Just seconds after Apple announced on Monday that it had sold a whopping 9 million iPhones (comprising both the iPhone 5c and 5s), a number of funny folks on Twitter were outdoing themselves trying to come up with fake headlines about how that would be bad for the company.
Little did they know, truth is dumber than fiction.
Yes, congratulations to Sandy Cannold who, writing for ABC News, tells us “Why Record iPhone Sales Might be Rotten for Apple” (tip o’ the antlers to Michael deAgonia).
Now, just soak that in for a second. Bathe yourself in the warm light of its ass-backwardness. Revel in the knowledge that, no matter how befuddled with old age you one day may get, you will never write something so wrong.
To me though, all this over-the-top fanfare and even the record-breaking first weekend of sales could actually be cause for concern.
Of course! Meanwhile, two of the headlines in the sidebar that ABC thinks “You might also like” are about female athletes who get breast-reduction surgery and a dog who just doesn’t want to move! Which is probably exactly right. If you liked this article, you probably will like those other two.
Now before Apple lovers …
And lovers of logic.
… pillory me …
Oh, it’s way too late for that, Sandy. We started pillorying you at the headline. You just have no idea what you’re talking about.
… and say that I have no idea what I am talking about …
Whoops!
… hear me out.
Mmmmmmmm, no.
I fully concede that Apple is going to make billions in profit from the sale of these new devices and the company is in no danger of becoming Blackberry or Nokia. But the reason I am voicing a bit of doubt is that it seems like Apple is now trying to squeeze every last bit of profit it can out of an aging, shall we call it, iStone.
Oh, honey, let’s not.
Turns out—did you know?—true innovation is dead at Apple!
This is no longer the Apple of Steve Jobs.
It’s the Apple of this man: Larry Peskowitz of 324 Maple Leaf Drive in Saginaw, Michigan! Larry’s an insurance salesman who likes bowling, fried foods, and videos of dogs that just don’t wanna move!
The Apple that seemingly every couple of years rocked the consumer electronics world with a product so innovative that it changed industries forever.
Actually, Sandy—and you can do this math if you know how to add integers—it was a minimum of every three years. Which is about what it’s been since the company last introduced a category-defining product.
I firmly believe …
Waaiiiiit forrrrrr iiiiiiiit …
… that Steve Jobs wouldn’t have been satisfied to only pocket billions upon billions on tweaked products alone.
Steve Jobs never would have released incremental upgrades to the iPhone! Except for all the ones he did.
The ball is now squarely in Tim Cook’s court.
Uh, yeah, well, maybe that’s why Cook said Apple would be releasing new products this fall and through 2014.
It’s worse to actually think that this is insight, but it’s also pretty bad to not realize that this exact same “brilliant idea” has been pushed by about 1000 other silly pundits over the last two years.
There are so many Apple whatever-gates—Antennagate, Glassgate, Mapsgate, etc.—that the Macalope would like to return the favor to the tech press. Henceforth, whenever a silly pundit writes about a supposed Apple failing, ask their editor why they haven’t done anything about Stupidgate, the continued publication of intensely stupid articles about Apple.