Boston Herald writer: I earned a fatwa from ‘Appleheads’ over idea that Apple should buy Palm

21 years ago

“If you think politics arouses strong passions, try writing about Apple,” Brett Arends writes for The Boston Herald. “Earlier this week I made the mild suggestion that the company take advantage of its soaring stock price to snap up Palm, the handheld computer maker. I argued that would quickly and cheaply open the door to the kind of multifunction handheld that combines a phone, an iPod music player and a PDA. The reaction among Appleheads? Feel the love. ‘Pinhead . . . you are indeed alone . . . what do you know anyhow? . . . clearly an idiot . . . go drink your Kool-Aid . . . worse than an idiot . . . should be fired on the spot . . . you obviously do not have a clue as to what you are writing . . . drunken clod. And people wonder why journalists aer (sic) loathed . . . do you even know what battery life is?'”

Arends writes, ” Wow. I quickly discovered that Apple, Inc. [sic], isn’t just a company. It’s the world’s only publicly traded religion. And I just earned a fatwa.”

“Palm is cheap – really cheap. At current prices, Apple could buy it with around 2 percent of its stock, and instantly add nearly 10 percent to its own sales,” Arends writes. “And Palm would be worth a lot more to Apple than on its own. It would gain a huge boost in credibility, innovation and marketing muscle.”

Full article here.
Arends either must have forgotten what he originally wrote or he just wants to blast the entire “Applehead” community based on some choice emails from a few bad apples. What he wrote that prompted the emails was idiotic, therefore, he was treated like an idiot. Not the nicest way to approach such things, but at least it seems logical enough, doesn’t it? [We recommend levelheaded factual responses to correct writers, columnists, pudits, analysts, etc., not the type of emails that Arends republishes in his article. It would probably be best overall if you blew off the initial steam here on MDN, as we often do in our “Takes,” then take your best ideas, our best points, and those from the best comments to construct devastatingly effective emails to achieve your desired effects in the future. Certain pundits and chronic repeat offenders excepted, of course. ]

Arends tried the simplistic “iPod is closed, Mac was closed, Mac ‘failed,’ so iPod will fail” theory in his first article. Perhaps he doesn’t mention it in his second article because he realized how uninformed he appears when he writes it? Arends also wrote of iPods, “They’re no longer clearly the best digital music player. They’re heavy and the battery life isn’t that great. Rival products the size of your thumb include a radio.” This, mind you, as Apple has the smallest, lightest, and highest capacity players (iPod shuffle, iPod nano) with excellent battery life (a now years-old canard), the market has proven that very few give a sheet about an FM radio, and Arends offers no proof whatsoever that Apple iPods are “no longer clearly the best digital music player.” (See related article below).

In his new article/hit piece, Arends throws out mostly everything from his first idiotic article and, after cherry-picking inflammatory emails to publish (likely the vast minority of the emails he received on the subject), replaces it all with “Palm is cheap, Apple should buy them to add to their bottom line, and help Palm gain value, credibility, innovation, and marketing might.” It sounds almost like Arends is a Palm user (dare we say “Palmhead?”) who’s looking for Apple to save Palm.

“Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival’s software… The new device will run on Windows Mobile 5.0, the latest version of the operating system that has been challenging Palm OS for years,” Greg Sandoval reported for The Associated Press on September 26, 2005. “The new Treo 700 will be offered through Verizon Wireless, according to market analyst Rob Enderle and other industry sources. ‘In terms of the level of importance, this would be in this space the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors,’ Enderle said.” Full article here.

Perhaps Arends missed that bit of news? And Enderle was wrong, as usual. What Palm has done would be like Apple announcing they were dropping Mac OS X for Windows XP. What does Arends suggest Apple do with a company that’s moving to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile? Market it mightily? What would that do for Apple’s credibility? Apple would have to kill that deal and work heavily on the new Treo and the Palm OS or create a new OS / integrate NewtonOS to compete. How much would that cost? Much more than Palm would be worth probably.

For our finale, we’ll leave you with this:
“In 2001, Jobs explained: ‘You can’t imagine how many people think we’re crazy for not doing a Palm,’ said Jobs, ‘I won’t lie; we thought about it a lot. But I started asking myself, how useful are they, really? How many people at a given meeting show up with one? I don’t think early cultures had organisers, but I do know they had music.’ – Sydney Morning Herald, May 24, 2005

[Note: we wouldn’t mind if an Apple-designed, Apple-branded mobile phone+PDA+iPod device became available, but Apple certainly doesn’t need Palm if they wanted to create such a product.]

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