It’s a new year, so that means everything’s different, right? HAHAHAHA. Please, do not make the Macalope’s sides literally split with laughter. Because that sounds awfully painful. And very strange. How would that even happen? Dry skin?
Anyway, despite the calendar change, silly punditry and unfounded Apple rumors are still popular pastimes. Which means the Macalope’s services are still required.
Same old, same old
It may be a new year but you can expect more of the same accountability-free silly punditry. As 2011 came to a close, we got a prime example of the genre foisted on us by Brian Deagon.
Apple, Google Seen Stumbling In 2012; Amazon, IBM Up
Isn’t it odd how it’s always the top dogs who are so widely expected to fail? Technology pundits ever strive to be the first to predict something groundbreaking. And, heck, why not, when the cost of being wrong is so low?
Why? Oddly, Deagon doesn’t really say other than to suggest the iPhone and iPad have lost their cachet, despite some indications to the contrary that the rest of us know as “reality.”
With the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple (AAPL) redefined markets and defined cool. But what’s left? The iPhone is boxy, flat and feeling stale.
Yes, the best selling smartphone is “stale.” He wrote that! It doesn’t matter if Apple sells a metric butt-ton of them, it doesn’t have 4G or 3D or some other number-letter combination that some Android phone has that drains its battery before you get out of the driveway.
The Samsung Galaxy smartphone seems cooler. With Google‘s (GOOG) Android platform now the fastest-growing mobile OS, Apple’s software advantage will diminish.
The Macalope has no real idea what market share has to do with software but that’s probably some kind of Apple zealot thing he’s got going on. Objective observers like Deagon could tell you but if you have to ask, you probably wouldn’t understand.
Smartphones and tablets will become commodity items and Apple will be eaten by the collective Android gang.
Just like happened with the iPod and the iPad.
Er…
Apple’s next big hope is the TV market, a tough nut to crack and where Samsung is king.
“PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
The Macalope loves the “next big hope” construction, as if Apple is somehow pinning everything on this next bet. Other companies can plod along, content to lead average and unremarkable lives, but Apple must produce breakout hit after breakout hit or it’s somehow failing.
John Gruber says the post will be fun a year from now, but while we might have our laughs, the Macalope predicts Deagon will never look back.
The thing about free advice
There’s a special place in hell reserved for those addicted to making New Year’s resolutions. But they get to ride those who make resolutions for other people like ponies over the flaming hot coals of eternity.
People like, oh, say, BetaNews’s Ed Oswald.
10 resolutions Apple should make for 2012
And here the Macalope thought Joe Wilcox was the only one at BetaNews who should have the keys to the Internet taken away from him for writing under the influence of… well, something. Mescaline? Floor wax, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and a blow to the head as a child? We won’t know for sure until the toxicology report is back.
Actually, truth be told, until now the Macalope had never read anything at BetaNews by anyone other than Wilcox. He thought maybe Joe was the sole writer, emerging each morning from an isolation tank brimming with his patented mix of bourbon and more bourbon, before sitting down to key complete insanity.
But apparently writing dumb things about Apple is more than a one-man job.
Oswald’s list is another vanity construction, more about the author’s attempts to show how smart he is than it is about Apple. And yet it features the same tired arguments you’ll find being barfed onto the Internet by any number of these screaming New Year’s revelers (“YOU KNOW WHAT APPLE NEEDSH TA DO? I’LL TELL YOU WHAT APPLE NEEDSH TA DO…”), drunk on conventional wisdom.
Apple needs 4G! It needs a 7-inch iPad! The iPhone needs a new form factor! The iPad needs to be cheaper! And what’s with all the lawsuits?!
Rather than deconstruct this nonsense in his usual inimitable fashion, the Macalope will make one suggestion for Apple:
Keep doing what you’re doing.
Yes, there are things the Macalope could quibble over—App Store rules, security policy, the Tuesday menu at Caffe Macs—but there’s little denying that Apple is, you know, doing pretty well. And there’s a reason that the people who are running Apple are running Apple and making millions of dollars and we’re writing for the Web.
Well, at least no one will accuse us of just doing it for the money.
Saturday Special: Shine on, you crazy diamond
A lot of people think the Macalope is exaggerating when he says he was weaned on Apple rumors, but it’s a fact. They were the only thing he’d take. Creamed peas, creamed spinach, creamed alfalfa—he’d throw them all back in his poor parents’ faces.
Can you imagine how hard it must be for two Manalopes to raise a mutant Macalope?
However, as is often the case with something you ate a lot of for a long time, he’s mostly lost his taste for the stuff. Too rich. Particularly when they’re creamed. Take, for instance, the recent spate of rumors about the next iPad. Just last week the inveterate goofballs at DigiTimes were serving up rumors that Apple would announce the iPad 3 at Macworld|iWorld. The Macalope wondered exactly how that would happen as, you know, Apple doesn’t go to the winter love-fest by the Bay anymore. Would Apple employees just take to the showroom floor and run around holding up iPad 3s shouting “iPad 3! iPad 3!”?
That’d be pretty funny, actually. The Macalope would like to see that. Alas, Jim Dalrymple has put the kibosh on the rumor, summarily snuffing it out with his Beard of Logic, Fact, and Sheer Obviousness +3.
Don’t despair, though! The Apple rumor mill grinds ever on, pressing forward like a machine perpetually fueled by hopes and dreams and aluminum unicorns.
Report: Apple to launch ‘full HD’ iPad 3 in March, followed by iPad 4 in October
iPad 4 in October, huh? Where does this “report” come from? Why, the always rock-solid DigiTimes, of course. Come on, people, it’s not like it’s ever gotten anything wrong before that Macworld announcement thingy.
Previously the publication claimed Apple had a 7.85-inch iPad in the works for a late 2012 launch, which their sources later claimed would no longer be happening.
“No longer be happening.” That’s Apple rumor shorthand for “We are totally making this crap up, but you people keep clicking on it, so…”
Oh, Apple rumors. Don’t ever change.
[Editors’ Note: Each week the Macalope skewers the worst of the week’s coverage of Apple and other technology companies. 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.]