Comments on: When WOW Becomes Not-WOW

By: Cynthia Thompson

Cynthia Thompson — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:46:26 +0000

I disagree with you……Apple is one company that continually WOWs me! Every time I use the Iphone, I am WOWed. When I see someone else use another type of phone, the Iphone continues as a WOW for me. Apple’s stock is a WOW for me. As a lover of music, the Ipod is a huge WOW for me! And I will purchase the new Iphone this summer and give my old one to my daughter. Believe me, she will be WOWed. I have to admit that my local Apple Store is not a WOW, but others where I have shopped are awesome. Thank you, Apple and Steve Jobs

By: Paul Merrill

Paul Merrill — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:11:38 +0000

The big NOT wow part of the new phone is the extra $10 a month AT&T charges for using it.

The $60 of the old one was already out of my budget.

Consider yourself lucky for being able to afford either.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:17:19 +0000

A real WOW would’ve been if Jobs had figured out a way to end the exclusive contract wit AT&T.

Imagine the buzz had he welcomed customers of ALL wireless carriers to get an iPhone at the new affordable price! Many, like me, would get one in a heartbeat.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:41:04 +0000

I believe the limitation of the “wow” is in the language itself. If you say “wow” for the first, and then it is improved, it is simply redundant to say “wow” again. The language needs a word to go past “wow” for the improvement on “wow”. Maybe we could borrow an expression from the Scots such as “Cow Wow” for the next move up.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:39:09 +0000

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:05:39 +0000

Hallo
I think we should not judge some thing before we see it.
That is a good lesson.

Greetings
Rebecca

By: Lawrence Salberg

Lawrence Salberg — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:11:09 +0000

Gotta say that I think the announcement, unlike some other venues, was done at the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) that had 5,500 developer (code geeks) present. Considering that over half the 1.5 hour presentation was done by someone other than Jobs and covered the nitty-gritty of the Software Developers Kit for the iPhone, I feel it’s reasonable to assume that “big bang pow”, followed by your “WoW” was not really the message being sent to the average consumer. It was indeed big news to many of the attendees and interesting to them, but the price point drop was, I think if anything, an inducement to bait any remaining skeptics into considering throwing their company’s weight behind development for the iPhone – to demonstrate that soon, almost everyone will have an iPhone.

It’s likely that you, like me, are just almost over-hyped prior to any announcement being made by Apple, thanks in part to stellar huge announcements in recent years and no thanks in part to the Apple fanboys hyping up stuff constantly on Digg (without merit quite often). We have, in essence, become numb.

If Jobs had announced a personal iPhone for $99 each, would it had been any bigger? If he had demo’d an iPhone app that could make you a millionaire overnight, would we really have been shocked? Not me. Excited, yes? Shocked, no.

As for the day traders who haven’t a clue about a company’s actual long-term potential, I wouldn’t even give any credence to their slipshod actions. And I’m real curious — if they are pulling money out of a company, are they backing someone else (if so, who?), are they just pulling out of the cell phone industry as a whole, or are they just thinking that Apple can’t make any more profits than they’ve already made. If the last option, they are fools. Maybe they missed the 70 country bit? That’s a lot of iPhones. I don’t travel to them countries, so I don’t care, but if I was a stock holder, I’d be licking my chops.

By: Bruce Stormer

Bruce Stormer — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:27:03 +0000

While I understand and agree with what you say about expectations and WOW for us in New Zealand there was a WOW because we have not had the iPhone reach our shores yet. But yesterday a launch date was released (July 11) so now we (along with about 11 other countries) get to experience the WOW of an iPhone becoming available on our local mobile network for the first time soon.

By: Wayne Zeitner

Wayne Zeitner — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:59:03 +0000

Mike, I’m pretty sure the fall-off in Apple’s stock price had to do not with the iPhone itself, but with Apple’s decision to give up revenue-sharing from its telecom partners.

By: Ed

Ed — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:58:41 +0000

I think you just discovered two fatal flaws in the WOW concept.

A) There are a finite number of WOW’s in the universe. Case in point: a runner breaks the 4 minute mile – WOW! Someone breaks that record – WOW! Eventually the record is broken and re-broken – Ho Hum. Meanwhile, the human body can only run so fast. No one will ever do the mile in zero minutes.

When asked what he wanted, John L Lewis said, “More.” There’s only so much “More” to be had and, the more people get, the more they want.

Secondly, if expectations are created in advance, the WOW is diluted or destroyed. Case in point: Financial analysts are predicting that company X is going to have a banner year and earn $Y per share. Company X has the best year in its history, exceeds all its previous metrics, but still falls short of $Y per share – No WOW.

Let’s see how excited people are when Amazon introduces the new and improved Kindle.