Two pieces by John Dvorak in two weeks? The Macalope knows it’s asking a lot of you, but load up on antacids and read on about his latest fever dreams. It’s been almost a year since Joe Wilcox said he was leaving Apple and he’s still figuring out whose CDs are whose. But he’s got a whole new myopic reason for the breakup! Finally, is the iPad mini real? Those wacky Apple rumor sites the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg say “Yes!”
Still crazy after all these years
Last Saturday, the Macalope mentioned how Buzzblog’s Paul McNamara coaxed a bitter, self-serving email out of John C. Dvorak (well, really, how hard could that be?) by asking him to explain how he could be so wrong about the iPhone five years ago.
As amusing as that was, it seems to have made John nostalgic for the good ol’ days when he trolled Apple fans with abandon.
Dvorak’s latest poke in the eye of Apple fans is “Giddyup, Apple!” (it’s over at PCMagazine if you’re feeling particularly masochistic) and is subtitled “The company is strolling like Microsoft when it should be sprinting like Adobe.”
Sprinting like the company that spent a couple of years telling us how Flash was the “real web.” Oookay.
We should have had an iPad 3 by now and an iPhone 5 by now.
Just because Apple calls it the “new iPad” doesn’t mean… you know, is there really any point in arguing with him?
Apple does not have this luxury because everyone is breathing down its neck, including Samsung, a partner of Apple’s. Teardown experts have shown that at least 26 percent of an iPhone is comprised of Samsung parts. Meanwhile, Apple is suing Samsung over its tablet.
And the capital of Nebraska is Lincoln!
And I should mention that many of Apple’s “patents” are ludicrous design and process patents. The curved edges and centered screen, for example, are patented.
As opposed to the patents of other companies which are all pure as the driven snow and smell like vanilla.
Samsung is going to calculate what it lost in the court action and I can assure you that someday in the future, when the opportunity is right, Samsung is going to pull the plug on some component. It will make sure that Apple eats at least that much money in lost sales.
And it’ll just take those components that it didn’t end up selling to Apple and light them on fire because smart business people are really in it for the spite.
Why are we supposed to believe the bizarre revenge fantasies of John Dvorak, PCMagazine? Is there some primer to this lunatic slash fiction? Like maybe a tab of acid?
While the iPhone users are using the once-fashionable, fragile iPhone 4, Samsung is rolling out a line of big screen beauties like the Note and the Galaxy S III.
John Dvorak is a size queen. Surprise.
Who knows what exactly is waiting in the wings when Apple eventually brings out the iPhone 5?
One thing’s for certain: No matter what it looks like you’ll tell us it stinks and is too late to save the company from ill humors or whatever it is you think is troubling Apple, as if any of these supposed troubles appear in its quarterly results.
To do this right, Apple needs a new phone every quarter.
Oh, is that all? And here the Macalope thought you were going to ask for something unreasonable.
This means four new phones a year with the old ones discontinued or sold off cheap. The Apple fans will buy four phones a year instead of one or two. Business will boom.
As… opposed to how Apple’s doing now.
Well, thanks for the advice, John. The Macalope’s sure Apple will really take it to heart.
Wait, the heart’s not really the right organ. Pancreas? Maybe they’ll take it to pancreas. If that.
Posture perfect
Now, correct the Macalope if he’s wrong, but didn’t Joe Wilcox already write a self-righteous screed about how he wasn’t leaving Apple, Apple left him?
Oh, yeah, here’s the Macalope’s take on that piece from almost a year ago. Apparently Joe’s going to leave Apple every year so he can make up a new reason why the company no longer meets his high personal standards.
Last year’s reason was because Apple was no longer innovative or inspiring without Steve Jobs. This year it’s because Apple’s too litigious about people copying its stuff (tip o’ the antlers to markbyrn).
The image of do-gooding, trendy Apple is inconsistent with its gruff bullying alter-ego.
There’s certainly no denying that Apple’s trendy. Just look at the trend lines. As for do-gooding, the Macalope’s not sure that’s ever been an accurate image.
Well, whatever. Like an in-law who’s overstayed his welcome, we’re just eager to help Joe pack and be on his way.
I had planned to buy a Linksys router, but Cisco shenanigans compelling users to sign up for Cloud Connect accounts put me off.
Oh, you mean it’s complicated finding unicorn companies that never do anything wrong? Who’d have thought it?
Strangely, Apple abdication sends me to Google.
And Google, as we all know, is utterly chaste and pure and would never do anything that could be considered anything less than above-board.
Normally this is where the Macalope would insert “Cough,” with a link to something proving how hilariously naive that is, but what’s the point, really? Joe’s solely fixated on Apple’s foibles for some reason and facts would only get in the way of his self-righteous rant.
Look, there are aspects of Apple’s control the Macalope doesn’t like, either. But the problem with Wilcox’s boycot is that in fleeing a company with control issues, he’s run into the arms of one with tremendous privacy issues. Which, not surprisingly, he doesn’t discuss for a second. Quite the contrary, if you bring them up, that just means you’re part of the problem.
Meanwhile, expect more stories about Google, which surely some of you will insist is changing slave masters. Shame on you.
Indeed. Shame on us for not living in your black-and-white world, Joe. Nailed it.
CONFIRMED
For those of you who enjoy driving to the rumor bank to deposit your fake rumor money which you somehow garner when rumors make that fateful transition from dream to reality, you might want to find your car keys. Because the consensus of opinion seems to have turned on one of our most recent Apple unicorns, the iPad mini.
Yes, this week you couldn’t shake your useless, stupid, fat new iPad without hitting a rumor about a svelte, pocketable iPad mini. Rumors are all fun and games until the likes of the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg get in on the game and then they’re deadly serious.
Yes, those “people familiar with the situation” have spoken and you should probably start saving up somewhere around $200 to $250 because you know you totally want that middle-sized iOS experience when an iPhone just isn’t big enough and an iPad is too big.
This leaves poor Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, who has long questioned the validity of these rumors, now on the outskirts of iPad Miniville standing on a soapbox and haranguing the stream of new entrants into this gold-rush town about its fast and loose lifestyle.
“Why Apple doesn’t need a 7-inch iPad”
Kingsley-Hughes makes a good point about the 7-inch tablet space being a race to the bottom, as Amazon and Google try to outbid each other for how much negative margin they can sell a tablet for in the hopes that you’ll buy some crap from them. But, then, Apple rarely plays by anyone else’s rules (the Apple TV notwithstanding), so one good argument against it doesn’t mean Cupertino can’t find a way to make it work, either by squeezing suppliers to get it to $200 or just selling it as a better device at $250.
To put it in the phrasing of a countryman of Kingsley-Hughes’s, there is more in heaven and Earth, Adrian, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
Maybe.
Then again, maybe not.
Shakespeare ended cutting that last part in a late edit of Hamlet.
[Editor’s Note: 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.]