You ever hear those stories about crazy laws that are somehow still on the books in certain areas? “City Council Shocked To Find Ordinance Dating To Prohibition Forbidding Left Handed People From Eating Cheese Still On The Books.”
That’s pretty much how the Macalope reacts every time he’s reminded they still let John C. Dvorak write about Apple.
“How the Apple Car Could Succeed and Why it Won’t.” (No link but an archive link here.)
Do we really need to recount the many atrocities committed by Dvorak? This is the guy who said Apple needed to “pull the plug on the iPhone” three months before it launched because Nokia and Motorola already had the smartphone market locked up.
In a just universe, Dvorak’s hands would go on strike and crawl off the ends of his arms every time he sat down to write about Apple. It is regrettable that the laws of justice do not work that way in our universe. Please sign the online petition.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.
Dvorak’s thoughts on the margins Apple got on the Mac back in 2007 are also gut-bustingly funny:
Those margins cannot exist in the mobile handset business for more than 15 minutes.
Apple, of course, has enjoyed iPhone margins that are substantially greater than those on the Mac for years.
No amount of being dramatically wrong appears to shame Dvorak or the publications he writes for. His Apple analysis is like PC Magazine’s personal Professor Binns, it died years ago but is still somehow showing up to work.
I’ve been a proponent of Apple marketing a large-screen TV set for probably five years or more.
You know what they should make? A fax machine.
Car design is tricky.
Ooh. Is it a black art like alchemy or making a good vegan meatloaf? Or is it something that’s hard but not impossible to figure out if you devote a bunch of years to quietly working on it, like making a smartphone?
If the design is too weird, or subject to ridicule, or if it picks up a derisive nickname … then it will be D.O.A.
There are so many ways Apple could go wrong that it’s positively dizzying! Certainly all reasonable people can agree that there’s no way they could get it right so they might as well just not try. It’s amazing how not trying so often turns out to be the best solution.
Size is another consideration. How big or how small should the vehicle be?
How many carburetors should it have? One? Three? One hundred and seventy-five? What does a carburetor even do? Very few car experts (known in the business as “caritarians”) even know! And all this before we say the words that strike fear into the hearts of car designers everywhere: Wankel rotary engine.
All of the breathless failure points Dvorak tries to throw on the road like tire spikes would be applicable for any company, not just Apple. Except this one, of course:
And here comes the rub. The price.
Apple products cost too much! They’ll never be able to sell any!
Uh-huh. Sure.
Dvorak’s Apple musings are not analysis. They’re performance art. Lazy, tired performance art.