Reply to comment

Over on financial site Seeking Alpha is an article entitled Apple's Leap from Mediocre to Marvelous.

Can't complain about that title, but I had to do so with the content. In a nutshell, the article argues that the iPod's success and the Mac's recent surge are due to Apple's superior sales force. Hmm. Not to take a thing away from those fine persons, but that simply isn't a remotely common observation, and the article doesn't effectively support the claim either. 

I had to comment as follows:

Wow. I'm all behind the *title* of the article – but the rest of the Apple history is so off-target.

The "secret" behind Apple's surge is great products. Marketing and sales forces provide nothing here but a little tail wind. (Case in point: a growing Apple presence in enterprise, despite all observations that the company's enterprise-oriented marketing and sales force amount to diddly in the industry's bucket of squat.)

Any discussion of iPod success that misses out on the "whole integrated experience" of iPod + iTunes has really missed the boat. (Quick tip for anyone seeking to write on the topic of iPod success: your ratio of "iPod" and "iTunes" usage should be close to 1:1.)

Likewise, the Mac's resurgence is almost entirely a story of Apple's relentlessly building a better product than the competition over the last 10 years. Not marketing, not sales force, not "cool", not "cult", none of that. Simply a far better product, one whose superiority all the Vista and Dell and HP marketing just can't hide.

Sorry, gotta file this story under "way off the mark".   

Anyone disagree?