Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

iPhatigue

Edit: I figured I better take a snapshot before this site disappears.

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Kent Le of Lawrenceville displays his new iPhone after waiting since 3 a.m. at the AT&T store in Duluth. ‘People will be admiring me,’ he said. (Emphasis added.)

Anybody who thinks people will admire them because they own a particular phone should kill themselves. Seriously. Kill yourself. You’re worthless. You’re a liability to civilization. Do the one and only thing you can do that would benefit another human being and self-eliminate. Please.

From Fake Steve…

How exactly does this work?

11:48 AM: Life is good. No worries. Who wants peanut butter and jelly for lunch?

11:49 AM: OMG!!! The iPhone and Leopard are going to be late! Sell all my Apple stock RIGHT NOW! They’re DOOMED, DAMMIT, DOOMED! I knew I shoudn’t have bought that Apple crap! SELL! SELL! FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET GOD! Dump all my 5 million shares in the next 15 minutes! DAMN YOU STEVE JOBS!

Why does someone have 5 million shares of stock in a company in which they obviously have so little confidence? Talk about timid… and stupid.

I realize the suspicious part of this scenario is the buyer and not the seller of those shares, but I wanted to make my little side point.

OK, this was just too good to pass up. I used to write more rebuttals to articles of this stripe, but I got sick of going round and round, writing the same things to rebut the same illogical rantings over and over. However, Fake Steve Jobs and The Macalope don’t have any qualms about tearing these nitwits up, so what the hell, I’ll join ‘em.

This gem is entitled “IT Confidential: 10 Indications Apple Is Headed For A Fall”. Oh the drama! The hyperbole! Apple is doomed, I tell ya! DOOOOOOMED!!

The author’s points are as follows:

10) The same reason the Dow won’t stay at 13,000–gravity. Last week, Apple reported eye-popping second-quarter financials: a 21% increase in revenue and a whopping 88% increase in profits. Apple attributed the results in part to continuing strength in the sale of its personal computers. That’s called being on a roll. You’ve been on a roll, right? And what happened?

Yes, I’ve been on a roll before, and what happened was that at some point I wasn’t anymore. Things gradually rolled from a fast pace to a normal pace. Hardly a “fall”, as I’m still alive and gainfully employed and writing my own thoughts for those who care to read them.

This guy’s logic is, um, not logic. “Something very good happened, therefore, something very bad must happen.” This kind of thought process dominates our gloom-and-doom media in real news as well as computer news. You, the reader, must be kept in a state of constant apprehension and near-panic, or else the writer’s story just isn’t all that interesting. If this guy has any facts to back up his assertion that Apple is headed for a fall because they just had the most profitable quarter in their history, let him present them. Otherwise, his woman’s intuition simply isn’t justification.

9) Just about everyone who might possibly want an iPod has one. I can’t get on an airplane or enter a mall without half the population sporting earbuds. Yet, according to its recent financial results, Apple sold 10.5 million iPods last quarter. It makes me think of the rumor about how the Church of Scientology kept L. Ron Hubbard’s book, Dianetics, on best-seller lists month after month: by buying hundreds of copies itself and burning them in the basement.

If anecdotal evidence of what I see is considered proof of what portion of Americans own an iPod, then I’ll counter his assertion with my own: Apple has plenty of room to sell more iPods. Here in middle America, there are certainly iPods to be seen, but not nearly as many as what this guy is describing. And among people I know who have iPods, almost every one of them currently owns, or has purchased, more than one, myself included.

Anecdotes != data, either mine or his. If this guy has hard evidence that iPod sales are about to take a “fall”, present it. Otherwise, again, his gut feeling that “Everybody has one!” and prediction of doom is meaningless.

Oh, and your reference to freaky religious cults is recognized, not appreciated, and thoroughly unoriginal.

8 ) Apple hasn’t refreshed its computer line in a few years. Take a lesson from Detroit: Upgrade.

What the hell is this guy talking about? Now we know for sure he’s pulling all of this out of thin air. It’s obvious he knows nothing about the company or its products.

For the love of all that is holy, I can’t figure out what this guy is talking about. In fact, Apple’s transition to Intel processors isn’t even two years old yet, and every Mac model listed in that table has been drastically revised in the last “few years”. To borrow a quote from Charles Babbage, I cannot rightly comprehend the confusion of ideas that would prompt such a stupid statement.

7) When an online impersonator of the CEO is more interesting than the CEO himself, that’s not a good sign. If you haven’t read The Secret Diary Of Steve Jobs (fakesteve.blogspot.com), you should. It’s not only funny but more than a little insightful on Apple’s internal politics.

Fake Steve is good. Real good. But - let me see if I understand this - because someone who is not involved Apple is able to freely speculate about the company’s internal workings in a very creative way, and the actual CEO of the company, who has a responsibility to employees and shareholders, cannot publicly be as witty or open about company events, the company is headed for a “fall”.

