Yesterday I guested (not actually a verb) on Zac Cichys current podcast One Forty and we talked about Marco Arments recent post entitled Apple has Lost the Functional High Ground.

The episode link: Episode 3: It Is What It Isn’t

I had a great time chatting with Zac about prose hyperbole but one thing I mentioned during the episode I think bears reiterating…

The Halo Effect Cuts Both Ways

The iPod and iMac famously fed into Apples product strategy often described as relying on the Halo effect, whereby a good niche product in one product category would drive sales of other products by the same company in other product categories.

Today Apple is tying together their different products and platforms more than ever with Yosemite, iOS8, Time Capsules, iMacs, iPads and shortly Apple Watches not even mentioning iTunes and the iWork/iLife suites (if it’s even fair to still refer to them as suites). The more closely they are tied the stronger the Halo effect but that’s a double-edged sword.

A good product in the circle makes the others look good and a bad product in the circle therefore makes the others look bad.

The iOS8 update that killed cellular service for about 40k iPhone users made a lot of people very nervous and this had prompted several of my friends to stop just updating their devices when an update comes out. The perception of more buggy software produced by Apple for even a single one of their products, even if the userbase growth distorts the actual numbers, is a genuine cause for concern overall.