Apple could lose $9 billion in one day if aliens descended from the skies to steal it

I personally don’t often write about Apple because I think people like our own Matthew Panzarino, my former colleague MG Siegler and John Gruber have way smarter things to write about the company and its products. You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve wished more people were like me in that regard.

Take this moronic take on the impending launch and estimated shipping date of the ‘iPad 3’, courtesy of Cult of Mac’s Charlie Sorrel.

Headline: Apple Could Lose $100 Million Per Day If The iPad 3 Doesn’t Ship Tomorrow

Bit of a strange hypothesis at first glance, but interesting! Click.

What if Apple launches the iPad 3 tomorrow and it doesn’t ship for another week and a half? The company could lose almost $1bn in sales.

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Hmmm, ok, well … I’m pretty sure this is going somewhere. Scroll.

Apple sold 15.43 million iPads in the first quarter of this year. Divide that by 14 weeks (98 days) and you get 153, 450 per day. We’ll take the price of an iPad as being halfway between the $499 model and the most expensive $829 model. That gives us a figure of $664.

So, crunching the numbers Apple is making around $104,546,122 per day. That’s $100m per day Apple stands to lose if people stop buying the iPad 2 to wait for the iPad 3.

Did I really just read this? We’ll just assume that the price of the iPad is $664, estimate that Apple is thus making about $100 million from selling the tablets on a daily basis and then conclude that’s how much they’d lose in 24 hours if not a single person on planet Earth buys an iPad that day, as if that would happen?

You know what? This is going somewhere, but it’s not a beautiful, well-scented place I’d personally recommend people to ever go and visit.

In all fairness, Sorrel kinda sorta acknowledges that his assumptions are absolutely void of logical reasoning at the bottom of his post – his “numbers are not entirely accurate” and apparently his “math is terrible” – but then why did this excuse for a blog post see the light of day at all? Did he just really, really want to write a headline people would click on, and somehow, something would then magically prevent readers from seeing through the bullshit that followed?

Why not point out Apple will lose every single one of its customers this year if the Mayans will be proven right about this end-of-the-world-in-2012 thing? Or that the production of iPhones and iPads might just experience a significant slow-down if a solar superstorm shut down all the electricity on the planet?

Sales of the iPad 2 won’t suddenly stop as soon as the iPad 3 is announced or starts shipping. Thus, it is pointless to even consider how it would affect Apple’s sales numbers. And it’s absolutely idiotic to just pull some numbers out of a hat, slap them onto a baseless assumption and somehow morph it into a blog post.

But do let us know as soon as there’s a UFO sighting near Apple’s cash reserves, Charlie. The effect of theft on the company’s bottom line might be devastating.