Arrogance
Ah, you’re off to a great start, Gundeep Hora!
I have to ask one question from Apple, if I may.
Well, the Macalope’s only read the title but already he’d prefer that you didn’t.
What’s up with the sheer arrogance in regards to iPhone?
Yeah! What is up with that?!
Man!
Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.
No, actually. The Macalope really, really doesn’t.
The lack of presence at last week’s CTIA tradeshow was purely disgusting and an insult to the entire industry.
Oh, that. Well… funny story. See, Steve Jobs thought Phil Schiller was going, and Phil Schiller thought Tim Cook was going and…
Personally, I wouldn’t be too arrogant at this point, especially considering the fact that the iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.
Boy, the Macalope never gets tired of hearing that one! And it’s a good thing since he’s been hearing it since 1984!
Then again, maybe that shows your insecurity about the iPhone and further proves my point.
Mmm… no.
Had you let the industry (press, analysts and competitors) experience the iPhone throughout CTIA, maybe you may have realized the idiocy behind the $599 price tag, and the phone’s lack of usefulness.
It’s $499, jackass. And “lack of usefulness”?
Let’s just say that if you and an iPhone were in a room together, something in the room would lack usefulness.
Clearly, it’s not designed for business users…
It may not be specifically designed for business users, but the Macalope suspects there will be a lot of senior executives and salespeople who are going to buy these things and simply demand their IT groups support them (at least their iPhones).
… and very few average consumers, mainly teenagers (the seemingly obvious target market of the iPhone), will have the budget to invest in a ludicrously priced cell phone.
Ah, the obvious target market for the iPhone is those punk kids because we all know Apple just makes toys! Like the iPod. Which is a toy. For… everyone.
Now, remember, this whole rant is ostensibly about Apple not showing the iPhone at some trade show. You remember the iPhone, right? It’s the product that isn’t shipping yet. The one that hasn’t received FCC approval yet.
That iPhone.
So, Apple, it’s not that I have anything against you… well, you may beg to differ after reading this column, but let’s be a little more humble, show some humility and launch a respectably priced product.
Oh, wait, maybe it’s not about the trade show. Maybe it’s about the price. Or maybe Gundeep doesn’t know what the hell it’s about, he just wanted to bash the iPhone.
Well, Gundeep, your name has been duly noted in the pantheon of clowns that rushed to declare the iPhone DOA. See you in a year or two!
UPDATE: In comments, DomBass points out that Hora’s first post about the iPhone was glowing. Try to rationalize the “lack of usefulness” comment with this:
Since the iPhone is also going to be a ridiculously powerful mobile device, the number of exciting applications that Apple will release throughout the product’s lifecycle is only going to make the iPhone an all around winner.
Jackass.
UPDATE II: Oh, man, it just gets worse. Commenter PygmySurfer found this gem from Hora in which he opines that Apple will dump OS X because it’s becoming a consumer electronics company.
Note to Hora: you might want to check what operating system two of Apple’s consumer electronics products — the iPhone and Apple TV (and probably the next version of the iPod, too) — run before writing something so mind-numbingly stupid.
There’s definitely arrogance involved here, but it’s coming from the Hora Group…
What? Enderle has multiple personality disorder, it’s only fair other crackpot pundits should too.
I wonder what this fellow had to say about the original iPod with its lack of market and devilishly high price? It’s the same old story, why do some people insist on donning the blinkers and imagining as hard as they can that Apple are evil and the world stinks? Answering that would be good journalism!
The sour grapes consistently spewed by Apple haters everywhere has been voluminous for years, but has reached epic proportions recently. Apple must be doing something right. Keep it up, Apple.
As for the haters, well, it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
There should be some sort of pundit prediction tracking database.
Also, in retrospect, better titles for this post would have been “Hora, Hora, Hora” or “The Hora. The Hora.” Oh, well. Hindsight is 20/20.
Is it a trade show about mobile phones? If so, I can’t imagine what they would have made of the iPhone.
“So, you’re saying it *doesn’t* make users want to smash it into little bits? Huh. Interesting.”
It’s commentaries like these that make me feel like I’m living on another planet. How can so-called tech pundits be so blind to the unique qualities that iPhone brings to the lackluster cellphone market?
Current handset engineers have their hands tied by the marketing guys, who have their hands tied by the carriers, so what consumers end up with is a high powered device capable of a multitude of functions, restricted to the most basic voice and text communications (and lame web browsing).
Apple comes along with none of these restrictions and builds a device that serves this hitherto hidden potential in a useful format, and all you hear is “Oh, it’s just a fad (that hasn’t happened yet)” and “Consumers don’t want it. I speak for Consumers everywhere” and, my favorite: “It’s too expensive.”
People like Hora and Dvorak should just stfu, or maybe just learn a little before publishing their thoughts.
“There should be some sort of pundit prediction tracking database.”
That is a brilliant idea; I may even do it…
yay, more flatulence from the pundit/yapping dick class… you know, I wish I was a more devious, dishonest person, because then I could write crap like that, get paid for it, and still sleep at night, kind of like the people who pitched cigarettes back in the day.
I don’t know why these guys (and gals, I suppose, although I can’t think of any gals who have done this–but that’s a whole ‘nother topic) go out of their way to denounce Apple products in advance. Especially products like the iPhone that will be hugely successful even if they do turn out to be, objectively, duds. I mean, is there any way at all that the iPhone won’t sell hundreds of thousands in its first year? I don’t think so.
I know that there’s some value to the notoriety of going against the conventional wisdom, but Dvorak et al just make themselves look foolish with claims like these. They say any press is good press, but if only for the sake of my ego I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my reputation as a being capable of rational thought for a bump in pageviews.
