0g1dnew's Profile

There is an interesting psychological dynamic that has arisen here. In classical conditioning, when a trainer is first starting to work with a subject, the trainer rewards every instance where the desired behavior occurs. (I.E. the mouse presses bar and gets a biscuit.) But reseachers have discovered that one reward for one behavior actually reduces the training efficiency. The subject gets bored and stops seeking the reward. A better ratio, once the subject has learned there are rewards to be earned, is to reward every 5th or 6th or 10th instance of the desired behavior. As a result the subject displays the desired behavior more frequently in anticipation of maybe the reward will come this time. (This is the same principle that makes gambling and gaming so exciting.) And the trainer can mold those behaviors more effectively by dishing the rewards when desirable variations on the behavior spontaneously arise. (This lowered reward to behavior ratio also means the trainer doesn't burn through the rewards as quickly.) Now look at what is going on with Apple's events. The behavior Apple desires is attention and buzz and press. The reward they have to offer is cool new tech. Early in their comeback, when Steve first came back to Apple, Cool new tech was only announced at Macworld in January and in July. Maybe at WWDC. And the New products came announced in bunches with multiple things announced at once. Minor product revision announcements would come in bland press releases in between the big conferences. We "mice" became conditioned to expect cool new tech whenever Steve took the stage. Now that we have made the association "Steve speaks- we get toys," Apple has started having special Steve speeches multiple times through the year, frequently unassociated with any conference. We get geared up every time like it is Christmas and maybe only one thing gets announced or its just a product revision but it keeps Apple in the spotlight. And maybe we're disappointed a little but that surely means that the big reward will come the next time Steve speaks, and we show up in droves. We are like the mouse that keeps pressing the bar in new and inventive ways waiting for the biscuit to drop. We talk about iPod strategy and Intel switches and BootCamp. We tell our friends when the next event is coming. We dish on the rumor sites. We contemplate the leaked photo fakes of unannounced products. We keep giving Apple attention hoping the next event is going to be the "Big Event." I'm not pointing this out to indicate that Apple is playing us for fools, but they are using an entrenched psychological principle as a marketing tool. No other company is able to do this because no other company has the history of secrecy and the track record of dropping the pleasure bomb of the "Next Big Thing" on a semi-regular basis. If Apple didn't produce the reward at least periodically (eg: original iMac, original iPod, the iTunes store, etc.), then none of us would pay attention. But now they have our attention and by dishing out the rewards in a sparse and measured fashion, they get a lot more bang for the buck out of their product announcements.