Apple Bowls Over Pre-Announcement Curse

There is a well-known curse in Silicon Valley which revolves around the fact that when product upgrades are pre-announced (whether by the company or not), sales for the existing product plummet. This isn't so with Apple.

Actually, the curse hasn't been in play for many items at all over the past decade or so. The latest example of this is the iPad II. Everyone knows it is coming, perhaps in April. It's apparent that it will be using a newer, higher resolution display. This new version will probably incorporate all the features missing from the original Apple iPad. Everything people moaned about will be fixed.

It doesn't seem to matter, though. The old iPad continues to sell like hotcakes, and the company will probably take inventory close to zero when it rolls out the new model.

I'm personally baffled by this. Do people have so much disposable income that they can cavalierly buy what is essentially a dead product and not care? Or, as most of them will do, knowing the behavior of the Apple mavens, buy the old one then the new one too. The magic spell Apple can cast on the public is amazing. I, for one, am glad to see the company use its hocus-pocus in China where the four Apple stores are a massive hit with the public.

The disappearance of the pre-announcement jinx is pretty amazing to me. It sure does smooth roll-outs and marketing schemes. Apparently, there are only a few people like myself who didn't buy the original product and will sit and wait for the follow-up product. Apple has erased the "wait and buy" guy.

There used to be an unwritten rule amongst the tech cognoscenti that you never got in on anything right away. Smart money laid back in wait. For a while, there was the notion that nothing should be bought or considered until version 3.0 arrived. It was always version 3.0 not 2.0.

This 3.0 concept had to die, because a company would go broke before releasing 3.0 of anything. But the idea of waiting and seeing remained solid until recently. Part of the demise of this sound idea stemmed from better marketing and the demise of the old computer magazines that promoted the wait and see notion.

While it's easy to blame Apple for killing the conservative approach towards tech, it was actually Microsoft with its rollout of Win95 who is to blame. That's when the lines and waiting overnight phenomenon began. TV reporters interviewed the people waiting in insane lines, and news stories were written about the all clamor. This is how Microsoft could pull off amazing, worldwide, PR stunts. I never could isolate the person really responsible for this new stunt at Microsoft, but they were long gone by the time XP and Vista arrived.

I figure they went to Apple since the idea transferred from one company to the other just like the baton in a relay race. Apple had it and was running hard.

So, now things have changed. Buyers are not cautious, and they need to have things right away, no matter what.

A new version is coming out tomorrow.
"So what, I need it now!"
Why do you need it at all?
"I just do. Everyone else has one!"

Wow. This is what we've become.