Okay, kids. This is it. This is the moment you've all been waiting for. Steve Jobs will take the stage at Moscone Center and Bicycle Repair and introduce another CEO. One year it was the guy from AT&T, another year it was that Intel guy; last year it was that coffee guy – or maybe that was the WWDC. Who can keep all this crap straight. I could look it up, but where would the fun be in that?
At any rate, all the punditbots are out there echoing each others' speculations about what Apple is going to introduce. It's all just silly. You know. If enough different things are predicted, somebody's bound to guess something right. I mean, somebody out there in the narrow part of the bell curve is predicting that the Chargers and the Giants are going to be in the Superbowl. Right?
I actually know – KNOW – some things that His Steveness will announce at MacWorld in a few days.
- All the fundtards who've been selling their shares of AAPL shouldn't have. The analysts, no matter how optimistic, are low-balling. Apple isn't leaving any inventory laying around anywhere. Invent it, build it, sell it, invent it about as fast as you can watch it.
- iPhone is eating the mobile phone market alive. You can hear the scream and see the bloody limbs of the mobile marketplace flailing between the crushing jaws of technology implementation and design they can't overcome. RIM has the good name of the Blackberry to keep them in the game for a while, but face it. The Blackberry is old technology, and it looks it. The Palm Treo? Feh. Their ads are el-lame-o, and the devices look like wooden sidewalks and hitchin' posts next to iPhones.
- The movie industry is going to learn faster than the recording industry that the way to profit in the 21st Century is through technology. At least at the moment, that means you go through Cupertino.
If you've been reading or watching TV, you'll know that the RIAA is now declaring it illegal to rip your legally purchased CDs to your legally purchased computer. Yo, RIAA. Are you guys really that fucking stupid? Your business model has cancer. Buttfuckthecustomeroma is cureable. Pissing off the last vestiges of your dwindling customer base to cure it is the same as using a pistol to cure a headache. The ailment will go away, but so will the patient. If you guys want to survive in this century, you're going to have to come to the tech table. You're going to have to learn how to play nice with us computer users, who – not to put to fine a point on it – will decide whether you ding-dongs stay in business.
If you want to see how it's done, watch Steve Jobs treat the customers like he needs them. You guys act like we need you. We don't. The artists don't. The listeners don't. Pretty soon A&R will be accomplished on blogs, for a pittance. Band promotion will happen in Google and Yahoo! and email between friends with similar tastes. Your business model only made sense when we needed trucks and stores and a roomful of Hi-Fi equipment to appreciate music at home. Now all we need is our internet connection and a handful of WiFi equipment.
Why can't you guys get it? You're not just biting the hand that feeds you; you're spitting in the face and stomping on the foot of the owner of the hand that's already a little sick of feeding you. Y'all better start treating us nicer, or you're going to lose it all.
Every audio recording worth a shit is on the internet and can be had for free. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. Honest people, that's most of us, prefer to buy and pay for our music so we feel like honest people. But if you offer us no alternative, we'll get the music however it's available.
You can't dam up the river. If you're really smart and really lucky, you can continue to make money selling bottled water. If you keep pissing in the stream like that, though, well...
Hey! Who brought the dog?
