“It’s easy to dump ire on anlysts for getting it wrong so often. What those guys do, however, is provide a particular service to particular people. Interpreting what analysts say in terms of truth or falsity is to forget the real lesson we should take from Prof. Frankfurt: words build worlds,” Rob Beschizza writes for Wired.

Beschizza’s list includes these gems:

• I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. — Michael Dell, October 1997
• The iMac will fail. — Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, 1998.
• The biggest long-term problem with moving to an Apple platform is that the company is in decline. — Rob Enderle, October 2003.
• Apple is already dead.— Microsoft’s Nathan Myhrvold said after Jobs’ return.
• [Apple] seems to have two options. The first is to break itself up, selling the hardware side. The second is to sell the company outright. — The Economist, February 1995.

Beschizza writes, “Any others to add? Now, don’t go posting the complete works of Rob Enderle, folks. Bandwidth isn’t free.”

More dumb Apple predictions in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Eric" for the heads up.]

No list of dumb Apple predictions can be complete without this year’s gem: “I am putting a sell on Apple, the company that created the iPhone,” Laura Goldman, investment advisor, LSG Capital, May 21, 2007. AAPL closed at $111.98 that day. Apple has risen approximately 70% since Goldman’s “sell” recommendation.

Or Michael S. Malone, from his article “Apple R.I.P.” published by Forbes on October 5, 2000, who wrote, “Steve Jobs can’t run companies.”

We loved Channel Marketing Corp’s David Goldstein’s May 2001 prediction regarding Apple Retail Stores, “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.” [Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "loopy_nj" for the reminder.]

We also thoroughly enjoyed Bill Ray’s December 23, 2006 article for The Register explaining “Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly.”