Let’s track how this went down.
First, people were saying there was trouble at the ol’ sawmill because Tim Cook was not Steve Jobs and he couldn’t handle Scott Forstall. Meanwhile, John Browett was personally dismantling Apple Stores across the land and turning them into Best Buys. EXECUTIVES GONE WILD! APPLE DOOMED! You know the drill.
Turns out Cook can handle Forstall, by showing him the door. This makes the rest of the executives happy. Bob Mansfield is so happy he decides to hang around for a few more years and work on [REDACTED], which is super-cool because it takes [REDACTED] and adds [REDACTED] to it, basically making it a space-cyborg-unicorn version of [REDACTED] and completely reinventing the [REDACTED] market.
In addition, Cook jettisoned John Browett, who did more damage to Apple retail in six months than all those people driving cars through Apple Store windows to grab MacBooks combined. Also, the Macalope heard he makes a funny noise when he eats soup. That’s just a thing he heard. You can see how that would bother the other executives.
Sort of like a “Gloink!” noise. The Macalope doesn’t know if this is true or not but, just saying, it’s “out there,” so it would be irresponsible not to talk about it.
That is to say, it’s “out there” now. Now that the Macalope has mentioned it.
(Gloink!)
So, anyway, Cook gets rid of these two thorns in his side, both of whom were predicted to rain fiery doom on Apple, and is confidence restored? Noooooo! Of course not! This is Apple we’re talking about! Now the story is about the great concern raised by getting rid of these two thorns in his side.
OK, The Guardian, yeah. We don’t expect much of anything from them. So this seems par for the course.
“We’ve passed peak Apple: it’s all downhill from here” (tip o’ the antlers to Michael Burgstahler)
The decision to dump Google’s maps for its own, and the changes at the top of the company to eject Scott Forstall and John Browett point to a subtle downward trajectory
Sure. Maps, whatever, Apple never released a flawed product, blah blah blah. But how, exactly, is making all the other executives happy and getting rid of a toxic plague on Apple retail a “downward trajectory”?
Yeah, yeah. Expecting The Guardian to make sense is a fool’s errand. But what about The New York Times?
“Product Questions and Threats of Higher Tax Hit Apple Shares”
You will note in the third paragraph of this piece that Apple’s stock “slid” 3.8 percent on Wednesday. It is only by the seventeenth paragraph that we’re informed Apple’s stock is still up 38 percent for the year.
Won’t Apple soon run out of people to sell iPhones, iPads and Macs to?
Presumably, Apple’s product lineup is set in stone. Just like it was when the company only sold Macs and then again when it only sold Macs and iPods.
Hey, Tim Cook’s been on the job a whole year and he hasn’t remade a single market yet! What up with that, lazybones?
The company said its new iPad Mini would be among those products with low profit margins, raising concerns that Apple will make less money as it competes in lower-priced segments of the mobile market.
Are these “low” profit margins or just margins that are lower than Apple’s existing industry-leading margins?
Let’s face it. The only thing Tim Cook can do to appease the naysayers is ship an entirely new product that revolutionizes a market. Is it reasonable to expect him to have done so in a year or even to expect Apple to do so in the two and a half years since the iPad was released? No. But that won’t stop people from projecting doom. As the Macalope says, dope springs eternal.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]