That's an 'em dash' in the title there if you were wondering about the joke...
So this past week Apple announced it's earnings report, and the worst thing in the world happened. They missed the predictions. Apple only made $8 billion in profit. They were supposed to make $10 billion.
I'll pause a moment to let that sink in.... one more moment... ok... So what does it mean when a company like Apple only makes an outrageous sum of money instead of a OMG FREAKING OUTRAGEOUS sum of money? It means that the pundits sit down at their iPads, at their kitchen tables, with their bluetooth wireless keyboards, and pound out paragraph after paragraph of snarky prose about how it's the beginning of the end for Apple, and that we all told you that it would never survive after Steve Jobs passed on.
I'll pause another moment to let the irony of that last run-on sentence sink in.... ready yet?.... ok.... So as much of an Apple fan boy that I am, let me begin by saying that, yes, Apple is not the same company it was when Steve Jobs was running it. Is it as good of a company? Probably not. Steve Jobs was an amazing individual who could motivate people to pull purple bunnies out of their butt and convince us that we were living in a post-rabbit era. Very few people alive can do what Steve Jobs did, and that's simply a fact that the world needs to accept.
But does that fact mean that Apple is doomed? Let's take a look at a couple other facts.... actually... I'm still kinda stuck on that first fact... APPLE MADE $8 BILLION!! I know people who are unemployed, many people I know are digging themselves out of credit card debt, my house is worth 50% of what it was valued at in 2007.... and Apple didn't make $10 billion... only $8 billion.
So let's put away the tranquilizers, and step back from the ledges. There are a lot of other companies out there that are in much, much worse trouble. Blackberry and Netflix are two that come to mind rather quickly. At some point we all have to come to terms with the fact that most people who want an iPhone 4, probably already have one. The market saturation of smartphones in general is incredible, and at some point it means that sales are going to stagnate a bit. But we don't need to worry for too long. The magical iPhone 5 will be in our hands in a couple months, along with a new post-PC 7 inch tablet, if you believe the rumor mills. Such is the endless cycle of technological innovation, a cycle that in less than 10 years brought us from clunky laptops, phones that couldn't browse the internet, and tablets that involved ink and paper... to an era of ultra-thin laptops and the extinction of removable media; smartphones that will not only browse the internet, but will tell you how many cups of rice you need to cook for your family dinner; and tablets that are so magical and life changing, that bloggers like myself will use them to deliver a simple message about a missed earnings report: "move along... nothing to see here."
So this past week Apple announced it's earnings report, and the worst thing in the world happened. They missed the predictions. Apple only made $8 billion in profit. They were supposed to make $10 billion.
I'll pause a moment to let that sink in.... one more moment... ok... So what does it mean when a company like Apple only makes an outrageous sum of money instead of a OMG FREAKING OUTRAGEOUS sum of money? It means that the pundits sit down at their iPads, at their kitchen tables, with their bluetooth wireless keyboards, and pound out paragraph after paragraph of snarky prose about how it's the beginning of the end for Apple, and that we all told you that it would never survive after Steve Jobs passed on.
I'll pause another moment to let the irony of that last run-on sentence sink in.... ready yet?.... ok.... So as much of an Apple fan boy that I am, let me begin by saying that, yes, Apple is not the same company it was when Steve Jobs was running it. Is it as good of a company? Probably not. Steve Jobs was an amazing individual who could motivate people to pull purple bunnies out of their butt and convince us that we were living in a post-rabbit era. Very few people alive can do what Steve Jobs did, and that's simply a fact that the world needs to accept.
But does that fact mean that Apple is doomed? Let's take a look at a couple other facts.... actually... I'm still kinda stuck on that first fact... APPLE MADE $8 BILLION!! I know people who are unemployed, many people I know are digging themselves out of credit card debt, my house is worth 50% of what it was valued at in 2007.... and Apple didn't make $10 billion... only $8 billion.
So let's put away the tranquilizers, and step back from the ledges. There are a lot of other companies out there that are in much, much worse trouble. Blackberry and Netflix are two that come to mind rather quickly. At some point we all have to come to terms with the fact that most people who want an iPhone 4, probably already have one. The market saturation of smartphones in general is incredible, and at some point it means that sales are going to stagnate a bit. But we don't need to worry for too long. The magical iPhone 5 will be in our hands in a couple months, along with a new post-PC 7 inch tablet, if you believe the rumor mills. Such is the endless cycle of technological innovation, a cycle that in less than 10 years brought us from clunky laptops, phones that couldn't browse the internet, and tablets that involved ink and paper... to an era of ultra-thin laptops and the extinction of removable media; smartphones that will not only browse the internet, but will tell you how many cups of rice you need to cook for your family dinner; and tablets that are so magical and life changing, that bloggers like myself will use them to deliver a simple message about a missed earnings report: "move along... nothing to see here."
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