RaceTalk posted on Tuesday about the Apple/Gizmodo conflict involving a break in at the home of Gizmodo editor Brian Chen to recover an iPhone prototype. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show’s take on the situation (which aired last night) is a hilarious, sound bite filled segment titled “Appholes.”
Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune’s BrainstormTech blog wrote in a post today that his favorite Stewart rant was, “Apple, you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming The Man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man!”
RaceTalk’s favorite segment gem asks, “The cops had to bash in the guy’s door? Don’t they know there’s an app for that?”
Enjoy Stewart’s plea to Apple to return to innovation, and step away from the home invasions.
Mercedes Bunz of The Guardian had an interesting piece last week on how media companies and newspapers are evolving into technology companies. It opened with a poignant quote from New York Times executive editor Bill Keller (even if you don’t necessarily believe it).
“The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company.”
While we might expect this sentiment from other forward-looking media outlets, the idea that the Times values technology as much as quality journalism is telling. Of course they’re hardly alone. Every traditional media company is examining the technology opportunities that lie in front of them. Bunz’s piece also looks at the success that CNN had with driving engagement and crowd-sourcing through its iPhone application and specifically its iReport button. Wired magazine drew praise at SXSW for its technological interpretation of a digital magazine on the forthcoming iPad. Everywhere you look there seems to be another media company testing a new technology.
While the “media meltdown” hasn’t directly affected public relations and communications agencies quite like it has media companies, the same focus on technology is pressing for the industry. After all, communications, and marketing as a whole, are tied at the hip to the future of the media industry. Just as technology is becoming more and more an integral part of doing good journalism, technology is becoming more and more an integral part of doing good PR. I’m not just talking about run-of-the-mill uses of existing and mainstream social platforms, such as: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. I’m talking about re-envisioning how to reach media and more importantly consumers in the digital age. Much in the way the New York Times has to think about the problem.
These are not only the tools and services that agencies should be looking at from vendors, but the technology that they should be investing in to create on their own.
The agencies and practitioners that will be around for the next technology bubble will be those who can honestly say like Keller (without PR spin), “we’re as much a technology company as we are a communications agency.”
Some waking from a coma this week might think the Apple Tablet is able to find the cure to cancer or create world peace due to all of the attention that it’s getting. There are articles popping up left and right telling us all about this new tablet, even though we still don’t have real confirmation that it exists. It’s overshadowing everything, including President Obama’s speech tomorrow – which seems to be a lot more important then Apple’s rumored new device. Has a gadget ever received so much attention before it was launched or confirmed?
Sure, the Apple Tablet sounds cool – I admit, it should be good for newspapers and magazines if it can provide them with a decent revenue model, but it’s not like people are going to need to purchase this product – it’s very much a luxury. First, it will likely be very expensive, just like all of Apple’s products. This means then a very small percentage of the population will actually purchase one. Second, is a tablet the right product for right now? People have been purchasing smaller mobile devices (smart phones), not larger ones. Since the Tablet won’t fit in your pocket, it simply replaces a laptop, or becomes another gadget for the living room.
I understand that people follow Apple’s every move, but this time it seems a bit overdone (how funny would it be if tomorrow’s announcement is about a completely different topic!) Can we please see the Tablet for what it really is: another device Apple wants us to purchase and add to our collection of gadgets so that we can post tweets and brag about which gadgets we have and how cool they are.
I’m not against the Tablet (although the constant talk is getting pretty old at this point), I’m just questioning how it can possible live up to the hype. If it was some other lesser known company that was developing it, there would be a lot of questions brought up instead of people drooling over the chance to see some photo-shopped picture of the device.
So let’s take a step back and see what the Tablet is all about before we credit it with changing the world.
Disclosure: Racepoint Group works with Sony’s eReader division.
Last week, only a few days before Apple declared record sales for its iPhone, The White House entered the fray of iPhone applications. The administration’s iPhone app “puts the latest information from the White House in the palm of your hands,” according to its pitchman – White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
In addition to listing out the applications functions, such as: accessing exclusive photos, videos and Webcasts; Gibbs takes the opportunity to take a lighthearted shot at the White House press corps.
“In fact, if you want to see me set the White House press corps straight every day, live, now there’s an app for that,” Gibbs coyly delivers before walking into a daily press briefing.
RaceTalk posted on Tuesday about the Apple/Gizmodo conflict involving a break in at the home of Gizmodo editor Brian Chen to recover an iPhone prototype. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show’s take on the situation (which aired last night) is a hilarious, sound bite filled segment titled “Appholes.”
