“Unless you were one of the poor reporters who had to yo-yo between Las Vegas and San Francisco this week, you may not have noticed a hidden message in all of the hoopla over the new Apple iPhone,” Michael S. Malone writes in a commentray for The Wall Street Journal.
Malone writes, “Apple Computer (make that Apple Inc. now) deliberately counterscheduled its annual MacWorld Expo — and its important new product announcement — directly against the Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s biggest consumer-electronics convention. Apple was sending a message that not only does it not inhabit the same universe as the rest of the consumer-electronics world (even Microsoft felt obliged to attend CES), but that its announcement would trump anything coming out of Vegas.”
MacDailyNews Note: “‘We’ve always had our event in the second week of January, beginning on Monday. They’re the ones who changed the date,’ said Mike Sponseller, a spokesman for IDG World Expo, operator of Macworld,” Dawn Kawamoto reported for CNET News on January 13, 2006. “CES, which usually kicks off around the second weekend in January, had to go with its 2007 dates because of its contract with the convention center in Las Vegas, noted Leah Arnold, a CES spokeswoman.” Full article here.
Malone continues, “And it did. The blogosphere lit up the moment Steve Jobs took the stage. On places like Fark.com, the usual fights broke out between the eternally moonstruck Macolytes (more cruelly, ‘Macsturbators’) and the increasingly jealous Apple-haters. CNN, as is usual with Apple, turned its news coverage into a day-long iPhone flack.”
Malone writes, “Mr. Jobs is the most paradoxical of creatures. On the one hand, though time and mortality have mellowed him, he remains something of a monster. If, like me, you grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same school, interviewed him in the early days of Apple, and even wrote a book about him and his company, there will always be things about him that are unforgivable — cruelties and manipulations (especially to Steve Wozniak), early crimes (illegal telephones, ironically), megalomania, and an unquenchable need to take credit from others (Do you know who led the original Mac team? Invented the iPod? Devised the new iPhone? I didn’t think so) — and that no achievement will ever erase.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh great, a Wall Street Journal commentator with an axe to grind.
Malone writes, “Yet there is no denying that Mr. Jobs is a business genius, the greatest marketer of our time, the most charismatic figure in electronics history. And he is the only really interesting person left in high tech, once the liveliest, most maverick corner of the industrial world. Sometimes, he seems like the only guy left in tech who’s having fun. Of course, there are also the products themselves. The iMac, the iPod and the new iPhone are, whatever the flaws, masterpieces of industrial design and enlightened human interfacing. They make competitors’ products — even when they’re better machines — seem plodding and prosaic. So even if Mr. Jobs shamelessly steals the limelight from his subordinates, we have seen, and hope never to see again, what Apple looks like without him.”
Malone writes, “This week, Mr. Jobs showed just what he can do when he’s in good health and sitting on a cool new product. There were great products at the CES, but after Tuesday no one noticed. The iPhone, which won’t be shipped until June, suffers from a number of classic Apple-under-Jobs weaknesses: not enough memory, probably not enough battery, a comparatively large (though wonderfully thin) case, a touch screen that will infuriate cell phone users and scratch up like the early iPods, and an unpopular distribution partner (Cingular). And the iPhone is stunningly expensive ($500 plus a two-year Cingular commitment).”
Malone writes, “But who cares? As Mr. Jobs said, the iPhone is going to revolutionize the phone. Not because it offers anything fundamentally new, but because it brilliantly ties together nearly all of the currently disparate portable consumer tech functions into a single exquisite package driven by a powerful and intuitive interface. But that’s only part of it. The iPhone will transform the market because unlike other tech mavericks who try to push the envelope, Mr. Jobs can introduce the iPhone, even in a clumsy, overpriced 1.0 version, and trust that the army of several million Apple true believers will rush out and buy.”
“For all his demons, thank God for him in this age of cookie-cutter CEOs. For a decade now (and for another decade at the beginning of the PC age) he has run the most enthralling and rewarding show in high tech. Let’s hope he gives us at least one decade more,” Malone writes
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whoops, scratch “Wall Street Journal commentator” stuff and make it “royal asshole with an axe to grind who writes schizo commentaries for which the normally-sane Wall Street Journal actually pays him and then, incredibly, publishes.” Note that Malone praises sporadically in order to grant himself license to demean with what he thinks is impunity. We moonstruck Macsturbators hereby revoke your license, Mr. Malone.
We won’t even bother asking why he describes the iPhone as “clumsy,” how he knows all about iPhone touchscreens, batteries, and memory without ever touching one, or why he can’t understand that people, sorry “Macsturbators,” buy Apple Macs and other Apple products simply because they are markedly better than the alternatives.
