Time magazine selects Apple’s iPhone as the best thing invented this year.
Why?
They list five reasons:
1. The iPhone is pretty.
2. It’s touchy-feely.
3. It will make other phones better.
4. It’s not a phone, it’s a platform.
5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come.
They are right.
The San Jose Mercury News says:
Jobs erred by dismissing the gripes of people who bought iPhones early, many of whom are Apple loyalists who felt insulted they were being overlooked in the company’s zeal to sell to a broader audience.
They say that Mr. Jobs is very sorry.
Well, don’t be sorry; just send us a $200 voucher.
If not, he is going to be in trouble.
And not only in the stock market.
Apple’s stock price fell 5 percent yesterday after the announcement, and was down further today, closing at 135.01, down $1.75, or 1.3 percent.
You don’t play with your most loyal costumers.
Just look at the first reactions on the Web.
A massive outcry is out there.
Just listen to them.
Listen… and send us the money.
(Illustration for TIME by Hanoch Piven)
UPDATE:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was flooded with e-mails from angry customers after the company lopped $200 off the price of the iPhone just two months after its debut, on Thursday apologized to early buyers and offered them a $100 credit.
In an open letter on Apple’s Web site, Jobs said that even though price drops are a reality in the personal technology world, the company was going to make sure it took care of its existing customers, even as it pursued new users with the iPhone’s aggressive price reduction.
“We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers,” Jobs wrote.
“We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.”
iPhone buyers will be eligible for a $100 credit good toward the purchase of any product at any Apple store or at Apple’s online store.
Jobs said more details will be released next week.
I told you.
Well, $100 is better than nothing.
What a historical marketing mistake!
The Chicago Tribune interviews some of the leading editors of American magazines.
Some quotes:
“While I do think online content could overtake newspapers, I believe that print magazines – because they are less ephemeral and more enduring, because they are more beautiful, because they offer perspective and amplify what people get elsewhere – will not be overtaken in the same way as newspapers,” Time managing editor Richard Stengel said by e-mail.
Here are some of the things Stengel and other top editors told us in e-mail responses about trends, the Internet and other influences in the world of print magazines.
-Bob Cohn | Executive editor | Wired
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “First, we’ll watch and learn from the newspaper industry, which faces much more serious and imminent competition from the Web. Beyond that, magazines have at least three things going for them: The marriage of design (lush photography, cool typography, inventive illustration) and words is much harder to capture online; your screen – whether it’s a cell phone or a desktop or a tablet – is a lousy way to read long-form journalism; [and] the magazine is the ultimate form factor – portable, rollable, tearable. Physicality is good.”
-Richard Stengel | Managing editor | Time
TRENDS: “I think we’re exemplifying one trend, which is a cleaner, more navigable design, and a more premium feel. Magazines go into people’s homes, and, at least for a newsmagazine, it needs to feel timely and timeless – in a sense, it’s like doing a monthly that comes out weekly.”
MORE TRENDS: “Of course, the other trend that is ubiquitous is how to transition magazine content online. I more and more think that online readers don’t want print translated into digital content – they want content unique to the online medium. So, for us, it’s how do you translate the qualities of the brand … into unique content for our Web site, which is now 24/7.”
-Janice Min | Editor in chief | Us Weekly
INFLUENTIAL EDITORS: “One of the most influential editors – and I’m not just saying this because I work for him – is [Rolling Stone founder] Jann Wenner. … And secondly, I’m just going to say a name everyone else says: David Remnick. Even if you aren’t reading his magazine, the New Yorker is so well-regarded that it’s the only magazine where intelligent people feel deep, existential shame if they don’t have a subscription.”
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “Online will eat into print, but it will never destroy it. Until people want to take laptops to the beach, there will always be room for magazines.”
-Will Dana | Managing editor | Rolling Stone
TRENDS: “To me, the big rule right now is that you can’t be bland and you can’t suck. There is a huge rush in the industry to think of your publication as a brand, and then extend that brand onto platforms. This is obviously a crucial thing to be doing, but in all this thinking about how you are going to reinvent yourself, you had better not forget about what got you established in the first place.”
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “Print will continue to be the primary engine of the magazine business, as long as we continue to offer great stories, great photography and great editorial packages.”
-Bill Falk | Editor in chief | The Week
TRENDS: Shorter stories, especially in the front of the magazine. More emphasis on perspective and commentary, and less on original reportage, scoops , and long-winded essays. Downsizing of staffs.
PRINT VS. ONLINE: “Readers still find print magazines more convenient, more portable , and more pleasurable to read. At The Week, we recently found this out the hard way, when we ran an online-only issue as an advertiser-driven promotion to coincide with Earth Day. I was inundated with angry e-mail from subscribers who said they loved reading The Week while commuting, in bed or on the toilet.”
-Cindi Leive | Editor -in chief | Glamour
From a great, long interview with Rupert Murdoch in Time magazine:
“They’re taking five billion dollars out of me and want to keep control,” Rupert Murdoch was saying into the phone, “in an industry in crisis! They can’t sell their company and still control it — that’s not how it works. I’m sorry!”
This week, TIME is offering four different options of the same cover story.
A good idea.
Be different!
This is an amazing picture.
For many years, we were told that digital photography would never match the quality of film.
Well… today, digital photography rules.
Period.
And produces briliant portraits like this one.
A great TIME cover.
This week’s cover story and front page of NEWSWEEK are excellent.
Shows how you can present a different view of the news.
More and more, newspapers and magazines have to find their own personality and NEWSWEEK is in the right direction.
TIME is in real trouble.
