There are two ways to write a piece admitting you were massively wrong about which company would hit a milestone first. One is to admit you were wrong and gracefully congratulate the company that succeeded.
Then there’s this way.
Writing for Gartner, Scott Galloway sarcastically says “Yay Capitalism.”
Apple’s market capitalization breached $1T this week.
And I’m really, really mad about it.
I’m a bit sanguine, as I’ve been predicting, with enormous confidence, that Amazon would get there first.
I was wrong and I’m going to take it out on Apple.
Oh well, I started predicting the ascent when the Seattle firm was worth $200B, and now it sits at $870B. So maybe I get the “most improved” ribbon.
And people complain that it was millennials who were ruined by the practice of giving everyone a trophy.
What significance does $1T have? Not much.
It doesn’t! It really doesn’t! That’s what the Macalope said on Saturday! And yet here we are sitting through a sixteen hundred (1,600!) word LARP of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite by the esteemed perfesser from NYU. “If Bezos had put me in, I know we woulda made it to $1 trillion first. No doubt in my mind.”
Does NYU have a chair in “Yeah, but…”?
This piece spins off the rails early and often.
If John Ritter were still alive, I believe that, if he and I were friends, he’d visit me if in the hospital and call to congratulate me when I got tenure (which will never happen, as I’m a clinical professor). However, if it did… John would call. Apple Inc. wouldn’t.
You’d think there has to be an easier way to say “Apple is not your friend, it’s a soulless corporate entity” than making up a friendship with a dead actor but, nope, you’d be wrong.
Steve Jobs will get more credit than he deserves. Mostly because he’s dead, and the easiest/hardest way to spread Vaseline over your accomplishments is to die early.
What a clever con to die of cancer. That Steve Jobs was a wily one.
Tim Cook deserves more credit than he will receive, as the firm accrued almost $700B under his watch.
This is at least a refreshing change from the cries of “Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs!”
And who has added the most value in their tenure as CEO? You guessed it, the wealthiest man in the world, Jeff Bezos ($890B).
Yes, Jeff Bezos wins by not dying of cancer. Very smart of him. Clearly he is the best at being CEO. So, see, really Galloway right all along.
There is a positive correlation between your income and the likelihood you have an iPhone. So, just as driving a Ferrari says you’re killing it, or have your priorities totally f***ed up, or both, owning an iPhone is the easiest way to communicate your sexual strength.
The insinuation by Galloway here is that the sexually impotent buy expensive smartphones but the joke’s on him because the Macalope owns an iPhone SE.
Apple’s move from the tech sector (brain) to the luxury sector (genitals) has enabled it to reap unthinkable margins for a computer company.
Oh, has Apple only recently started selling devices that cost more than the industry average? That is indeed news. Some of that fake news the Macalope has been hearing so much about.
I believe few things could better predict our social fabric unraveling than Apple hitting $2T in value. Yay. Capitalism.
As opposed to the company whose employees can’t take bathroom breaks for fear of losing their jobs. That would have been OK. But a company that charges more for its phones? End of civilization. Isn’t there an argument you can make here about the benefits of soaking the rich? No? OK.
Galloway is right that these numbers don’t matter. What matters even less, though, is whiney excuse-making and lashing out for being wrong about a number that doesn’t matter.