Only God knows what he thinks Steve Jobs did to him that caused such obvious and deep-seated emotional scars.
We can only surmise that Malone wants this cruel monstrous Jobs creature to continue manipulating his army of eternally moonstruck Macolytes for as long as possible, so he can continue working on his pathological hatred issues in public by staining the pages of The Wall Street Journal with his festering bullshit.
Let’s Google a bit, shall we? Here are some quotes by master prognosticator Michael S. Malone from his article “Apple R.I.P.” published by Forbes on October 5, 2000:
• Steve Jobs can’t run companies… Why is he a poor CEO? Because he’s mercurial, insufficiently engaged by the more boring (but crucial) operations like distribution and, ultimately, because he’s a pretty nasty piece of work.
• Apple is a small fish, and the pond is going dry… Now that Apple has upgraded its customer base it has no place to go. And to make matters worse, the rise of personal digital assistants, palmtops, embedded controllers, etc. promises in the next few years to render the PC industry into a backwater business filled with commodity products–hardly the place to be a pricey innovator.
• Cool people, Apple’s market, are already bored with the iMac. Thus, Jobs created an insatiable hunger for novelty that now even Apple, even with its splendid new cube, can’t satiate. In the process, he hastened the entire personal computer industry towards its end… having hastened the end of the desktop PC era, Steve Jobs has put Apple again in a precarious position. When the end does come, the big companies will have the necessary capital to transition into the multitude of new industries that will evolve out of the PC. The products of these new markets will be, thanks to Apple, stylish and beautiful. What an irony it will be if Apple, cranking out ever-less profitable commodity iMacs, its stock depressed, cannot afford to follow.
Malone’s crystal ball is as cracked as his head.
Contact info:
Wall Street Journal Comments and Feedback: newseditors@wsj.com
Michael S. Malone at Forbes: mmalone@forbes.com
Michael S. Malone at AOL: msmalone@aol.com
“Macsturbators”
That’s about as original as Smackintush and Crapple. So many idiots, so little Polonium.
sad
WSJ: Wall Street Jealousy?
“Do you know who led the original Mac team? Invented the iPod? Devised the new iPhone? I didn’t think so”
Hmmmm, do we know who at JVC invented the VCR?
Who at Sony invented the Walkman?
Who at Sony came up with HDV?
Who at Motorola created the RAZR?
Who at Commodore invented the C64?
Who at IBM created the PC Jr.?
Who at Adobe created Photoshop>
Sign that somebody didn’t do his homework: He thinks Apple schedules MacWorld Expo. I’m no Professional Journalist, but let me just try this. Maybe it’s really hard.
1. Going to http://www.macworldexpo.com.
2. Reading the copyright text on the web site.
3. Noticing that it says “(C) 2007 IDG WORLD EXPO CORP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED”
4. Thinking, “Hmmm, maybe IDG World Expo Corp is a subsidiary of Apple Inc.”
5. Clicking on the “IDG WORLD EXPO” button.
6. Noticing that IDG World Expo also hosts Linux conferences and Novell Whatever conferences.
7. Thinking, “Naw, that doesn’t sound like Apple Inc. Must be somebody else.”
It took 6 steps. None of them required a Degree in Professional Journalism.
MDN: clearly
Counterschedule?
MacWorld happens on the second Tuesday in January! CES is the trade show that seems to be a bit more flexible in its scheduling.
Did MDN actually read the article?!
This dude actually said some pretty good things about apple and the iPhone, and any criticisms of Apple are either already well known, or are just complaining that the Apple stuff is too good…doesnt really seem like a complaint to me.
Stop being so extreme MDN!
Michael S. (MELON-HEAD) Malone is a career Mac-basher. I noticed him way back in early ‘90s. He has a sad life bashing Mac and spreading bigotry. Decades later, Apple excelled to high status but Mike Melon-head Malone STILL writes for FOOD!!! Enough said!!! SAD LIFE!!!
WTF?
MacWorld was always scheduled on the second week in January. When there were 2 shows per year the second was usually second week in July.
This guy is a sad, pathetic, little man.
Not sure about the others, but after seeing the Photoshop splash screen, I DO know that Seetharaman Narrayanan had SOMETHING to do with Photoshop Development!
(ok… don’t troll me with the correct spelling of his name. Just saying that, it’s amazing what the human brain can pick up when it’s not even paying attention. Like, how, for , oh 6-7 years, I have seen the name Seetharaman Narrayanan, or whatever it is, about 2-3 times a day. .. well, maybe not since I switched to Mac, seeing as I don’t have to restart three times a day like in Windows.)
