Pity, pity, Steve, you did not manage the expectations
Jun 13th, 2007 by AndieCZ
Raising expectations and not meeting them is the most typical fundamental mistake, which can happen in the business. It is usually possible to find it in the area of project management, where unmanaged expectations of internal and external customers quickly finished many careers.
The expectations from the speech of Steve Jobs at WWDC were really high. Not supported just by the Apple community, but also heavily supported by the financial markets analysts and their predictions. Many of them predicted new products and “revolutionary” services and predicting the shares of Apple to buy.
The issue with the speech is a bit different. Apple did make no comment to any of the rumors on the market and inside the Apple community. What usually happens with rumors? They start as a tiny story and after several hours, it is completely expected news, which just needs an official confirmation. The confirmation did not come and the rumor was growing bigger and bigger and no one knew the roots and the real truth. It was known just to Apple, but the company kept silence.
Basically, there were two major mistakes on the speech of Steve Jobs´speech:
- In the light of raised expectations of final audience, the speech of Steve Jobs was a real disappointment. When I read the 10 biggest changes in Mac OS X Leopard, nothing looked really attractive to me. 2 new Dashboard widgets visible on the screen? Wow, but I expected the Dashboard widget to be able to sit on the Desktop. Spaces? Cool, but Linux has it for years. New iChat features? Cool, what about some serious work? Smart Preview? Cool, but I know it from other operating systems.
- Also, the introduction of Safari 3 for Windows was not a lucky moment. I know it is beta. But Steve forgot to mention it is very early beta. The application runs just under English version of Windows correctly, trying to run under different language brings sudden results. Trying a different language version under Mac OS X can bring the same. It was too early to release that as many people make humor about really “innovative web browser” as it shows internet pages very “innovative way”.
The real issue is not bringing some innovative ideas. The issue is not bringing the confirmation of rumors at the market. The market expected Apple will make a huge step in the development of Mac OS X Leopard and the expectations were not met. Right now, me personally, I do not see any benefit of upgrading my current Mac OS X to Mac OS X Leopard for 129 USD, when I see no value added and productivity increase.
Steve, the next keynote needs a lot of preparation and generally… you need to drive the expectations of the target audience.
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