Woo Hoo.

Apple has introduced new stuff. Whooda ever thunk it. 16 Gig iPhone, 32 Gig iPod Touch. Are you about done jumping around and screaming now? Me too. That's tiring.

So last week at work I finished all the stuff I had to have done by the end of next week. That leaves me with a whole bunch of time for reading the innertubes. It wasn't really research, unless you count abject boredom as research.

Anyway, I read a couple of analysts that said unbelievably dumb things. No. Really. One guy was talking about the upcoming MS-Yahoo merger. He said that somehow that would be bad for Apple. I read the whole story and the logic was so convoluted and twisted it took two chocolate-covered chocolate cake doughnuts to get through it.

Another, more mainstream, article claimed that Apple can't afford the exclusive carrier arrangement with AT&T. I'm no expert, but it seems to be working okay so far. Apple is the third largest smartphone maker now, behind Nokia and RIM. Apple's been in the business for eight months as opposed to several years. If Apple's in trouble it doesn't look terribly painful for them.

Somebody else said that Apple has to have more than one model of phone because historically companies with only one model don't do well. The article didn't specify which companies ever only had just one model of phone. I seem to recall that Western Electric did fine for years with just one model. No, wait. They had other models, too. They had some with extra buttons for additional lines and all that jazz.

So that means no one has ever tried having "just one model." The article also said that just adding more memory doesn't create a "new model." Anyway, this one analyst is pretty sure that Apple's business model is flawed – probably doomed. DOOMED. According to the punditbot or analyst or whatever the hell he is, Apple needs a flip phone and a slide-out full-keyboard phone, and a phone with a little plastic stylus, and a phone that doesn't do anything except dial 9-1-1, and a phone that you have to recharge with minutes by buying a card at 7-11, and a phone in the shape of a froggy that floats and squeaks when you squeeze it, and a phone that tastes like chicken.

Okay, I'm guessing on some of that.

Summary: The interwebs are alive with the sound of assclowns.

I'm in a letter writing mood lately:

Dear Dumbass Tech-Financial/Business Analyst:

It is not good for your neck and back to have your ass cheeks on your shoulders. That is an unnatural position. And since you have to pull your head out of your ass long enough to breathe occasionally, take a moment to read.

If you want to comment intelligently on Apple, start by looking at one fact. This one should be easy: The frigging company is making money hand over fist. Every quarter they make more money than the quarter before. It has been like that for eight years. Actually, it's been pretty close to that ever since Gil Amelio changed jobs. The thing you might do as a service to the business community is try to discover the causes of that.

In other words, quit making up goofy crap and pointing it out as mistakes. You start with a fictitious negative premise and then analyze the company in terms of made up bullshit instead of reality. I'm guessing that you actually believe in the validity of your fictional analysis. That scares me.

Start to look at the facts and report the reality: Whatever Apple is doing is working. If you want to do a real analysis (I know better, but I have to try), you could try to figure out WHY what Apple is doing works. Start reporting stuff that could actually help Apple's competitors by lighting the way.

Really. If you want to really hurt Apple's fortunes, the best way is to warn the others so they can arm themselves against the onslaught. Continually patting the competition's hand and saying, "It's all right. Apple's doing it wrong. They can't win," is not going to help anyone except Apple.

At the rate things are going, Apple will regain it's rightful position as the first personal computer company by about 2012. The stock will be trading at about $3000/share. You'll still be reporting how screwed up Apple is because, let's face it, you're an idiot.

Sincerely,

Rip

Note: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. (But that's where the smart money will be.)

Note II: I have repeatedly stated that Apple has no competition, and I stand by that. I only rhetorically refer to "the competition" for the sake of tech-business/financial analyst retards who need that concept to fill their bizarre view of reality.

Pizza's here.