Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly (2006)

The register is popular because of its sarcastic wit and tries to position itself as s ring through the fog. This is just a writer confusing sarcasm and ridiculing apple fans as analysis and opinion. The fact he calls people discussing how much they love the packaging "sickening" tells everything we need to know.

You can go back and find posts that aggressively argue that any new technology will succeed or fail.

Right now, you can find people saying that Tesla has a bright future or that it's going down the toilet. Extreme viewpoints get clicks, especially when they're contrary to popular opinion (like OP).

There's an irony or perverse incentive here.

The more wrong the article is, the more likely it will be remembered and pointed to through time. This means an article like this will continue to make more ad revenue than a peer that was correct in its predictions.

Journalists and pundits are never punished for getting stuff wrong. (Look at the 90% percent of them that didn't see the housing crash coming in 2008.)

The lesson seems to be to make the most outrageous and wrong claims possible to be click-bait for both the short term and long haul.

The article got a lot right, but also got a lot wrong. IMO here's what he (and many other pundits) got the most wrong:

   Mobile phones are not complex to use because
   of bad interface design, they are complex to
   use because they are complex devices with
   a myriad of features.

No, it really was "bad interface design". In spades.