To be clear, there are plenty of problems that prevent the iPhone from being ideal for everyone (no high speed, relatively high price, size/shape, faux-widescreen aspect ratio, etc.)–but it’s clearly a smart, well-designed, and eminently desirable product. And anyone who says otherwise is a disingenuous weenie.
Well the funny part of all this is that the iPhone was shown off at CITA by AT&T. Here is a link to the article on this http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-ctia-att-keynote-iphone-gets-an-outing/ . Unfortunatley I can only surmise that Mr Gundeep Hora was not invited to this or missed this event. I believe since this was a wireless specific trade show Apple was letting AT&T show it off at their overall event to let them draw a bigger audience. Which means
Few pundits look back at their old predictions to review how accurate they were. I suspect this is because so few of their predictions are accurate to any level of detail. For some reason, some pundits manage to completely misread Apple time and again, to the point where bozos like Enderle have been predicting the imminent demise of Apple for years.
Do they ever wonder why it is that reality stubbornly refises to match their predictions?
I think that’s where the theory that Apple users are mindless consumers comes from. How else can they explain the inexplicable success of devices like the Mac or the iPod?
If the choice comes to “vast hordes of brainwashed fools rich enough to prop up a multi-billion dollar company” or “the prediction was way off,” Occam’s Razor implies that the latter is far more likely.
This Hora guy may be right or he may be wrong. His pronunciation of Apple’s doom only lacks the word “beleagured” for his own arrogance to be complete.
“There should be some sort of pundit prediction tracking database.”
That is really, the finest idea I’ve heard in a LONG, LONG time. Could be all web 2.0 with cool, animated graphs and fancy stats showing the % of wrongness for each person who foolishly thinks the iPhone won’t sell millions upon millions of units. I really would like to have a DB site like this. Quick, someone make it happen, PLEASE!
Reminds me of a shot down teenager. “Well, I didn’t want to dance with you anyway! AND your breath stinks! (hrumph)”
There are still a great number of people who think the iPod has succeeded *solely* because of advertising — it seemed like the “it” thing, and the sheep in the world had to have it.
But after several years, they refuse to wake up and realize that fads don’t last this long. Sure, Apple advertises the iPod, but that’s not the key to its success. (There has only been one commercial for the iPhone, and it aired a handful of times — and I still have non-tech people asking me all about it because they know I use Apple products.)
Huh? This bozo says the product is aimed at teenagers, but that teenagers won’t be able to afford it. Doesn’t it occur to him that perhaps then it isn’t aimed at teenagers?
As for a “respectable” price, what’s that supposed to mean? A whole failed economic system was based on the notion that value was to be understood as something other than what people were prepared to pay for something. The value of something isn’t determined by the king or the church or the state or the commissar or Gundeep Hora. If Apple–and whichever phone companies that sell this on–are asking more than people are prepared to pay, then people will spend their money in other ways. There’s no indication that that will be the case. In point of fact, the level of interest suggests it won’t be. AT & T has had over a million inquiries:
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20070327:MTFH69461_2007-03-27_14-07-22_N27454351&type=comktNews&rpc=44
Last week AT&T (Cingular) reported that they have received around one million requests for e-mails to alert cutomers when the iPhone is available. If those turn into actual sales, that’s $400-$500 million in revenue right out of the chute! Bugs Bunny had a term for so-called “pundits” like this guy – “ultra-moroon”…
Has anyone seen this bozo’s first posting about the iphone?
http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments/Columns/iPhone%3A_The_REAL_iPod_Killer_200702012800/
He loved it!
He is obviously trolling. What a berk.
Translation:
“I paid big bux for the expensive CITA conference, hoping to see the iPhone, but missed it.”
What’s really amusing is the article Dombass linked to is actually linked to smack in the middle of Hora’s current column.
Zowee.
Interestingly enough, Gundeep trots out his “I don’t have anything against Apple” in another (obviously trollish) article: http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments/Columns/Apple_Ready_to_Kill_OS_X?_200702282811/
“Well the funny part of all this is that the iPhone was shown off at CITA by AT&T [at the keynote].” Dumbass musta notta gotta invite.
Trolling for page hits and referrer revenue… did you notice the (broken) link to the Apple Store at the bottom of the Apple bashing post.
I agree with 42: if only I didn’t have any scruples I could do that job for a living too…
Let’s leave the poor boy alone. Clearly he is bipolar… or is it manic-depressive? Or is that the same as bipolar? Now I’m confused.
Perhaps they will re-name the syndrome: “Gundeeply Disturbed”.
Oh great Horned one! Might I suggest something?
I think that these loony “Dvorakians” no longer deserve actual links. Howsabout instead of pointing to the actual article, which is going to get this guy link hits – that instead you just point to the Google cached version? Just a thought. Yours,
Brigadier Jently Kirmbloom (Mrs.)
Courtesy of John Gruber, it looks like the iPhone made a rare public appearance at this show and since it saw its own shadow, it’ll mean two more months of lousy Zune advertisements….
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-ctia-att-keynote-iphone-gets-an-outing/
Maybe Gundeep should’ve paid attention to the program schedule instead of wandering around aimlessly on the show floor.
“Those who obstinately oppose the most widely held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want backseats.”
— François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Substitue ‘widely held’ with ‘obvious’. ‘Nuff said except to add that there is also money in it because: 1) news outlets these days save big by substituting their own reseach and analysis with cherry-picks of two polar points of view (no matter how insane–such as Ann Coulter or Rob Enderle) and 2) nervous competitors like to motivate themselves, even with delusions, if they feel they are losing and they are worried their customers might leave before they ‘get it back together’ or if they even will eventually.