Joe Wilcox: Lunatic

February 26th, 2010, by The Angry Drunk

We fea­ture the work of Joe Wilcox at Betanews fairly fre­quently on Ye Olde Angry Mac Bastards pod­cast, mainly because he’s a rav­ing lunatic, but the fes­ter­ing turd that he pub­lished yes­ter­day forced me to take direct action. The head­line reads Apple should ban free­bees from the iPad App Store and that essen­tially sums up the arti­cle. Joe argues that, in order to dis­tin­guish the iPad from the iPod Touch and the iPhone, Apple should set a pol­icy that no free appli­ca­tions can be offered via the iPad App Store.

Apple shouldn’t treat iPad like iPhone or iPod touch. The iPad App Store should be stocked full of pre­mium con­tent, mean­ing no free­bees. It’s the right way to help estab­lish iPad as a pre­mium prod­uct, as some­thing spe­cial like the Macintosh. Unfortunately, Apple has lit­tle incen­tive to take this right approach ben­e­fit­ing its devel­op­ers (because they make more money), cus­tomers (because they get bet­ter qual­ity apps) and the iPad brand (because it comes be to viewed as a more pre­mium product).

Ok, excuse me for a sec­ond while I go stick my cock in a light socket. I need to reboot my brain.

…

All right I’m back. What in the ever­last­ing fuck is wrong with Joe? Where to begin with this crapfest. First, how the fuck does “pre­mium” equate to “paid” you gorm­less twat? There are many free appli­ca­tions in the App Store that are of exceed­ingly high qual­ity. Second, where does this “iPad App Store” codswal­lop come from. Of course no one knows exactly what the iTunes App store will look like after the iPad is released, but it’s a damn good bet that iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad appli­ca­tions will be offered as part of a sin­gle store just as they are now.

Moving on:

Apple’s busi­ness is about sell­ing hard­ware, using soft­ware and ser­vices as dif­fer­en­tia­tors. Sure, Apple sold its 10 bil­lionth song at iTunes yes­ter­day, but the company’s busi­ness isn’t about sell­ing con­tent. The con­tent is a means to sell­ing more high-margin hard­ware. From that per­spec­tive, paid apps only mar­gin­ally ben­e­fit Apple. Free is bet­ter, because there can be more appli­ca­tions, which is good for build­ing out the App Store/iPhone OS device platform.

This para­graph is so bizarre I can’t actu­ally parse it. First it seems to be argu­ing against the very posi­tion that Joe staked out in the pre­vi­ous para­graph. Secondly, how does “free” mean that there will be more appli­ca­tions. Since it’s the devel­op­ers who decide to build appli­ca­tions for the iDe­vices, the reverse would seem to be the case. I is confused.

Joe bab­bles on for a few more para­graphs about iDe­vice sales num­bers before pre­sent­ing the meat of his thesis.

If three-quarters of the apps are paid ones already, why not 100 per­cent on iPad? Sure some peo­ple will balk, but, hell, they’re the early adopters pay­ing some­where between $499 and $829 for iPad. What should they expect? It’s a new prod­uct cat­e­gory for Apple and one where com­peti­tors have repeat­edly failed. If Apple is going to try and break­through with tablets, why not freshen the approach: Make the prod­uct even more chic by mak­ing it more exclu­sive — even at $499. Paid apps, and only paid apps, is one way to do it.

All I can say here is that Joe Wilcox has about as much under­stand­ing of con­sumer psy­chol­ogy as Robbie The Robot, per­haps less. Allowing only paid appli­ca­tions on the iPad won’t make it “chic,” it will make it the worst prod­uct fail­ure since The Angry Drunk’s Whiskey and Sex Toy Kit for Toddlers. Joe con­tin­ues to rehash this same point for a few para­graphs until he deliv­ers this zinger:

Apple’s risk is low, from my per­spec­tive, although com­pany execs might balk at any strat­egy that could hurt early iPad sales. The peo­ple who are going to buy have already decided to do so. According to a report released today by AdMob, 16 per­cent of iPhone users and 24 per­cent of iPod touch users plan to buy an iPad within six months.

“Apple’s risk is low….” For the love of Satan some­one please get me a sup­ply of what­ever drugs Joe is tak­ing. Apple’s risk is the howls of rage from both devel­op­ers and con­sumers, Not to men­tion the tech media. Apple’s risk is the com­plete and utter flop of the iPad when the “com­pe­ti­tion” trum­pets the “fact” that you can’t get free appli­ca­tions for it. Sweet Mephistopheles we had a day long debate on Twitter yes­ter­day about how to get users to pay any­thing for iPad appli­ca­tions; now you want to enforce no free apps. Seriously, is Wilcox on Benzedrine?


Hat tip to my favorite font of facial-hair, Jim Dalrymple at The Loop.

5 comments - (Comments closed)
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  • http://twitter.com/GlennF GlennF

    “The Angry Drunk’s Whiskey and Sex Toy Kit for Toddlers” — I think I saw that on the remain­dered shelf at Barnes & Noble between, “17 More Things To Do with Lutefisk That Your Lover Will Like” and “Richard Simmons’ Guide to Heterosexual Foreplay That Trims Your Tummy!”

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/PACMan3000/ Paul A. Chapel

    Joe Wilcox is a pro­fes­sional troll. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He writes so many stu­pid arti­cles, sprin­kled with with the rare thought­ful one that I’ve con­cluded he’s just another Dvorak clone. The blo­gos­phere is ripe with writ­ers just like him.

    He’s becom­ing Betanew’s bread and but­ter though. His arti­cles enrage a lot of peo­ple and when they do, the clicks float up into the stratos­phere. I finally under­stand why so many peo­ple watch Glen Beck. It’s not that they all agree with him, he’s just enter­tain­ing.

    I couldn’t get more than two para­graphs into Joe’s lat­est screed with­out get­ting bored with the whole thing. It’s so silly, what’s the point?

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/PACMan3000/ Paul A. Chapel

    Joe Wilcox is a pro­fes­sional troll. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He writes so many stu­pid arti­cles, sprin­kled with with the rare thought­ful one that I’ve con­cluded he’s just another Dvorak clone. The blo­gos­phere is ripe with writ­ers just like him.

    He’s becom­ing Betanew’s bread and but­ter though. His arti­cles enrage a lot of peo­ple and when they do, the clicks float up into the stratos­phere. I finally under­stand why so many peo­ple watch Glen Beck. It’s not that they all agree with him, he’s just entertaining.

    I couldn’t get more than two para­graphs into Joe’s lat­est screed with­out get­ting bored with the whole thing. It’s so silly, what’s the point?

  • kiil

    Thanks for break­ing down Wilcox’s post so that I did not have to read it myself. As Paul men­tion he’s a troll. As an aside, I think that peo­ple out there are using the term tablet which means for most of them a per­sonal com­puter that con­sists of only the mon­i­tor part of a note­book. The iPad is a media perusal device which also hap­pens to func­tion as an elec­tric clip­board. Its funny Apple is not com­pete­ing in the tablet mar­ket — it is avoid­ing it all together.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for break­ing down Wilcox’s post so that I did not have to read it myself. As Paul men­tion he’s a troll. As an aside, I think that peo­ple out there are using the term tablet which means for most of them a per­sonal com­puter that con­sists of only the mon­i­tor part of a note­book. The iPad is a media perusal device which also hap­pens to func­tion as an elec­tric clip­board. Its funny Apple is not com­pete­ing in the tablet mar­ket — it is avoid­ing it all together.