Apple Is Doomed

Dan Lyons talks to former Apple sales executive (1984–2004 — not that recent) and gets a scathing critique of Apple and its prospects under Tim Cook. Whole thing feels specious to me (summary: Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs) but let’s focus on just one part:

“The third is that Apple is a `next great thing’ company, and that in and of itself is unsustainable. They haven’t found the next great thing after the iPad and iPhone, and their shares in both those areas are slipping. Of course they are ignoring traditional computers to a large extent.

“I could add a fourth [factor] related to the third point, but it’s debatable. Always in the past when Apple screwed up or got too cocky, they could fall back on a core group of `prosumers’ who were dedicated to Apple’s products. I think Apple has lost or is in the process of losing those folks, but I have no way to measure that other than I know a fair number of folks like myself that are no longer Apple products evangelists.

“I got a note from [a former Apple colleague] last night that it was time to replace his wife’s MacBook and he offered to get her whatever she wanted. She chose Lenovo.”

Apple is “ignoring traditional computers” and is losing the “prosumer” market. And an unnamed former Apple employee’s wife bought a Lenovo notebook. Meantime, Apple is number one in U.S. notebook sales; they’ve released two new MacBook Pros with retina displays that blow away anything from any competitor in terms of professional-caliber display technology, thinness, and weight; and Mac sales have outgrown the PC industry as a whole every single quarter for six consecutive years.

Would be nice to see how well the Mac could be doing if Apple weren’t ignoring traditional computers.

★ Friday, 9 November 2012