Apple Update Attack: Is 2008 the Year of the Weekly Update?
Tuesdays are nearly always the Apple day of the week. It’s Apple’s release date of choice, and rightly so; it allows stock to be in stores, and hence people’s hands, by the weekend.
But 2008 has been an interesting year, and it all started with a comment at a small event, known as MacWorld from a Mr Steven P. Jobs (ever heard of him, I certainly haven’t):
“[Big List of New Stuff]…all this in the FIRST two weeks. And we’ve got 50 more weeks to go!” At the time, it stuck in my head. Is it just a passing comment, or does he really mean Apple have 50 more products (at least!) to bring out this year? To my amazement, he seems to have meant it. Look Back. Every week, without fail, there has been some kind of Apple update:
Jan 7 – Mac Pros
Jan 15th – Macworld – Duh! – Mainly iPhone software update, as well as Movie Rentals
Jan 22nd – Pink nano
Jan 29th – MBA Ships + New UK iPhone tariffs
Feb 5th – iPod Touch + iPhone upgrades
Feb 12th – Aperture + 10.5.2
Feb 19th – Xsan + iPod Shuffle
Admittedly, some of these are minor, however I think it shows Apple’s desire to be on top of the market and to lead the way in product innovation. But could this be the year in which Apple updates every Tuesday? Is that even possible?
This Tuesday should see the release of the long awaited ‘Mobile’ OS X SDK, and then we’re into March. That’s a full 8 weeks in which Apple has pulled something out of Infinite Loop and wowed us all. And don’t forget, the MacBook Pro is overdue for an update, and in recent times the MacBook has been updated within weeks of it’s big brother, so Apple is not short of new stuff that it can bring out. Looking further into the year we have iPhone 2.0 almost confirmed, and maybe even a sneak peek at 10.6 at WWDC.
Whatever happens, this is a big year for Apple. With the growth of iPod sales slowing, Apple must explore new markets to keep investors happy and the stock price high; we’ve already seen this year what a mediocre MacWorld can do… All this leaves me wondering: what is left for 2008? Will Apple stick to the current trend of an update a week? Keep your RSS feeds burning on Tuesdays to find out!
I noticed that to. I think that they could release something every tuesday, but it would largely reduce the number of products they could release at a time at big events like WWDC.
Exciting, though. It’s fun to check apple.com every tuesday to see what’s new, even if it’s just a minor thing.
It’s a great way to cover themselves when the store goes down every Tuesday. “Uh, we’ve got something new!?!? Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
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UPDATE: and the attack continues…. we have MB’s and MBP’s and actual 2GB shuffles – but where is that pesky SDK?
Great post.