Unless you haven’t seen a news site, checked your Facebook or been cornered by the resident IT geek, you would have heard about Apple’s new iPad which was launched today. In essence, it is an enlarged iPod touch with full book reading, Kindle killing features. And I admit, I am a little excited.
But the excitement didn’t start today. The internet has been buzzing with rumours of an Apple ‘tablet’ device for years. Apple enthusiasts have created hundreds of unofficial mockups and predictions which address features, design, functionality and even what Steve Jobs will wear when unveiling. The Apple community created a huge amount of noise in anticipation for today.
But with all this noise comes expectation. And for many, they were let down. From Twitter:
“Quite disappointed with the iPad. (AT&T = terrible, no multitasking, not widescreen, no flash plug-in, no camera, no GPS, can’t write on it)” AlexWorkman
“Not sure whether to be excited/disappointed about ipad at the moment…expected a bit more from Apple” VilleLee
“Very disappointed by Apple’s iPad. So locked down, so proprietary, so limited. We wanted a Mac tablet, we got a giant iPhone.” suprememoocow
“a bit disappointed in apple for the ipad..not as ground-breaking as i hoped…its decent..but nothing i would go out of my way to buy…” smisa
So far, there are 177,000 Google results for iPad and variations of “disappoint”. Just like the spawn of Andre Agassi and Stefi Graf, the iPad was always going to struggle to live up to the expectations that had been set for it.
But here’s the funny part: Apple did not create or fuel this expectation in any way. The production of all Apple products is top secret. Apple never confirmed they were working on a tablet device let alone hinted at the features it may have. In fact, Apple don’t even have a blog, Facebook or Twitter site. They embrace closed communication.
Yet because Apple have such a huge fan base, there was no prompting required. The community set the expectation level for Apple. It is up to Apple to rise to this level. Regardless of whether it sells one or one million, the next couple of months will be full of conversations about whether it hit this mark or not. And so far, it’s not looking good.
What do you think? Could Apple have levelled the expectations of the community by engaging them prior to launch? Or is this irrelevant? Does the existence of such an anticipating, involved community mean that it doesn’t matter what is said, the fans will buy the product anyway?
Nathan Bush is an Interactive Strategist at BCM
Apple is expert in the art of seducing their consumers. They were late to market with an mp3 player and mobile, but they succeeded with great design and innovatlon. See, touch, play with the iPad and if it’s true to form betcha you’ll be under the Steve Jobs spell.
Great point Kev, in the end there is no other product to compare it to and it’s being compared to imagination. Also, just came across this quote from Steve Jobs:
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give them to that. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
(via Brand DNA, http://branddna.blogspot.com/2010/01/wisdom-of-steve.html)
Interesting that one of the world’s most successful, technology embracing, innovative companies does not embrace social media.
It’s kinda refreshing
“But here’s the funny part: Apple did not create or fuel this expectation in any way”
I kind of disagree. In fact apple did create, and did indeed fuel this expectation in a multitude of ways. They did this simply by creating amazingly brilliant precursory products like the iPod and iPhone etc
They themselves set the baseline and by default all expectations.
Great read though, thanks