PAMtastic Questions and Answers

Still a few days to go, but I think we already have the answer to this little prediction from Palm investor Roger McNamee:

“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. 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.”

A: (wait for it) iPhones:

Approximately 12% of consumers who visited a retail store this past weekend to make their iPhone 3G S purchase said they were replacing a BlackBerry handset, the latest sign that Apple continues to make headway against rival Research in Motion in the high-stakes smartphone market.
That data point is one of several interesting statistics to come out of a survey by Piper Jaffray of 256 early iPhone 3G S adopters shopping for their new handsets at Apple retail stores in New York and Minnesota this past weekend.

What a remarkable and unpredictable turn of events! Apple convinced another million rubes to buy their products that, as we all know, are only a temporary fashion and not indicative of a new usage model at all. I thought this introduction would mark the end of the iPhone era as hordes of dissatisfied users fled the sinking, née doomed platform for the Elysian fields of Windows Mobile and Blackberry or scrappy up-and-comer Palm Pre. After all, they've got tiny keyboards. And some other features that are...probably important! RIM (and the rest) can't possibly fail. Right? You don't just walk in and create a "decent phone." It's just not possible. Well, I'm sure these poor, misguided users will be off to RIM, Pre, or Android any day now...

Stonecutters

Time for prediction accuracy measurement everyone! Yes, it's delicious PAM; this time, we review our psychohistorical analysis re: iPhone, Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard), and the magical mystical marble interface. Let's review. I said:

So, carve it in stone: Snow Leopard will be announced and a full demo given at WWDC, cost $129.00, only run on Intel-based Macs, and probably ship reasonably soon after announcement, say right around 9/1/09.

Alright, Snow Leopard was announced and given demo at WWDC: +1
SL will cost, um, $29.00: -1(00)
SL will indeed run only on Intel-based Macs: +1
SL will indeed ship "in September": +1

75%. Not too shabby. Take that, eternal asshat Rob Enderle.
On Marble: Clearly, that'll be the reason the next update reverts to $129 pricing...

iPhone Mini: I "have my doubts" and still do. +1, huzzah! Also a bonus dose of goodwill for noting the notion that existing iPhone tech takes up the "low end" (whether in Mini form or not) while shiny new iPhonery takes the old price-point with feature/memory extension. Fish in a barrel, that one.

The tablet: too soon to score. Certainly the animus directed at AT&T onstage implies a "hey look, it's that Verizon guy!" attitude amongst the Apple powers that be. We shall see. Score it a zero for now, though.

That gives the staff a 4 out of 5, for a glittering 80%. Everyone feel free to take one extra mint on the way out of the office tonight.