Roger McNamee: We Love You to Death, But... [iPhone Smack Talk]
[Update: Here's the video, and note the McNamee has a new, shorter and classier haircut. Officially redeemed!]
[Update 2: More smacktalk! "Our product is just going to run rings around them on the web. If you want to go the web, it's going to be a million time faster, well, not a million times, several times faster and that's a huge deal for most people."]
Before we go too far, we need to stipulate that Roger McNamee is still our hero. He's out there, exposing himself to the Swishers and Lacys of the world (no, not like that), hobnobbing at the TED Conference, and generally doing his best to get everybody on board with the Pre. We love him to death. Now, have you ever heard somebody say "I love him to death" without a "but" at the end? Here it is:
Bloomberg [via our friends at TiPb, who are just beside themselves with snarky glee over all this] reports that yesterday McNamee dropped this little bomb during an interview:
You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone, [...] Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.
Uh, Roger, maybe you don't want to raise expectations that high, okay? We know that Palm very much needs the Pre to be a smash hit in order to stay alive, but here's the deal: you want people to think that it is more successful than they anticipated, not less. Suggesting that every iPhone user who bought on day one are going to switch to the Pre is therefore not wise.
Ok, we kid, there's a little more context to the quote -- McNamee was apparently focusing mainly on the early adopted, gotta-have-the-best-and-latest-stuff contingent of day 1 iPhone buyers:
Think about it -- If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market [...] Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.
Fair enough and a good point, the Pre is definitely going to be the newest and hottest thing around when it finally gets released, but buddy, pal, compadre, hero -- could you please Elevate them expectation guns a little lower?