6) Apple opened seven stores last quarter, for a total of 177 worldwide, and a third store is planned for Manhattan. Are there enough thin, cool, good-looking young people in the world to staff them?

Sounds like fat old guy is a little jealous of Apple Store employees. And that’s no wonder, considering that he has some obvious insecurities, as demonstrated by this article he’s written proclaiming the “fall” of an obviously successful company, based on nothing more than his gut and whatever psychosis compels him to dislike a company he obviously knows nothing about.

And not everyone who works at an Apple store is thin, cool, good-looking, young, or any combination of the above. Same goes for their advertising.

5) Everyone is getting tired of those “I’m a Mac … And I’m a PC” commercials. The Mac dude comes across as smug while the PC guy, who not coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to Bill Gates, elicits sympathy. And if the public starts feeling sorry for Bill Gates, you’ve lost.

I can’t speak to this, as I haven’t been able to watch an Apple ad for about five years. (I find it hard to believe that anyone could have sympathy for Bill Gates, but that’s just my gut, and I’m not ready to declare the “fall” of Microsoft because of it.) But I can say that advertising doesn’t necessarily reflect the product, and hating something because of the ads is just as irrational as every other point this guy has attempted to make.

Allow me to present an example outside the realm of computing. I love the show House. It may be the only scheduled thing I look forward to every week. Fox’s promotions for the show, however, suck ass. They’re out of context and overly dramatic and they do a real disservice to the quality of the show. In my mind, a more accurate portrayal of the show, and less hype, could only be helpful. As bad as the promos are, the show is still excellent and I make a point to watch every week because the show itself is great. Advertising does not make the product.

4) There’s increasing speculation the iPhone will flop. And it’s not like Apple hasn’t had flops before–remember the Newton?

What tech company hasn’t had a flop? You forgot the Cube and the Pippin and the Apple III and a few other things, all of which were much worse than the Newton. I’m not personally excited about the iPhone, but if it flops, Apple won’t collapse because of it, as evidenced by the record quarter Apple just posted (which this guy says is all bad) without any iPhone sales whatsoever.

Current speculation + past flops != “fall”. Again, that’s some piss poor logic. There’s increasing speculation that dinosaurs will once again rule the Earth. They’ve ruled before. Run for your lives!

3) Windows Vista is better than it’s getting credit for. Conventional wisdom says Apple gains market share as Microsoft loses because of a backlash against Vista. But Vista hasn’t been given a fair trial, and Microsoft has been known to pull products out of the fire. And beware the backlash against the backlash (see No. 5).

Yes, we all know how credible conventional wisdom is. And beware of the backlash against the backlash against the backlash!

Apple is a hardware company. I reject the premise of Microsoft and Apple being involved in some zero-sum game. Apple’s more direct competition is Dell, and both Dell and Microsoft are encountering some rough water right now.

Apple just posted a record quarter. They’re growing much faster than the computer market as a whole (and gaining meaningless market share) while making a crap ton of money. Meanwhile, Dell has started offering Windows XP again because of customer demand. As good as Vista may or may not be, customers are making their preferences known. They prefer Mac OS X and Windows XP over Vista. Additionally, Dell is about to move away from its online-only sales model because their strategy of out-cheaping the competition isn’t working anymore.

Tell me, which of these companies is most likely headed for a “fall”?

2) That pesky stock options backdating thing won’t go away. Last week, Apple’s former CFO said Jobs knew the regulatory implications of backdating and agreed to it anyway. The company’s board of directors issued a statement of confidence in Jobs, including board member and former Vice President Al Gore. When Al Gore’s your backup plan, it’s time to reassess.

I’m no fan of Algore, but the fact that his name is on the board’s statement means squat to anyone. What does matter is that the board supports the guy, period. Admittedly I don’t understand the stock options mess enough to get into it here, but if this guy did, or if he knew of something factual to indicate a “fall” was coming because of it, he should state it here. He didn’t. Instead, he invokes Algore’s name as some kind measure of desperation.

And finally…

1) I just bought an Apple iMac, which carries with it my personal version of the Sports Illustrated cover curse. The last PC I owned was a Sony Vaio, and look at what happened to that company. Before that, I owned a Micron PC. You didn’t know that Micron, the microprocessor company, made PCs? It did, and good ones, back in the 1990s. In 2001, Micron sold its ailing PC business to an investment firm, which subsequently changed the name of the company to MPC. Sorry, Apple–I didn’t mean to throw the hoodoo down on you.

So you personally are the kiss of death? I don’t know wether to pity you because of your self esteem problem, or to feel contempt for you because you believe your personal bad luck extends to others, either by virtue of your power or your all-permeating insipidness.

The only “fall” here should be your writing off the pages of InformationWeek.