Remarking on the glut of Apple FUD, especially as it relates to Apple’s share price lately, and those who revel in it, Daring FireBall’s John Gruber writes:
A lot of people formed their impression of Apple in the 1990’s, and to them, that’s what Apple will always be: a niche hardware maker that insists on doing things the wrong way (closed instead of open, etc.) in the name of control. To these people, everything that’s happened with Apple in the past decade has been a fluke, an aberration.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly.
We pity
the foolsthese types of people for all that they’ve missed and, if they don’t wise up, all that they’ll miss in the future.While you’re toiling with your crappy Windows PCs, your wannabe iPhones, your pretend iPods, and your fake iPads, Apple-haters, we’re running rings around you and laughing. Don’t worry, we’re laughing with delight, not at you… much.
A damned long-lasting fluke or abberation.
Yes, and the other side of that coin is that many of those people who formed those opinions in the 90s were also MS fans, who can’t forgive Apple for its success.
One of the reasons so many went with the inferior Android system (was very inferior, still is significantly inferior) was for this very same reason. They might have left MS behind, but couldn’t bring themselves to embracing the “enemy” Apple.
Android fans too young to have cared in the nineties either picked up their parents’ religion or styled themselves as black hats.
Fluke? Actually consider this. Just saw the stock price on a linear scale over the past 5-7 years. If you draw a straight line along its price you will see an almost perfect straight ling growth. Except for the past year with a bump up then back down. 500+$ is right where we should be with 600$ by end of year and 700$ by end of next year.
Check it out and see. Almost perfect 100$ a year growth over 5-7 years.
Just a really weird thought.
En
Exactly. Not a fluke. A ballistic trajectory. Maybe a relativistic light cone. But something with the moral weight of inevitability.
If the stock price continues to exhibit constant linear growth, and if (a big IF) the earnings continue to exhibit quadratic or cubic growth, how long until the P/E ratio goes all the way down to 1?
If that ever happens Apple could buy back all its shares for just one year’s earnings. Maybe that’s what the cash hoard is for?
I want to think that my misspelling of aberration was an aberration. Where are the grammar police when you need them?
hannahjs, Grammar police at your service! How would you like your punishment served? Cold? or luke warm?
Make it fluke warm.
Touche! 🙂
Gruber is relying on old impressions. I find that for people under 45, Apple is a heroic company with intriguing products.
All of fail to realize that it doe not take long for markets to mature these dasys. While the run up to PCs n every home took 25 years, the smartphone and tablet markets took only 25 months. Ubiquity of these product categories is all around us. Markets don’t grow that fast. Also, let time I looked out of my window, the world economy has still not recovered sufficiently enough for rapid market growth of a large cap company. Apple is a corporation, nothing more, nothing less.
Why has the share price tanked? Because the market says so. It matters not about manipulation P/E etc. Markets are driven by emotion, controlled by auto trading and driven bonkers by journalists w2ho are hit whores.
But sometimes, those under 45 inherit the mindsets of their elders… I can think of three people I know in their 30s (I’m in my late 40s) who adhere to this outmoded way of thinking to the letter.
Yes, but it’s the over-45s who are the analysts and talking heads, etc.
everyone over 45 must be liquidated.
wait..
Time to be renewed..
(or whatever they said.)
Renew! Renew! Renew!
If you ran from Carrousel, fingers crossed you did not drop your ANKH before opening the sanctuary door …
Perfectly said MDN. Spot on.
It is a good point. I know what my impression of Apple was in the mid to late 90’s running Windows 3.1 and later Windows 95 thinking it was the greatest thing in the world.
The experts (sic) may be trapped in the 90’s.
Indeed. Those who live in the past die there too…always longing for the “good old days”, ever protecting their perspective from the realms of possibility and change. Meanwhile visionaries blaze new trails, open new doors, and point us to a new reality. Steve Jobs was a master visionary. I wonder who will be next on this smallest of stages?
MDN, these people are not toiling much on Windows PC but crappy
Android phones and tablets. These people had moved from Windows to Andy’s hemorroids.
uh when a company makes more than Exxon, jeez come on, fluke?
why not 70% of the smartphone market? Apple is adding new stores, countries and carriers every year – samsung is a mature player in the handset market with more than a 10 year lead over apple. no reason apple will be capped at a ceiling of 22% – does not make sense.
It is actually a long term plan. Sometimes you just know that what you are doing is right and stick with it. Eventually, you are proven correct.
Long ago, Apple realized the PC wasn’t the end all, be all but only a part of and “information utility”.
What the haters are really grinding their molars about is that they can’t help but know that something as enormous and phenomenal as Apple’s climb to the stratosphere can no longer plausibly be explained away as smoke and mirrors, or snake oil; moreover,
(2) too many people buy Apple to support the notion that they’re all just fanboys,
(3) there is no known mechanism for an overnight collapse of such a carefully managed business operation at this monumental scale,
(4) despite market share arguments, Apple eclipses the opposition’s profits, mind share, and cultural relevance,
(5) Apple is a more popular religion than any tech cult outside of Luddism,
(5) and they excite an orgy of publicity at the slightest hint of tarnish. Everybody else, vis-à-vis the pundits and paparazzi, is Rodney Dangerfield.
In these times where everyone is bashing Apple, it’s so good to read this site. Thanks MDN.
I think that perhaps people are underestimsting Androids appeal. Why would someone use the expensive iPhone for its vibration mode? No, they would use Android so any liquid spillage etc. wouldn’t matter if they toasted the phine. Lots of em being given away. Wonder if someone can do a fully funded statistically significant academic study on it comsidering the belly button lint one was completed…
Honestly – I don’t own the stock – I own their products. As long as they continue making great products – I’ll continue buying them.
I still to this day hear people say: “You can’t right-click on a Mac.” “There are no games for the Mac.” “You can’t run the Office software on a Mac.” “There is no Photoshop for the Mac.” “You have to use Safari because there are no other browsers for the Mac, like Firefox.”
I know that none of this is FUD – it’s just pure idiocy and laziness.
After reading some of the posts above, I should clarify that all of the comments I mention above have come from various people under the age of 45 – all of them under the age of 40 actually.