My God Another One Gets It!
In a welcome break from the current torrent of “Apple is dooomed” reporting, Jason Snell over at MacWorld hits on, what I think, is the real story in this piece. Jason’s argument, which I agree with whole-heartedly, is that the string of Apple failures leading up to July’s mega fiasco is the result of Apple simply biting off more than it can chew. I think that this is self-evident, and if you look carefully I think that you can see the seeds of this situation going all the way back to the release of Tiger and the PPC to Intel transition. Additionally, I think that the signs are there for those who want to see them that Apple gets this, and is working to pull themselves out of the hole. As one tiny piece of evidence I’ll point to the “no major features” Snow Leopard release. The bottom line is, Apple isn’t “arrogant,” or “incompetent.” They’re simply facing the consequences of being too successful.
Posted on August 13th, 2008 under Posts • Tags: Apple. • 
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August 13th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Huh. Well.
Apple is still making money hand over fist. Their “string of failures” is hard to pick out of their continuously increasing market share, revenue, and profit.
There isn’t a company on the planet that wouldn’t kill for Apple’s string of failures.
It’s relative.
Just sayin’.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:49 am
@Rip Ragged:
No argument from me on that.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Catastrophic success?
August 14th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
@ Rip Ragged
True, but what I find really gratifying is that they aren’t just blindly doing Scrooge McDuck cannonballs into their mounds of money. They recognize that some of the problems that manifested recently could hurt them in the future.
That’s good management.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I don’t know, not being privy to the inner workings of the mind of Steve Jobs, but I’d be willing to bet all the money in my wallet against the unencumbered equity in your house that there’s a plan for all those dollars in the rathole.
A cushion against a fuck-up is a good thing to have. El Jobso bets the frigging house on a new technology twice a year or so. A few billion in the bank is a nice little insurance policy.
If I’m an Apple employee, it makes me feel a little more secure about buying a new Prius.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I’m not privy to Steve Jobs’ grey matter, the content of your wallet nor the unencumbered equity in my house (my wife and my bank are really good at that stuff, thankfully) but I totally agree with you.
It reminds me of the only interesting line to come out of the mouth of former senator Fred Thompson (as an “actor” in “The Hunt for Red October” not a “senator”, [intentional scare quotes in all cases]): “Russians don’t take a dump, son, without a plan”. Well, no company accrues that much cash in hand (and revenue growth and profit and dividends) without a plan. As you said, it’s one hell of an insurance policy.
My point being that they aren’t just wallowing back in the current greenbacks but are smart enough to recognize potential problems in their ability to keep producing them and are take timely action to ameliorate the problems.
Toyota’s share price should do well too.
PS: I think my randomly-assigned avatar in this comment system is sexier than your randomly assigned avatar in this comment system, so there!
PS2: Your blog is quite interesting.
PS3: I don’t like console platforms.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Sorry about this self-referential reply, but when I stated “my randomly-assigned avatar in this comment system is sexier than your randomly assigned avatar” I was referring to the one that appeared in this comment.
Whereas the one that appeared in the comment above is obviously of inferior parentage.
And ugly.
What fresh hell is this?
August 16th, 2008 at 6:44 am
I have never wanted a sexy avatar. If I did, I would opt for something that was not symmetric, geometric, or a shaed of purple.
I don’t think Apple is competing with Microsoft, Nokia, Dell, et. al. at all. Apple August is trying only to be better than Apple July. Kicking the shit out of everybody else will just happen as a byproduct.
And it sure is fun to watch.
August 16th, 2008 at 9:14 am
@Wrinkle_In_Time:
These generated avatars are based on your email address, the case of which you changed between comments; hence the differing avatars.
@Rip: Wordpress offers two additional generated avatar options, or I could turn the generated avatars off completely. I’m not sold on them anyway. You guys tell me.
August 16th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
@Rip Ragged
Oh yes, it sure as hell is fun to watch.
@The Angry Drunk
I was just being silly about the assigned avatars: please continue to do whatever the hell you like. BTW: Your chosen avatar looks like a Wii version of Wolverine. The smiling square of processed cheese that now appears for me is quite amusing. I never guessed Wordpress would treat e-mail addresses with case sensitivity and I only typed it that way out of shift_key_laziness. The underscores being a throwback to boards with less sophisticated usernames.
@The topic
The “Apple is doomed” crowd are probably just trying to manipulate the stock price à la Jim Cramer, et cretina.
August 16th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
sigh I fail at teh intarwebs.
August 16th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
@TAD
Frankly, I don’t care what random graphic appears next to my handle, as long as it isn’t Steve Ballmer doing something unembarrassing.
The Apple is doomed crowd has many subsets: short sellers, Wintards, paid M$ shills, some Linux geeks, and IT guys who don’t get it.
It doesn’t really matter. They’re all just beer cans on the road in front of the Apple steamroller.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Case in point (dumbass short seller):
http://seekingalpha.com/article/91409-apple-great-company-with-lofty-valuation-due-for-pullback