Apple

Oh Apple Where Art Thou?

On more than a couple of occasions wandering the halls of NAB this year, I heard comments from random passers-by along the lines of, “WHY can't Apple BE here? I mean how hard is it?”

I have to agree with them. One of the largest companies in the world, sitting on $159 BILLION in CASH, fer Jimminy Cricket, and they can't break off a tiny fractional piece o’ that to come to NAB, set up a modest booth and show off their stuff. Not to mention give the faithful users some swag.

Believe me, I understand why they have opted not to come to the show - they can get an audience of 100M of their peeps via their tightly controlled shows on their website, vs. 100k via NAB. When you get this big, it’s all about the percentages. And this is exactly the issue - they are showing their MicroSoftiness, their not-hungry, beaner-centric approach. Unlike Blackmagic and Atomos, they now only talk about upcoming products via their own TV channel.
But I have to say that this particular 100,000 people talk to all the other people that use Apple products. Do the math.

I would think that they could send a few geniuses and some hardware and software to show those of us who use and love their products (and spent time and money to come to Vegas), that they are AT LEAST
thinking about us. They're still producing some really nice hardware and software — but the Blackmagics of the world are taking over the wow factor that Steve used to give us in their product launches. I dunno about you, but I feel more connected to, and excited by, Blackmagic than Apple now. Which makes me happy for BM and sad about Apple.

I expect it's quite possible that Steve himself would approve of not "wasting" money on NAB. But the other side of that coin is that their continuing absence is
engendering bad feelings toward the company that didn't exist before.
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