John Dvorak: Apple Should Pull the Plug on the iPhone (2007) | Hacker News Reader

John Dvorak: Apple Should Pull the Plug on the iPhone (2007)

daringfireball.net

18 pointspmattos19 comments

What so many folks never get is that the joy of John C. Dvorak is that he's a curmudgeon -- and in a world full of tech bloggers who fall under the spell the newest shinny object that's always a bit refreshing. Sort of having slightly bitter coffee with your sugar filled pastry. He makes a perfect foil for sunny Leo Laporte (which is why he is always a great guest on TWiT).

>is that he's a curmudgeon

No, he's a troll: http://scripting.com/2006/06/09.html

edit: sorry arn, I was revising the post while you were writing yours. The scripting.com link above does have a link to the original .mov video, your Youtube link will likely have better compatibility with non-Mac users.

here it is on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg

I find it moderately amusing that people are perfectly fine with saying "he's trolling, he's trolling, he's trolling" to the vast majority someone says, but then when that someone says "I am trolling", they jump to the "Oh, but HERE he's telling the truth!"

Yeah, I know, it's a lot easier to believe someone when they're agreeing with you.

Ah, John Dvorak. I seriously think you'd be hard-pressed to find a man who is so wrong so much of the time and be so well-paid for it.

>I seriously think you'd be hard-pressed to find a man who is so wrong so much of the time and be so well-paid for it.

There's always Rob Enderle...

No, he's just playing the odds. Say everything sucks and hope most things do.

He was just trolling for traffic.

Like this post.

He should team up with Jim Cramer so you can get your daily fix of "opposite news". If Cramer's pitching you better be ditching.

What people saw back then is that Jobs was selling a phone. When in reality Steve was selling a post-pc device that could also make phone calls. That's why the usual fashion cycle didn't apply.

The categories are still quite confusing, because Apple's products stubbornly fail to fit cleanly in any of the old ones.

Is the iPod Touch a phone? No. Is it more-or-less like an iPhone? More, rather than less. Is the iPad a PC? No. Does it replace a PC? Yes and no. Does it replace an iPhone? No and yes.

It's reminiscent of the elder days when "microcomputers" were new, and one could have an extensive debate over whether a microcomputer was a real computer or just a toy. In the long run, of course, the very word microcomputer died out.

He's wrong, but eerily prophetic too -- all the reasons he says that the ipod was successful are the reasons that the iphone was successful (I do disagree with how important advertising was, though).

He just didn't realize, living in the moment, that all the existing smartphones were crap. Just as people pre-ipod did not realize that all the existing MP3 players were crap.

It's not until you see how much better something can be that the blinders can come off.

He just didn't realize...

Watch that Youtube video posted here by arn. He wrote it to get hits, not to represent his actual world view.

"The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that it can play it fast enough."

John Dvorak was right about the trends, he was wrong about the company. Apple can play "the fashion game" better than any other consumer electronics firm. With the iPhone, they've played fast for a sustained period.

It's pretty amazing that there's only one iPhone and iPad at a time. Sure, there's updated versions, but there's only one size and form that Apple promotes at any time. They don't do this with their desktops and laptops or even iPods. I can't think of any other leading device with such a "take it or leave it" mentality that a large share of people conform to.

This just reminds me that, like Derek Sivers says so well, you can't predict the future.

I wonder if there are any John Gruber posts predicting Android to be a complete failure...

Hindsight is 20/20

In 9 years, we'll look back on today with 2020 hindsight.

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