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With desktop computers slowly shifting to make a place for tablets, Apple is skating to the puck: This feels like the reset Apple did with iMovie a few years b
by wiremine 13y ago
With desktop computers slowly shifting to make a place for tablets, Apple is skating to the puck:
This feels like the reset Apple did with iMovie a few years back:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=640314 http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=640314
Apple made iMovie easier [1], and ultimately reduced the price of Final Cut Pro to $300, which is in the range of high-end amateurs or power users.
In this case, though, I don't think they care about the power user, because the threat/opportunity is down market in Google Docs. I think they are simplifying the product to reach a lot more people, rather than retain the loyalty of a small group of users who use Pages as a full-blown word processor. I.e., they want to convert a percentage of their iOS users to Pages.
Apple says they have sold 600 million iOS devices [2]. If you assume 300 of those devices are active, and Apple coverts 3% of those users, they have 9M new Pages users. If those iOS users happen to use the Mac version of Pages, even better. But they want to convert people away from Android/Google Docs as much as they want to shift people away from Windows/Microsoft Word.
[1] "Easier" is subjective, but as a long-time user of iMovie, _I_ found it easier, so I'll use that term here.
[2] http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/10/4415258/apple-announces-600-million-ios-devices-sold http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/10/4415258/apple-announces-60...
- rossjudson 13y agoIn other words, they're aiming for the market of people who don't want to pay for a word processor.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago> Apple is skating to the puck Given the rest of your comment, I think you meant ‘Apple is skating to where the puck is going to be’.
- wiremine 13y agoNo, I think the puck is already at two of the three platforms they targeted with the new release: web and desktop. I think mobile/tablets isn't there yet, but that is changing, too. Microsoft isn't getting much traction yet, but they're moving there, too.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoHmm, I think you don’t really understand the Gretzky quote “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been” and how it’s used in this context. If you skate to where the puck is now, you’re just following others, stuck in old ways, and you’ll always at a competitive disadvantage (it takes time to skate – if you skate to where the puck is now, you’ll never be able to hit it.) If you’re skating to where the puck is going to be (when you get there), you’re taking the lead, you’re anticipating change acting before it happens.
- maaku 13y agoWriters don't compose on a tablet. No one who does any significant amount of writing does so on a tablet. They use keyboards. A word processor is a tool for writing. It should optimize for the input devices used by writers.