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Fox Business: Apple Watch Debut falls flat **linked article**

I think Fox News has underlying motivations with how they wrote this story.

Fox News is essentially the media arm of the Republican Party, and just a few weeks ago, Apple, along with a bunch of other businesses called republicans out for their bigoted RFRA laws in Indiana and Arkansas.

Clearly this article was aimed at undermining Apples new product in an attempt to deflate the hype.

If you guys think this chick was dumb enough to think it's legit to compare lines for an iPhone sale vs lines for the watch try on then you're very mistaken.

They aren't dumb, but they know their viewer base is and that they are easily fooled.

If they could change the image of Apple from an enormously powerful and successful corp to a company that can't even get a few people to line up for their latest product then future comments from Cook about pieces of republican legislation won't be perceived by their base as so damaging.
 
Bigserver1 said:
It's a bit hard to believe that the debut fell flat when normal stock was out within the first 5-10 minutes, and certain models were quicker than that.

I do think it's an odd misstep on apples part to not offer this in stores on the 24th. You'd think they'd want the press of people standing in line, etc.
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To be fair, without knowing how much initial stock they had. Nobody can say success or fail. Could be like the gold 5S where there were only small launch supplies. Could also be tons. Who knows at this point.
 
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No need to be rude guys, but point out the facts.
 
I don't think there's any reason to get upset. This site posted articles about people lining up with pictures. It was expected, people lineup for Apple launches. doesn't matter if it's reasonable.

Apple could have done better explaining what they were trying to accomplish. It was also technically not the launch since no one gets a watch until the 24th. Still can't believe Apple will not have inventory in stores.
 
I just want the story to be factual, as I don't care about the net result of the product. I wasn't going to get involved in twitter until I read some of her tweets about Apple. She resorts to belittling someone because they wanted to point out the inaccuracies. Her responses include upsetting the Apple fanbase, wondering how much stock someone had with Apple, and generally painting a negative image of Apple. To me she's the professional she shouldn't have to resort to the amateur low level tactics to prove her point, she is a business reporter. I found her tweets uninformed, misleading, and immature. Plus it was fun exchanging barbs with a Fox reporter and have her actually respond. Good show for her, honestly.
 
superlawyer15 said:
I think Fox News has underlying motivations with how they wrote this story.

Fox News is essentially the media arm of the Republican Party, and just a few weeks ago, Apple, along with a bunch of other businesses called republicans out for their bigoted RFRA laws in Indiana and Arkansas.
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And I'm sure that's why Rupert Murdoch made a cameo appearance in Joanna Stern's YouTube video where he pretends to walk off with her review unit. It sounds like a clickbait article, which all news outlets do.

Fox Business lured Maria Bartiromo away from CNBC. They have a more libertarian leaning editorial stance than Fox News, and it's where Fox's libertarian hosts (Stossel, Kennedy) have their main shows. That demographic is largely with Apple on the RFRA laws.
 
Scrub175 said:
I just want the story to be factual, as I don't care about the net result of the product. I wasn't going to get involved in twitter until I read some of her tweets about Apple. She resorts to belittling someone because they wanted to point out the inaccuracies. Her responses include upsetting the Apple fanbase, wondering how much stock someone had with Apple, and generally painting a negative image of Apple. To me she's the professional she shouldn't have to resort to the amateur low level tactics to prove her point, she is a business reporter. I found her tweets uninformed, misleading, and immature. Plus it was fun exchanging barbs with a Fox reporter and have her actually respond. Good show for her, honestly.
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Well, I do think her article is representative of the public as a whole, and in that light has value. I didn't find any of it to be inaccurate to my knowledge. In fact, as I said multiple news outlets are reporting seeing the same thing, lukewarm response.
 
The lack of lines at the Apple Store yesterday was a resounding success as far as I (and I think Apple) am concerned.

The magic of lining up on launch day is over. Most of the people there are scalpers. They eat up the majority of the stock, create even longer lines that dissuade actual customers from participating, and there's zero excitement involved.

Yesterday anyone who wanted to try on a Watch got the opportunity to do so with little to no wait involved. And anyone who wanted to order one could do so whenever they pleased from wherever they pleased.

Stock constraints aside, I'd say that's about as ideal a launch scenario as you could ask for.

(And even though Apple isn't officially calling yesterday a launch, if you can order it and you can see and experience it in store, it's a launch. And a great one at that.)
 
Cashmonee said:
Well, I do think her article is representative of the public as a whole, and in that light has value. I didn't find any of it to be inaccurate to my knowledge. In fact, as I said multiple news outlets are reporting seeing the same thing, lukewarm response.
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I'm not disputing the lack of folks at Apple stores. Her inaccuracies are a) why there weren't throngs of folks at the store and b) Apple's game day change in plan. Neither of those are factual. Generally although I've never been, stores don't have long lines for pre ordering, but in this case with the pre order launch window the try on window opened as well. So perhaps there is a case study to be done on why there weren't large crowds for try on. But even with that said the public was informed to make appointments for try ons. So that's a push and open for debate. What my main contention is regarding the game day change of purchases in store. It was very well explained in tech blogs how the purchase process would work. Her contention is Apple changed from in store to web only the day before and that is utterly false.

My attempts for accuracy isn't a defense to Apple's perceived lack of potential buyers showing up at the store, it's to make sure the information reported about the process is accurate. She has the sources and connections to make a more accurate and factual story, she chooses to use rumor and ill fact speculation and try to sell it as fact. That's my concern. As stated by her and others, several news agencies reported similar stories, but I generally don't visit them to fact check. Plus are the articles related to the change in purchasing process or just a barometer of the relatively cool "launch" of the Apple watch. If it's covering the lack of lines for the "launch" try on window I'm not concerned, but if it's parroting a similar message of Apple changed the buying process the day before, then those reporters are inaccurate as well.

