People know the Price, not the Value

I and many of my peer group have little use for Apple. I was a huge fan of Apple until the Lisa project (Apple III & miserable failure, shortly followed by the Mac). I promptly dumped them at that point.

I think that Apple is a good example of a company who started as an innovator and then as they aged they became just one more large corporate parasite. The iPod revealed them to have pirated others intellectual property and I am willing to bet that the iPhone has also been built on unauthorized use of others intellectual property.

Could this be why Apple is a card carrying member to the Coalition for Patent fairness & PIRACY?

Today Apple is another example of a company who uses massive advertising and hype as a substitute for their inability to produce any significant inventions. When coupled with their egos and their "we can take what we want mindset" I think it is inevitable that they stagnate. If a company cannot invent anything significant themselves and they have alienated those who do, they are doomed to stagnate.

In my opinion, this is why Apple has become so innovative at hype and their hallmark is creating cult like cultures which persuade people to pay far more for their products than they are worth. It is a shame, because Apple could have been so much more.


Ronald J. Riley,

Creating a succesful mass market product requires:

1) Making something 99% of the population understands, can use and IS WILLING to use.
2) Marketing it in a way that 99% of the population understands, can be reached and brainwashed to use.
3) Giving it a "halo" of a "status symbol".
4) Giving it a price ALMOST unreachable, but still reachable.

What really doesn't matter is that it is an innovation, (but it needs to look like an innovation)that it is useful, that it is good.
What matters is what it looks like.
People, as usual, know the price, not the value