Home » Rants
Apple's Rise and FallWhen does it end? How does it end?
There are any number of ludicrous things about Apple's infamous fanboys. Contradictions in terms. Paradoxes. Hypocrisies. Outright erratic schizophrenic Jamestown behaviour.
- They break into a cold sweat if they hear anyone anywhere is using their precious operating system on anything but genuine overpriced Apple hardware.
- They revel in the fact they're a downtrodden minority, doomed to the margins by the psychotic leadership of their company.
- They regard themselves as superior to everyone else even though they don't understand a hoot about how operating systems work. Even their self-professed fanboy leader John Gruber who sports an impressive four year degree in Quark Xpress admits he just likes being a snob.
- They think they're still running their precious beige box 'Mac OS' even though it started to rot fifteen years ago and was replaced by a FreeBSD clone. It didn't matter David Pogue and Chris Stone told them time and again 'it's not the same system' because they don't care. It IS still the same system.
- They sat around for years as everyone else worked securely in 32-bit computing, waiting yes just waiting for their hysterically chaotic company to come up with something. In the end their company couldn't come up with anything so their interim CEO bought someone else's operating system instead. Yet it took another five years until they got to see their new operating system. But as far as they were concerned it's the same 'Mac OS' they'd been using since 1984. Now they're better than everyone else again. What a relief.
- For years they had the world's most user hostile personal computing operating system on the planet. For no one else on any other platform has ever had to configure the amount of RAM to allocate to each application or manage crash prone things like 'kernel extensions'. In comparison all other platforms 'just worked' and theirs didn't.
- Things were so bad even the most ferocious fanboys admitted you couldn't leave their system idling overnight. Just by standing there doing nothing the sorry thing would crash by morning - a unique feat in the world of computing. Windows has been known to lose memory when idling but crash when standing there doing nothing? Never. Only Apple could create such a unique system.
- They have their precious 5% market share. They'll never be bigger. Not with their current psychotic leadership they won't. Their computer market has been saturated years ago. If they hadn't lucked out with the gift of a design for the iPod they wouldn't have had anywhere to go.
- So they're teetering all the time. Their old dream of a 20% market share is just that and no more: a dream. They'll never get there again. Not with the current psychotic leadership.
- But here's the ludicrous, the contradiction, the paradox, the hypocrisy, the outright erratic schizophrenic Jonestown: day in day out 24/7/365.2422 they're terrified the sky is falling.
Several major companies are withdrawing from Macworld. They've paid for their space but they're not wasting any more money. They're pulling out.
Steve Jobs won't be delivering the keynote at Macworld. Apple's own Steve Ballmer will attempt to woo the crowd instead. Maybe he can shout 'Macintosh! Macintosh! Macintosh!' for half an hour.
And after this year Apple aren't going to be in Macworld either.
There are no new blazing products planned for Macworld. Ive has his new line of notebooks and that's it, that's all she wrote. Apple constantly need new products to survive. Now they have none.
The iPod has jumped the shark. Apple try new variations on the same worn out theme and more and more they fail to impress the pundits. They've saturated the market long ago.
The iPhone isn't the replacement gadget for the iPod. Anybody can use an iPod but an iPhone user has to cancel the current carrier contract and (in the US) go with the underachiever AT&T. It's still not secure enough for corporate use and Apple don't know how to sell to governments and corporations anyway.
The iPod Touch is in between and could in theory replace the iPod but it's not exactly sweeping the nation.
Over half of Apple's total revenues come from their handsets. If they'd never happened upon the design sketches for the iPod etc they'd have bottomed out long ago. They don't even use the word 'computer' in their corporate name anymore. They're actually winging it: they don't really know what they're doing.
From north of the border and from down in Florida an attack is underway. The Attack of the Clones. Apple could possibly stop the Florida attack but the northern one? Much more difficult. All they're doing on that front is selling hardware that can in theory run Apple's OS. And many others. Basically with off the shelf components just like the primordial IBM PC. That's not even close to a misdemeanour.
So just when things are getting tight with the Cupertino people the vultures swoop down, ready to chew on the carrion. It's the OS people want. Not Steve Jobs, not the FlavorAid, not the shiny hermetically sealed boxes from the Planet Groovy - just the OS.
Apple have been a corporate roller coaster throughout their history. Possibly the one and only Fortune 500 company always in trouble, always a step from dissolution.
Sooner or later the ride's going to end.
- 'Mac Skywatcher'
|