“Who at Adobe created Photoshop?”
Point well taken but it’s a shame people have no clue about the brothers Thomas Knoll and John Knoll who began development on Photoshop in 1987.
The Knoll brothers deserve recognition.
Would have been nice if he gave some examples… “– even when they’re better machines — “. he was referring to the competition. The iPhone price seems very competitive with it’s competition.. other ‘smart’ phones. Holy sheet, the FUD is already over the top,… in business and politics the truth gets lost in the spin cycle, pathetic.
At MDN, everyone who doesn’t love everyone and everything about Apple has an “axe to grind” and get virulent condemnation. What’s up with that? Do we all really have to love the Finder?
Seems a pretty fair article to me. He makes obvious his reasons for disliking Jobs (his book – ‘Infinite Loop’ – is very good on the first two decades of Apple). The last half of the piece is full of praise for the man and MDN gets all uptight about it? There’s a difference between supporting Apple and remaining willingly blinkered to their faults. If, as in this case, MDN wishes to go or the latter approach then it is the one guilty of producing “festering bullshit”.
8GB isn’t enough memory? What is wrong with these people? It’s certainly enough for a ton of music on my Nano.
Plus it has an SD slot on the top, so add 2 more gigs if you really need it.
Who invented photoshop? The credits roll every time I open the app. For a full list of credits that actually do roll, go to About Photoshop…
“They make competitors’ products — even when they’re better machines — seem plodding and prosaic.”
Notice he doesn’t mention anything that he thinks is better.
“The iPhone, which won’t be shipped until June, suffers from a number of classic Apple-under-Jobs weaknesses: not enough memory, probably not enough battery,…”
Hmm, he prints speculation as fact, and makes things up, how quaint. Lets check the competition, shall we. The BlackJack is the latest and greatest. It has only 64MB memory. It has only a 1.3 MP camera.
“Mr. Jobs can introduce the iPhone, even in a clumsy, overpriced 1.0 version”
Imagine that, he tosses a stone without explaining what ‘clumsy; means.
This guy is such a phony, and not even a good one. He is the classic phony that puts fake praise in with his insults to make it seem like he’s being kind.
OMG An article that isn’t trying to kiss Steve Jobs ass! We have to take him down. The guy is plain wrong about Macworld scheduling because Apple doesn’t pick it, but other than that he has good points. Steve is not the font from which all good Apple things spring. He’s a brilliant business leader and motivator, but there are lots of geniuses who have been at Apple who have done great things. Steve hasn’t done a good job of giving them all the credit they deserve. Steve has flaws. Accept that. It doesn’t mean he’s a terrible person or that the mac is a bad platform. It means he’s human. Get over it.
What does Fake Steve have to say about this?
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/01/sure-enough-hack-of-all-hacks-michael-s.html#links
Michael S. Malone gets it. I think.
WizeGuy: I’m with you. Was MDN reading the same article?
“This dude actually said some pretty good things about apple and the iPhone, and any criticisms of Apple are either already well known, or are just complaining that the Apple stuff is too good…doesnt really seem like a complaint to me.”
What he does is classic politically correct attacks. Mask an attack with a pseudo compliment. It’s like saying, He’s rude, obnoxious, but he’s trying to stop his compulsion to club baby seals”. Is the last one a compliment? No, not really, but people will think you’re being nice.
With all due disrespect, “Jay,” YOU GET OVER IT.
When Billy Boy Gates, Stevie Monkey Boy Ballmer, Michael Dull Dell, and CEO’s of that ilk begin to show 1/10th of the leadership, innovation, vision, and inspiration of this “flawed” person, we’ll take him down a notch. Count on it.
Until then, put your penis envy back in your pants and STFU. There must be plenty of websites that give a crap what you have to say.
BTW, Fake Steve has edited it to remove some of the vulgarity. The first version was way more harsh.
“OMG An article that isn’t trying to kiss Steve Jobs ass! We have to take him down”
No, we don’t need to take him down for disagreeing, we need to object to the dishonest reporting. Yes, he may make some good points, but a lot of what he says is speculation passed off as fact, which is dishonest. He also throws out negatives without explaining why he thinks that. For instance, he calls the iPhone clumsy, without explaining what’s clumsy about it.
In fact, he makes many comments on the iPhone, but doesn’t mention if he even got his hands on one. He knocks it for having too little memory, when it has far more memory than the competition.