Scary stuff and do you want some free advice with that free Wi-Fi?
This week’s MacUser piece looks at Windows 7 (AAAAAIIIIIEEEE!!!), free Wi-Fi from AT&T and free advice from people you don’t want any advice from.
Getting results and acting out
This week’s piece at MacUser looks at Apple’s quarterly results and the new “Get a Mac” ads, for your reading enjoyment.
The kids these days with the iPhones! I tells ya!
Every time the Macalope tries to get out of the business of jousting at silly pundits, he gets pulled back in.
The horny one was determined to ignore Tom Kaneshige’s InfoWorld piece entitled “A new etiquette for the iPhone generation”. Really he was. He ignored it when he saw it in InfoWorld’s daily email blast. He ignored it again when he saw it has been reposted by InfoWorld’s sister publication, Macworld.
But then someone emailed it to him and instinct took over.
Stupid antelope genes.
Armin Henreich’s infamous “I Am Rich” iPhone application—a $1,000 ruby-red screen saver—was pulled from Apple App Store shelves months ago, but its message still resonates loudly.
Really? With who? Other than jackass tech journalists.
Now the iPhone, the tech symbol of the “in” crowd, is on the verge of crossing the line into AIG-like excess and arrogance.
Hey, everyone! We’re getting a bailout and a taxpayer-funded trip to a spa! Whoo-hoo!
“I’m not sure, under the current economic conditions, that it’s a great statement to make,” says Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group. “You may not want to flash it.”
Are you suggesting, Tom, that we take advice on what kind of personal statement to make from this man?
Or really any kind of advice?
C’mon, Tom. Not every iPhone user can suddenly take up golf. For starters, there aren’t enough tee times.
Maybe you’re new around here so the Macalope will just let you know that quoting Enderle in a piece about Apple is tantamount to scrawling on the top of said piece “I AM SO PHONING THIS IN” next to your byline in crayon.
From “my apps are cooler than your apps” contests…
The Macalope must have missed this contest. Anyone know what he’s talking about here?
…to “sent from my iPhone” e-mail footers…
Yeah, it’s a good thing no other smart phones have those!
cough – Blackberry – cough
…people love showing off their iPhones.
Yeah, what is up with that?! My god, people! Get a phone you’re embarrassed of! Tuck it away in the closet! Bury it in a mason jar under your porch!
NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.
Traditional cell phones and iPods already audibly isolated people in their own little worlds, and iPhone’s visual carnival pushes that isolation further.
Wait, wait, wait. Which is it, Tom? Are we loud-mouthed show-offs who insist on pushing our gaudy iPhones on everyone we meet on the street, or are we quiet introverts, leading lonely, isolated lives, shunning all human contact for the warm glow of technology? It can’t be both, dude.
The visual nature of the iPhone can be a big distraction. Will consumers, walking around with their heads down as they play a game or look at a map on the iPhone’s mini-screen, collide with each other like pinballs?
Will these iPhone-using kids wander onto our lawns and summarily decline to get off of them?
Last month, a train engineer in Los Angeles was allegedly text messaging on his cell phone moments before he crashed into a freight train, killing 25 people, including himself.
That settles it! From now on, only the Amish will drive our nation’s trains!
Wait…
Look, this kind of trite, bullshitty article gets trotted out every so often by lazy-assed writers (or, in fairness to Kaneshige, writers with lazy-assed editors) who dourly want to warn us of the perils of the printing press cotton gin horseless carriage phonograph television…
Oh, fuck it, you get the point.
Just stop it.
Apple surpasses goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008
A quarter Two months early [that's sales to-date, not as of the end of last quarter]. Just announced on the quarterly conference call, not that it’s surprising unless you’re a jackass. And you know who you are.
Hippies, Loose Accusations and They Got My Partner!
This week’s piece is up at MacUser. THe Macalope looks at the new MacBooks, the so-called “Apple tax” and FireWire. Finally, a note about fjords.
Is this a joke?
Wired’s news feed teases Adam DuVander’s Webmonkey piece on the so-called “Apple tax” thusly:
It’s no secret that Apple’s computers cost more than PCs with similar specs.
Well, when you put it like that, it must be true!
But Apple’s disclosure of its sales figures and estimated market share at a press event Tuesday raises new questions about exactly how much money the company is making off each new Mac purchase.
And new questions mean new jackasstic answers! Enough teasing! Let’s get to the piece.
The concept, which has merit, is that Apple’s computers cost more than PCs.
Does it have merit? Of course! Adam just said so!
Just how much? Apple hinted at the number in its event today:
Retail share: 17.6 percent market share of unit sales.
Revenue share: 31.3 percent of retail sales.In other words, where one in five computer sales is an Apple, these account for one of every three dollars spent. Apple has more share of the revenue because its computer cost more.
Cost more than what? Cost more than similarly configured machines as Adam says (remember, the teaser promised we’d be talking about similarly configured machines)? No.
No matter how you crunch the numbers, they imply that Apple charges at least 50 percent more than other manufacturers, maybe even twice as much.
Good lord.
They do not. How would that even be possible? Don’t you think people might notice that? What the numbers show is that Apple competes at the high end of the market and has no presence in the low end of the market.
Are you kidding us, Adam? Are you kidding us, Wired?
The Build, the Brick and the Dock
This week’s piece is up at MacUser, covering hot Swedish Foreign Minister Mac switchers, laser-cut MacBooks and you patented whatnow?
The Macalope joins MacUser
The Macalope is thrilled – THRILLED! – to announce that starting, well, now he’ll be doing a weekly piece for MacUser. You can read the first riveting installment here.
See? The horny one always lands upright. He’s like a furry, antlered Weeble.
The piece will largely be a weekly roundup of stories from the Macalope’s unique perspective. He’ll still be punching out a few of the usual jackasses here but, frankly, there’s going to be less of that. Truth be told, it’s simply exhausting trying to play whack-a-mole with people who simply do not care whether or not they’re accurate in their “reporting” about Apple. There are too many Todd Sullivans out there that are simply not worth the time (and the Macalope credits a number of commenters for pointing this out).
If there is a major publication that decides to let a silly pundit fly his anti-Apple freak flag, the Macalope will surely take it on. But no more generating free traffic for people whose blathering would otherwise go unheeded.
Onward and upward.
Something's coming
Can you smell it?
Fear not, true believer. The reports of the Macalope’s demise are Jobsian, not Newmanian.