I caught up with some RSS over the weekend and read The Macalope tearing apart Peter ‘wuh?’ Cohan’s recent Forbes piece. Cohan is one of a number of people lacking a strong link with reality that reckon the best thing for the hugely profitable Apple to do right now would be to get rid of CEO Tim Cook and replace him with Jony Ive. That’s because Jony Ive knows how to design pretty things and Tim Cook, presumably, knows nothing at all. As noted by The Macalope, Cohan did at least note one tiny snag in his cunning plan:

It’s unclear whether Ive has the skills to manage Apple …

And The Macaope then added:

Sadly, this dumb argument that only under Steve Jobs could Apple innovate won’t stop being made until Apple reinvents another market. And, realistically, given the intellectual prowess and integrity of the people making it, it probably won’t even end then.

Nope. In fact, here’s precisely what’s going to happen if and when Apple produces an entirely new product line:

  1. People will say it will be a total disaster (much like, say, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad proved to be).
  2. People will yell “Steve Jobs would never have done that” until their throats are sore with agonising pain. And then they will type STEVE JOBS WOULD NEVER HAVE DONE THAT until their fingers are worn down to the bone. And then they will use eyebrow wiggles to signal to trained pets to communicate with humanity that Steve Jobs would never have done that. Because, you know, these people haven’t said that enough of late.
  3. Apple’s new product will sell. In fact, it will sell what in technical terms is referred to as a ‘crap load’ of units.
  4. Pundits will hammer the ‘warp reality’ button until they can spew words on to the internet that make some kind of argument that they thought Apple’s new thing would be a huge success all along.
  5. The pundits will wait up to—but no longer than—90 days.
  6. Apple will then be accused of not being able to innovate, having not revolutionised a new industry for two quarters running, despite having actually only done so a handful of times in its history.

Naturally, at points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, AAPL will be down at least three per cent.