Arrogant and Stupid

Once upon a time there was a place called Apple Matters.com with a muddleheaded dimwit blogger named Hadley Stern. Even though Hadley was a fourth rate hack, he just knew that he was smarter than Steve Jobs who founded a company called Apple with a market cap bigger than General Motors and Ford combined.

As fools will do, Hadley called Steve Jobs's company, and by association Steve Jobs himself arrogant and stupid. This because Steve Jobs built a phone so incredibly cool that all the developers in the world want to be able to access its kernel and fuck it up as bad as WinCE, and Apple won't let them.

Also, as fools often do, Hadley numbered his reasons.

1. It alienates developers.

Hadley explains this by likening developers to the gods of ancient myths. Then he goes on to mention how much better the iPhone would be with "Transmit, Now-Up-To-Date, and the office suite. I'm satisfied with my ability to get by with a phone that doesn't have an FTP server installed. All of us Mac fanboys know that Apple would like to see the Office suite cast into the fiery pits of Cleveland.

He calls that "Stupid reason number one." I agree.

2. Coverflow.

Apple didn't invent this Application. It bought the company that developed it. Therefore Apple is arrogant.

No, Hadley, Apple is a corporation – a BIG corporation. When someone wants something, and can afford to purchase it, that is called business. It isn't arrogant, any more than it is arrogant for you to buy breakfast at Waffle House when you're hungry.

3. It's like Verizon and people hate Verizon.

Because Verizon has a business model, and Apple has a business model, and those two business models have similarities. Apple is Verizon. It makes perfect sense to anyone who thinks that having the same number of arms, legs, ears, and butt-cheeks as Paris Hilton makes you a brain-dead bimbo.

Hadley promised seven reasons and ran out of ties to reality before he finished number two.

4. Niche markets and use-cases are lost.

Hadley makes the case that Apple is ignoring corporate America, and losing all kinds of money because of it. Then he claims he's concerned as a shareholder.

Hadley, if you grab your left ear with your right hand, then grab your right ear with your left hand, and keep a good grip – you can pull your head out of your ass and see that Apple stock is kicking ass for the last 10 years.

The lack of a corporate presence doesn't seem to be causing much of a problem.

Dork.

5. No one else will come along and do it.
(Whatever the hell that means.)

Hadley says, "Arrogance was the reason Apple didn't have the business vision to do what Bill Gates did, divorce the operating system from the hardware it was running on." (Note: Nobody is buying Vista. Bill Gates's 'business sense to divorce the computer from the operating system' was because he never built a frigging computer in the whole history of the company.) Then he says "...[Windows] provided access to the real innovation behind the Mac operating system, a WYSIWYG interface." Windows has never had, and still doesn't have a real WYSIWYG interface.

Windows has about 97% WYSIWYG, on about 90% of the apps that run on it. You'll still get page breaks, tabs, and indents on the page that aren't on the screen and vice versa. With Mac I get 100% WYSIWYG from 100% of the apps 100% of the time. 23 years after that Mac innovation, Windows ain't there yet. Less than 100% WYSISYG is NOT WYSIWYG.

Then he goes on to say that someday someone will steal Apple's advantage.

Listen to yourself Hadley. "Apple's advantage." It isn't arrogant to press your advantage. It's called competing.

6. It's bad for the user.

Let's see, nothing else on the planet comes close to the iPhone experience. Someday somebody will build a better mousetrap. Don't buy this because someday there will be something better.

That's just stupid.

7. Money.

In this lesson Professor Hadley, who probably has never even eaten in a third-tier B School cafeteria, and probably makes less money per year than El Jobso spends on socks, explains what His Steveness should be doing to make more money.

Hadley listen, just between us girls, if you really knew how to make a pile of money you'd have better things to do than write crap like that.

I forgot to go compare Apple's market cap to GM and Ford. Remind me next week, unless I forget. Then skip it.

I'm not going to wear a hat tomorrow.