I feel folks think this is me or us taking a defensive position about the lack of warm reception of the watch release. Having read Android, Apple, and tech blogs the overall consensus is the majority of smart phone users is not ready for nor find value in a smart watch. They sell but not to the mass market like flagship devices. Most true tech enthusiasts understand that, so with that foundation of knowledge the response of the general consumer with the Apple watch try on is pretty much anticipated. Even in our microcosm of who I would consider smart phone power users there is a high percentage that see no value in a smart watch, so why would anyone expect John Q Public iPhone user who never visits a tech blog to be the target mass audience responding to a try on window launch at Apple stores? I wouldn't expect that. At work I'm the tech guy and everyone always jokes if I've gotten the new Apple anything, but thus far not a single person has mentioned or joked about it to me. It's just not as big of deal to the majority of iPhone users, yet. I think Apple will drive that market with hardware release 2 and really on release 3. By then that tech segment will have gained steam.

Thanks for posting and sharing your thoughts.
 
Bigserver1 said:
It's a bit hard to believe that the debut fell flat when normal stock was out within the first 5-10 minutes, and certain models were quicker than that.

I do think it's an odd misstep on apples part to not offer this in stores on the 24th. You'd think they'd want the press of people standing in line, etc.
Click to expand...
The debut didn't fall flat. But being sold out in this case didn't signify success either. Chinese phones 'sell out' in seconds. Limited supply due to poor display yields meant there was less than 1 million Apple Watches available to pre-order worldwide.
 
?

Lloydbm41 said:
The debut didn't fall flat. But being sold out in this case didn't signify success either. Chinese phones 'sell out' in seconds. Limited supply due to poor display yields meant there was less than 1 million Apple Watches available to pre-order worldwide.
Click to expand...

How do you know there were less than a million?
 
CodeSpyder said:
I quote from the article.



I remember the very first iPhone sales. I called on the Saturday after sales had started to ask about the lines for iPhones. They said there were no lines. I asked if they had iPhones. They said that they did. I was in my car in a flash to buy my first iPhone. Remember the first iPhone? - Edge network and hard drive for storage. It was thick and slow.

Sales went well for the Apple Watch. Sales will get better over time and so will the Apple Watch.
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The iPhone has never contained a hard drive, it has always had flash memory for storage.
 
so much ignorance in that article. Of course there were not lines, they made it very public that try ons would be by appointment and let folks start booking them online at midnight. Anyone that walked up is put on a wait list and sent away for the time in between.

And she mixes up preorder with the actual in store launch.

They are encouraging these try ons to order online so they don't have to deal with tons of traffic in store. every person they shift to an online order, especially with an online guided set up, is one more person that won't bog up an employee who can help someone that couldn't get a try on before product hit the store, or who wants to buy something like a new laptop for the kid for college. That was always the push for try on appointments. The staff were not to encourage them to wait and book a product reservation, but rather just order online. PRs that change their mind and try on and pick a different model were to be encouraged to order online as well.

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Primus84 said:
The iPhone has never contained a hard drive, it has always had flash memory for storage.
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More of her ignorance.

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Bigserver1 said:
I do think it's an odd misstep on apples part to not offer this in stores on the 24th. You'd think they'd want the press of people standing in line, etc.
Click to expand...

the 24th might still happen. they haven't actually said it won't. But they have a structure in place to bar lines and have from day one.

They do not want lines. Because these days the press is all bad press about hordes of resellers, trash on the streets, pissed off stores, fights etc. Not to mention all the bitching by customers and so on

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twisted-pixel said:
But this doesn't take into account what those normal stock levels were. If they only had 10 in stock and these sold out does that mean a successful launch? Or a failure in production that they didn't have a great deal of stock available?
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Ah yes, the HP argument. They said their tablet sold out in less than a day. And it turned out they only had 5000 and no way to make more for like six months.

I suspect that Apple has a good 100k of each model. At least of the Watch and Sport. The Edition might be more like 10k each.
 
dacreativeguy said:
Theory 1: They are so supply constrained that they don't want riots at the stores when long lines form and they can't fill demand.
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Even if they had tons of stock and could cover everything everyone wanted in terms of items they still wouldn't want lines. Lines invite stupid crap like resellers getting there way early to hog all the best stock. Lines mean that someone has to wait and get pissy about it. Lines mean that they have to have some staff outside to watch those lines to avoid crap. That means anywhere from say 3 to 10 folks aren't inside ringing up sales. and there are only so many folks they can ring up in a day just due to staffing.

The system they have in place is created so the 'line' is not literally there. The same amount of folks ringing up iPhones last time can be set to ring up watches, plus the 3-10 folks that were outside on the line. They would still conceivably get to you at the same time as before but now you can do other stuff in place of sweating in the sun etc.
 
Very good points, but the Fox biz reporter just won't see it. She defends her narrow minded assertions. I don't think this gen or next gen will be huge but eventually Apple will tap the right market and gain a new larger marketshare. It will just take time.
 
Che Castro said:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2015/04/13/apple-watch-wager/

His already backpedaling
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He's being very unrealistic with his stretch expectations so he can save face and still be able to publish an article that says see I told you so. Very few new segment items can expect to sell 50 million. We already have sales data from Android that proves this is a cool and emerging market. Guess it's time to blast his comment section now too. It's fun when the author replies and try's to defend their faulted logic of a click bait article. Just like Kyle Porter on CBS sports. When Tiger Wooods was out of golf, Kyle would still publish an article or two daily about Woods just for the click.
 
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