Apple’s belated AI reveal had better not be ‘off the mark’
After some online “outrage” (that and a nickel will get you a nickel), Apple’s vice president of marketing, Tor Myhren, weakly proffered that the company “missed the mark” with an iPad Pro advertisement, which depicted tube TVs, video games, cans of paint, cameras, and musical instruments being crushed.
Besides being a pitiful kowtow (Apple CEO Tim Cook is an expert at that, at least), nothing much will come of it regarding Apple’s stock price. But, if the company misses the mark when it unveils its belated AI features next month, Apple stock could be in a lot of trouble.
It hasn’t been Apple’s year so far, and it’s under increasing pressure to win over investors and consumers with an AI offering worthy of the company’s storied history. It’s a little late to the AI party but that won’t matter as long as it pulls through.
But the stakes are high. The company just isn’t growing—revenue has fallen in five of the past six quarters. Arguably it hasn’t had a big hit with a new product in years and CEO Tim Cook’s challenges are mounting from tackling falling iPhone sales in China to fighting off antitrust lawsuits…
There are other signs that perhaps all is not well behind the scenes. Apple scrapped its self-driving electric car project earlier this year after a decade of development, as well as abandoning plans to build its own smartwatch screens.
The quest to develop the next big thing has proved fruitless so far. But there’s still hope that an innovative suite of AI features could drive an iPhone supercycle—enticing the more than 1 billion iPhone users to upgrade their handsets.
Anything short of a roaring success at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month, though, and Apple’s tricky 2024 could quickly become its defining year for all the wrong reasons.
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Apple’s marketing team can recover quickly enough from being thrown under the bus by higher-ups —— for the sin of creating an ad that created tremendous buzz around a product line that has been bungled and hamstrung for over a decade by the same higher-ups —— that they can market the ever-living sheet out of whatever AI features Apple has to show off at WWDC.
If not, and Apple lays an AI egg at WWDC and it miraculously wakes up Apple’s somnambulant board, triggering some transformative change in the C-Suite, it might be a blessing in disguise. Short term pain for long term gain!
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post Apple’s belated AI reveal had better not be ‘off the mark’ appeared first on MacDailyNews.
