| By Hollis Tibbetts |
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| December 2, 2011 06:00 AM EST |
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2,471 |
Apple's Surprising Marketing Blunder
Along with hoards of other people, I upgraded my perfectly good iPhone 4 for the new iPhone 4S. Why? Siri. Am I happy? No.
I "listened" to the iPhone 4S launch - from live blog streams. I was honestly quite disappointed. A faster processor? The iPhone 4 was fast enough for me. Same "defective" exposed-glass design that is guaranteed to shatter the first time you drop it (my first iPhone 4 lasted two days). Heck, you can't even show your new iPhone off because it looks identical to the old one. No crowds of people asking you "what do you think of your new iPhone????"
The One Thing
The one somewhat new feature - Siri. Of course, Siri used to be available on all iPhones (albeit not as integrated) until IOS 5.0 came along. At first, I decided to wait for a real iPhone upgrade. But I couldn't hold out, I "had" to have Siri. So I shelled out $199 and signed up for a 2 year AT&T extension. All so I could bask in the glory of having my own personal digital assistant named Siri.
So far, Apple's done an astonishing marketing job. They've somehow convinced me to buy something that I not only didn't need, but didn't really want. I wanted something new, whiz-bang magic. Something that looked different. And something that wasn't incredibly fragile.
Then I Started Using Siri
One of my core beliefs is that a great product is great marketing. Conversely, a crappy product is bad marketing.
Siri is a bad product. It is defective in operation as well as design.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it works, it works pretty well. When it doesn't work, it's infuriating. I love it. I hate it. It has such great promise. It totally fails to deliver.
Sometimes, Siri will go for extended periods of time, and simply not be able to process any requests at all. By that, I mean that it usually just ignores you - as if you hadn't said anything at all. Or sometimes it will tell you that it's not working.
Software Malpractice
Worse than that, when Siri fails, it forgets what you told it. That's why the design is defective. A capably designed product would buffer and store your voice message locally on the phone. If the Siri servers couldn't be contacted or were overloaded, it would either automatically retry, or would give you the option - for example "I'm busy right now, can I try your command again in 30 seconds?"
Instead, it just LOSES your message. Which can be quite infuriating if you've just dictated a paragraph long email.
Can you imagine a word processing program that would just randomly LOSE a sentence or a paragraph - as if you had never typed it at all? No company would release such a product. That'd be a totally defective product - software malpractice. But that's what Apple has done.
Other times, Siri just refuses to work. You try to turn it on, and it just turns itself back off. Rebooting the phone seems to fix it. Or going into the Configuration screen, turning Siri off and then turning Siri back on again. Going back to the word processing analogy - a word processing application that required a reboot of the PC to use would be ridiculed.
Apple's Product and Marketing #FAIL
All in all, Siri is a product that is NOT ready for prime-time. Yet, Apple chose to make Siri the cornerstone of its marketing campaign for the iPhone 4S. In my mind, that makes it a marketing #FAIL.
A Defective Product is Defective Marketing
A disappointing thing from a company that I consider to be the best product and marketing company on the planet.
Hollis has established himself as a successful software marketing and technology expert. His various strategy, marketing and technology blogs are read over 40,000 times a month.
He has over 20 years experience in creating, executing and managing innovative and effective marketing programs for startup, midsize and large technology companies in Silicon Valley and Austin TX. He has substantial expertise and a highly successful track record in positioning and launching companies and products and achieving solid, sustained growth.
Hollis has developed substantial expertise in middleware, SaaS, Cloud, data management and distributed application technologies, with over 2 decades of experience in marketing, technical, product management and product marketing roles at leading companies in such as Pervasive, Aruna (acquired by Progress Software), Sybase (now SAP), webMethods (now Software AG), M7 Corporation (acquired by BEA/Oracle), OnDisplay (acquired by Vignette) and KIVA Software (acquired by Netscape). He has established himself as an industry expert, having authored a large number of technology white papers, as well as published media articles and book contributions.
Hollis is a regularly featured blogger at ebizQ, a venue focused on enterprise technologies, with over 100,000 subscribers. He is also a featured author on Social Media Today "The World's Best Thinkers on Social Media", and maintains a blog focused on creating great software: Software Marketing 2011. He tweets actively as @SoftwareHollis
Additional information is available at HollisTibbetts.com
or at
Artemis Ventures LLC.
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