves?
For one thing, it’s the first iPhone to arrive on three carriers in the United States. Verizon customers largely turned up their nose at the late arriving Verizon iPhone 4, saying that they would instead wait until an iPhone arrived on Verizon at launch; it turns out they meant it. Sprint customers swore up and down that they would never buy an iPhone until it came to their favorite carrier; they meant it too, and now they’re snapping up the Sprint iPhone 4S after waiting patiently for four-plus years. iPhone 3GS users on AT&T are butting because they’re upgrade-eligible, and because they’ve judged the iPhone 4S, whose internal hardware specs surpass the iPhone 4 in a number of ways, to be worth the investment. Various prominent BlackBerry users have taken to Twitter to complain that their BlackBerry Messenger compatriots have switched to the iPhone 4S, pointing to an ongoing switcher trend as well. And yes, some iPhone 4 users are upgrading to the 4S even though it means paying extra because they’re not yet upgrade-eligible, to an iPhone which looks exactly like the one they’re upgrading from, either because they like Siri or because they like the internal spec upgrades.
Steve Jobs always believed that making great products which were suitable for mainstream consumers was enough, and that the kind of hackability and homebrew programmability sought out by the geeks wasn’t worth concerning himself with. Geek headline writers, who only focus on the latter, never understood what Jobs was trying to do and never understood why mainstream consumers bought his products in such large numbers, writing off Apple products as useless fashion accessories. But the iPhone 4S, by not representing a new hardware trend, by not making the old iPhone look outdated, and by setting sales records anyway, proves otherwise. Consumers aren’t buying the iPhone 4S to look cool. But then they weren’t buying the last four iPhone models to look cool either. The geeks don’t get that, and having no concept that ease of use is a virtue or a relevant buying factor for the mainstream, perhaps never will. But Jobs’ vision, whereby he was convinced he could build mainstream-oriented products and sell them to the mainstream while bypassing undue geek influence over those purchases in the process, gets yet another boost the similar-yet-solid iPhone 4S disproves the notion that it was ever about fashion, trendiness, or any of the other blind stabs in the dark which the geekiest one percent always grasped at as they failed to grasp the simple fact that Jobs understood the mainstream 99% of consumers in a manner they never could. Here’s more on the iPhone 4S.
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