Bad news about Apple once again as it turns out that the company and its products are nor—repeat: not—immune to the effects of time.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, John D. Stoll tells us how the destroyer of all things will eventually get Apple as well.
“Polaroid. Walkman. Palm Pilot. iPhone?” (Tip o’ the antlers to Philip.)
People love iPhones. But were you aware that death eventually catches up to all of us? Where is your god now?
Good one, WSJ.
If history is any indication… America’s favorite handheld device will someday take up residence with the digital camera, the calculator, the pager, Sony’s Walkman and the Palm Pilot in a museum.
It’s almost as if technology is somehow intrinsically related to the time in which it exists. Weird. The Macalope should fax some people about this.
Consider it was as recently as the mid-1990s when I spent an hour a day during my senior year in high school in a room full of electric typewriters learning to type.
Where have you gone, Mavis Beacon? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Apple, for the better part of the 2000s, was the master of the next big thing: the iPod, the MacBook Air…
People thought the MacBook Air was pretty cool when it was announced, but it wasn’t initially a huge sales hit.
…the iPad, the iPhone.
Is there anything missing from that list? Rhymes with Snapple Botch? Yeah, the Apple Watch is a tremendous success but pundits declared it a “flop” early on and that preconception must never be challenged no matter how many Apple sells.
Instead Stoll lays it on thick with the conventional wisdom about Apple’s offerings.
Apple has had no breakthrough on TV, a modest success with its watch, a stumble in music…
A “stumble”? Is Stoll’s web searcher thingy not working?
“Apple Music Just Surpassed Spotify’s U.S. Subscriber Count.”
Only for Apple would the Watch be a “flop” (or even a “modest success”) and Apple Music be a “stumble.”
Now let us turn to the person we would naturally turn to for the definitive last word on Apple.
“It’s hard to be a two-trick pony,” former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told me Thursday.
The Macalope just raised his eyebrows so far they went halfway down his back. He wasn’t even aware he could do that.
“It’s amazing to do one. It’s super amazing to do two. Doing three?”
For a guy who owns a professional basketball team, Ballmer seems to have a little trouble counting three-pointers.
He said Apple’s line of Mac products is one trick and the so-called i-Series (iPhone or iPod) was a second.
Yah got yer Macs and then yah got yer whatsits. Yer goobers. Thingamajiggies, I calls ‘em. If I can stick ‘em in my mouth, they’re all the same to me.
We’ve missed you, Steve. The Macalope had to retire the Winotaur after you left. The company just wasn’t throwing big, sweeping haymakers that were connecting with absolutely nothing anymore.
So, Apple had a success with Macs… and then anything with an “i” in front of it. Okay. Boy, that naming convention was sure unfortunate. If only they’d known their success would ultimately come down to that they might have named the original iPod and iPhone a little more differently, since they were actually pretty different products.
Boy, the Macalope went into this article warily but when you stack up a bunch of conventional wisdom and then top it off with a quote from someone who famously failed to compete against the company, then it sure… uh…
Nope. Still ridiculous.