Linked List: September 5, 2007

Wednesday, 5 September 2007

‘Zune Thoughts’ on Today’s iPod News ★

Jason Dunn:

Today isn’t a good day to be a Zune fan, that’s for sure. Why? Because Apple unleashed a new wave of iPods today, and they’re every bit as impressive as I was fearing they’d be. This was no simple product refresh with memory bumps and price drops — no, this is a whole new generation of iPods.

Fake Steve: Be Afraid ★

“Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.”

Hoefler & Frere-Jones ★

Brand-new web site (and, finally, a weblog) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, type designers extraordinaire. Coincides with the release of Chronicle, an expansive and impressive family of text faces.

Apple Price Protection ★

From Apple’s Sales and Refund policy:

Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.

So if you just bought an iPhone in the last 10 days, you can get $200 back. I wonder about the 30-day refund period, though — the $200 cut is far more than the restocking fee.

Update: My mistake, the refund period is 14 days. Interestingly, one DF reader who bought an iPhone in early August reports that he called Apple and they offered him a $100 refund. Anyone else corroborate this?

Regarding July Smartphone Sales Numbers ★

Worth pointing out that the source for these “iPhone is best-selling smartphone in July” is iSuppli, the market research company whose break-apart cost analyses I questioned last month. The source for their sales estimates is, according to Reuters, “a consumer survey of 2 million participants in the United States that it carries out online once a month.” So take them with a grain of salt.

Joe Hewitt Gets Fifth Row Seat for Keynote ★

Hewitt helped create the Facebook iPhone-optimized site:

Apple was kind enough to invite myself and Dave Morin from Facebook to the event, telling us only that Steve would be browsing the Facebook iPhone site at some point in the presentation.

Nice move on Apple’s part, but it leads to a question: What do we call iPhone-optimized sites now?

Scott Moritz, Jackass of the Week ★

TheStreet.com’s Scott Moritz:

Then, in an unexpected move, Apple killed the 4-gigabit [sic] iPhone and slashed the price of the 8-gigabit [sic] iPhone by $200, to $399. Apple rarely cuts prices on products, preferring to introduce replacements and discontinue previous models.

The move will add more evidence to the speculation that the iPhone, while causing quite a buzz, may not be selling as rapidly as some optimists had expected.

There is no need for speculation. We know exactly how well the iPhone has been selling, because Jobs said so on stage today: they’re on track to sell their millionth iPhone some time this month. That’s a good number. Earlier this week the news hit that the iPhone outsold every other smartphone on the market in July.

Apple didn’t cut the price because demand is low — they set the debut price ridiculously high because demand was ridiculously high. I suspect that for the first few weeks, they were selling iPhones as fast as they could make them. Apple’s being aggressive, not defensive. (And for those of you who’ve already bought one and are pissed about the price cut, if you didn’t think the iPhone was worth $599, you shouldn’t have bought it. That’s how supply and demand works.)

(Via big-time Moritz fan Gedeon Maheux.)

Jackassiest Headline of the Day ★

Post-event headline on Apple 2.0 (Business 2.0’s Apple weblog): “iPod Refresh Does Not Include the Beatles”. Yeah, iPod Touch is a “refresh” and the still-unannounced Beatles deal is the biggest news of the day.

The Scourge of That Damn Frog Song ★

Jeff Harrell on Apple’s ringtone strategy. Reasonable and interesting theory, but I disagree.

KT Tunstall ★

Love the design of her web site.

Welcome Back, Kottke ★

I’ve been waiting to use that headline ever since he went on paternity leave.

Regarding OS X-Based iPods ★

Re-linking this one from July, on why I expect to see iPhone-esque OS X-based iPods announced today. In short, don’t get trapped over-thinking Apple’s fundamental strategy. It’s simple: Make the best products they can and sell them.

The Talk Show: Predictions for ‘The Beat Goes On’ Apple Event ★

We have about two hours until showtime; you can spend 18 minutes of the wait listening to Dan Benjamin and me guessing what Apple’s going to announce. My predictions in short: OS X-based iPods and iPod Nanos, the Beatles’ catalog on the iTunes Store, and over-the-air purchasing of content from iTunes directly to Wi-Fi-enabled iPods and iPhones.

Also: an iPhone software update with new features. A software update is a way to put the iPhone back in the news without changing the hardware product.