Wait! Where’s the death ray?
When I first started planning this post, I was expecting Apple to announce an iPhone 5. Naturally, the mythical i5’s been hyped to insane levels, and I had a great idea for a post about the dangers of overly high expectations: you see, I figured that when Apple announced it’s iPhone 5, it would be an amazing device and still people would be disappointed because it just didn’t have a death ray. Or maybe a built in razor. Or it didn’t cook your dinner for you.Rather than focus on what it did have, everyone would focus on what it didn’t.
The fact is, over building expectations can be a real problem: build the expectations for the new hire too high and nothing that person does will be good enough. Build the expectations for the seminar too high, and the actual seminar is bound to be a disappointment. Build the expectations for the pony too high and you’ll complain that it wasn’t a thoroughbred horse.
But Apple fooled me, and now I feel more like Marvin the Martian wondering what happened to his Earth-shattering kaboom. For sixteen months of hype, it’s rather anti-climactic. Perhaps Apple should take Marvin’s advice at the end of the cartoon.
It’s also rather rough for Tim Cook. Even a bigger question than the i5 was whether or not Tim Cook could fill Steve Jobs’ turtleneck. I, for one, still don’t know. He was, in a manner of speaking, given some pretty poor lines. The question now is whether or not the i4S release will define the image of Tim Cook.
Managing expectations is important. Letting them get too big may be fun sometimes, but can also have some very negative consequences. And when you don’t even come close, everyone remembers the missing earth-shattering kaboom.
