“A short time after the Apple Watch launches, probably when the first sales estimates come in from the analysts, I expect to see stories along the lines of ‘the Apple Watch has failed,'” Ewan Spence writes for Forbes. “All of these articles will be factually correct. I’ll agree with the conclusions of all of them. And it will be hard, logically, to argue against the written premises that the Apple Watch has somehow failed. In a world of snap judgements, I’m pretty confident on this call. I’m also confident that it will be the wrong judgement to make.”
“Apple has had failures before. It has had products that have come off the stage to meet an eager audience only to be written off as a failure scant months later,” Spence writes. “And while that label may fit in the first few months you can be sure that the Apple Watch is going to follow the same trajectory to success as other failed Apple product lines towards a long and successful life.”
“Arguably Apple’s biggest ‘failure’ is the iPhone 5C,” Spence writes. “By June 2014, the iPhone 5C had sold twenty-four million handsets. The number sold now will be much higher, possibly approaching forty million handsets. If the Apple Watch can fail as spectacularly as the 5C, bring it on.”
The full article, with more about the “failure” of the iPad Air, the original iPhone, and the upcoming failure of the Apple Watch here.
MacDailyNews Take: The bigger the “failure,” the better!
Is this guy really that dumb? If I were a manager at Forbes, this guy would be done.
With respect: I think you should re-read the article.
Or perhaps even read it? With respect, of course.
I respect your respect, and hope that the outpouring helps this poor lost soul, if not, we can give him our sole in the butt
Ummm. You don’t get the “tongue in cheek” aspect of his statements?? The first clue is in the last sentence in this quote: “And it will be hard, logically, to argue against the written premises that the Apple Watch has somehow failed. In a world of snap judgements, I’m pretty confident on this call. I’m also confident that it will be the wrong judgement to make.”
The next clue is here: “And while that label may fit in the first few months you can be sure that the Apple Watch is going to follow the same trajectory to success as other failed Apple product lines towards a long and successful life.”
The guy is making fun of analysts who rush to judge everything Apple does without comprehending the product, the market, or what constitutes a failure.
read the article moron
You don’t have to call him names.
Contractually, he does.
The only failure I can remember was the Mac Cube. It seemed to disappear as fast as it arrived Though – I think the ROI came as it morphed into the Mac Mini?
There were others. Pippin, for example. And Apple Hi-Fi – which was actually a good product but was laughed out of town because Steve referred to it as “real hi-fi” – which it clearly wasn’t. I think it added to the impression that Apple was pretentious. The Newton was ahead of its time, so from a sales perspective was a failure. And most people detested the hockey puck mouse.
They don’t count if Steve Jobs was AWAL.
The hockey puck mouse was the biggest dumb idea out of Apple! 😛 I remember struggling with it.
The hockey puck actually worked very well if you had very small hands, which didn’t help most normal adults, granted. If it had been marketed for elementary-school kids, it probably would have passed by without comment.
Someone (Kensington?) made a clip-on shell for the mouse that extended it to roughly typical mouse dimensions. A group of us at Sun ended up using them for several years on several generations of Macs; worked like a charm.
What!?!? I still have and love my cube!
itsbob, didn’t they nickname the Cube the ‘iToaster?’ 😀
Same here itsbob! Great fanless design, just a bit pricey
Replaced the HDD with 2TB, removed the video card (fan on the card failed) and it is now my iTunes server, headless, attached only with power cable and audio cable to my surround receiver. I Use “remote” on iPhone, or any computer in the house, to play to any of my airports, macs, or the big stereo in the living room. Priceless to see the looks on people who use Android and wish they could do something like that… and it looks like a piece of art, since i drilled a hole in the cabinet it sits on, and fed the wires through so it is really clean
Love that thing, it was my first mac, inspired me to buy apple stock with my rollover 401K
Thanks to that mac, and it’s inspiration, I am now retired, but will never retire my cube !-)
Gosh, I bet you’re catnip to all the girls!
I still have one stored in a server room. Worked great until replaced with newer faster. But still works fine.
Keeping as museum piece.
I think Apple has had and learned from their share of “fails”, well before the 5C. I haven’t worn a watch since the late 80’s, this is the first time I’ve been inspired to wear one again. And the future of app design will guarantee I will use it like never before. In ways we can’t even imagine right now.
Howie Isaacks is right, the article link I think might perhaps be in all probability at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/03/17/apple-watch-will-be-a-failure/
Of course the author is writing a satirical piece, and joebloggs points out some clues and here is another one added to the mix (thanks joebloggs).
“All of these articles will be factually correct.” – Come on modern day tech journanalists and analysts using facts? That’s hilarious.
There is the other side of that coin, the failure of the jouranalists and analysts to get it. I’m sure this will end up with a lot of them having to go under deep psychological therapy where they pour out their hearts and souls about the doom and gloom drivel they write about the Watch. Some cases will worry that they are actually starting to believe the spin that they write. Others will confess about having factophobia (the fear of facts) so tech jouranalism seems to be a good profession to go into. Still others will put spin on the spin, and rationalize to the psychoticanalist that by writing articles devoid of morality and integrity they are doing their patriotic duty. Then of course there are those long gone, those addicted to getting the hits any and every which way they know how.
No matter how bad the articles are, they will get the hits, like people slowing down to see a traffic accidents, and these low lives have realized that when you sell fear and failure the hits just keep on coming.
/shjtt (satire, humor, joke tall tale tag)
One word: Lisa
Isn’t that the computer Steve denied fathering? 😉
Like most Apple “failures” that one went on to be very successful once they got it right, i.e. Mac.
Yes, the successor to the Lisa Computer, the Mac, was successful, and so is the Lisa that Steve denied fathering, as far as it is known
You’re evil. Clever evil. Hilarious evil.
A decent article. He forgot to mention worshipful fanbois, and “Tim Cook isn’t Steve Jobs,” but all in all he skewered the prevailing narrative pretty well.
20th Anniversary Mac.
Performa series (I was a proud owner).
Newton.
Luxo iMac (round base, my favorite design)
…And no doubt Apple will FAIL FAIL again. But let’s hope they never stop trying. How many companies bother to invent at all these days? Not many. And many of those that used to (Hello Sony!) are busy driving themselves into the group thanks to having LOST their spirit and skill set of entrepreneurship.
Then there’s China, ad nauseam… 😛
what was the white apple boom box called? it borrowed some technical design cues from bose’s acoustimass technology. that didn’t last too long.
joebloggs mentioned it above…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi-Fi
Least we forget the current failure, the Mac Pro “trashcan” that isn’t exactly flying off the shelves these days. Won’t be long until it is chalked up to being a really bad idea.
Considering the rather small market to which it’s aimed, it seems to be doing pretty well. The previous Mac Pro versions didn’t sell in huge volumes either.