Literally everything about Apple stinks, including the things that don’t. And the things they never even announced? They’re late.
Writing for Fast Company, Mark Wilson keys a hate letter to Apple.
“Dear Apple, Please Fix Boring Problems This Year.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)
That thing you heard was really good? It can’t be. Otherwise the story doesn’t work.
Then in 2016, Apple announced AirPods—a wireless earbud deemed ugly by the Wall Street Journal…
Well, we probably shouldn’t look at the whole headline from that link, should we? I mean, Wilson couldn’t be omitting any salient points from it, surely, because that would be… uh, yeah, totally in character for him, yes, let’s just take a peek…
“Best Wireless Earbuds: Apple’s AirPods (Yes, Those Ugly Things).”
Best. Wireless. Earbuds. The Macalope has seen people bury the lede before but he’s not certain he’s seen someone bury the first half of a headline.
And they are the best wireless earbuds, bud. They’re great. The Macalope will say it again: Criticizing the AirPods is simply shorthand for saying “I do not own AirPods.” Are they perfect? No. They are not. However, they are the kind of classic Apple product that’s so good when it’s good that it makes you forget when it’s bad. Also, it’s never as bad as the other truly bad products in the same category.
But in Wilson’s scenario of doom, they have to be bad because everything at Apple is bad. Even the stuff they don’t actually make.
Meanwhile, Apple scaled back the largest ambitions of its secretive self-driving vehicle program. Rumor has it the company will no longer build its own vehicle, but a system for car manufacturers to incorporate into their own designs.
And amid all of these delays and misses…
How does one “miss” on the shipment of a product they don’t even make yet? This is like an adjunct to the problem of Schrödinger’s cat in which the box containing the cat is put in a self-driving car that gets stuck in traffic.
One thing that is certainly true, though, is that the market for self-driving cars is all sewn up now and it’s way too late for Apple to have an impact in it since everyone owns a self-driving car already and you’re reading this article while you ride in one because the cars, they drive themselves.
OH, WELL. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME, APPLE.
The Mac Pro—the flagship of Apple desktop hardware—hasn’t been updated since 2013…
The iMac is unarguably the flagship of Apple desktop hardware, not the Mac Pro. But, hey, the iMac didn’t get an update in 2016, either, which is the first year it hasn’t received even so much as a speed bump since its introduction. One year isn’t nearly as bad as the Mac Pro’s epic drought, however.
The new Macbook Pro has a Touchbar [sic] that looks like something dreamed up by an intern at HP.
Again, most people who use the Touch Bar actually like it, but we can’t admit that because everything must be terrible and hated. It’s the Tinkerbell of Apple doom: You just have to believe everything is awful. Boo, children! Only your relentless booing will save the Tinkerbell of Apple doom!
Microsoft, smelling blood in the water, has given up on phones but focused on the future of the laptop and desktop. Its Surface line is not only selling well to the mainstream, it’s experimenting aggressively to score the Photoshopping, Maya-ing, and AutoDesk-ing market, too.
Follow that link and you’ll see that Microsoft made $926 million in the third quarter of 2016 from Surface sales. Now, that is pretty good and, more importantly, it’s growing. But it still pales in comparison to the $5.63 billion in revenue Apple made from the Mac in the same quarter.
Anyone who is compelled to trade in an Apple product for a discount on a Surface seems more likely to toss their iPhone for Android, too.
Oh, totally. If you’re frustrated with one problem, why not burn your entire world to the ground and salt the earth? That just makes sense.
Yes, Apple has problems. (Microsoft also has problems but is always presumed to be able to Microsoft their way out of them because Microsoft!) Somehow, though, Apple just having problems is never good enough. The company must be made to look like it only has problems. The reasons for this continue to baffle this furry observer.
Author: The Macalope
In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.