“Critics are getting under Apple’s skin”

“A king who must remind people he is a king is no true king at all.”

“[iOS 7] can be viewed as a welcome revamp — or a desperate lunge for relevance via cosmetic changes.”

Desperate!  Apple is desperate.  FYI.

“Apple Stays Closed As iOS Shuts The Door On Developers”

“Apple demonstrated that it will keep its iron grip on iOS 7 ...  Rather than debut new opportunities for developers, Apple squelched them at WWDC ...”

“Long ago, Apple declared war on inconsistency.  ...  Hardcore users and third-party developers are the casualties of this war.  ... it may have left a sinking feeling in the stomachs of those hopeful to build helpful experiences for users ...”

“[I]f Apple wants to satisfy us all and compete with the ever-evolving Android, it needs to let iOS mature.”

The worst part?  Consumers have paid a paltry $14 billion for iOS apps so far, of which the developers have received just $10 billion.

In the same spirit, here’s a simple analysis of data in a graph from Asymco.com.  Here’s the original graph:

And here’s my reasonable projection of the Apple and Android curves into the near future:

This shows Apple passing Android sometime around next February.  So — unless something causes these nice, graceful curves to abruptly change direction — Android will lose the raw-numbers crown about eight months from now.

Expect an update to this page when that does/doesn’t happen!

“Windows Phone to close in on iPhone by 2017”

“Microsoft and its partners are starting to operate on all cylinders and Canalys forecasts show Windows Phone market share nearly matching Apple’s iPhone by 2017.”

Lotta smart guys there at Canalys.

I worry that Apple is in the same situation [Sony was], in that the sequence of extraordinary products has been disruptive relative to the traditional competitors in the marketplace, but relative to Apple’s business model, they have not been disruptive to Apple.  So they haven’t seen this problem before.  I worry that maybe they have not learned to recognize what’s been happening, because they haven’t seen this kind of problem before. ...

The transition from proprietary architecture to open modular architecture just happens over and over again.  It happened in the personal computer.  Although it didn’t kill Apple’s computer business, it relegated Apple to the status of a minor player.  The iPod is a proprietary integrated product, although that is becoming quite modular.  You can download your music from Amazon as easily as you can from iTunes.  You also see modularity organized around the Android operating system that is growing much faster than the iPhone.  So I worry that modularity will do its work on Apple.

Call me cynical, but I get a sneaking feeling that Christensen’s main worry is that several years from now, Apple will be doing better than ever.

[...]

But when I render it in OpenGL it comes out all broken looking, like this:

[...]

“The Apple culture, or cult ... has a dark side, long hiding in plain sight, that helps explain its special difference: lawyers.”

“Apple has long been a lawyer’s company.  Put another way, most successful technology companies are products of skillful and especially vile legal departments — the more skillful and vile, the more successful.”

“It’s very hard to find anyone in the technology business who, at one time or another, hasn’t been menaced by Apple’s lawyers.”

“Jobs was a man of sui generis arrogance and entitlement, as well as pitiless lawyers, who managed to convince seemly [sic] virtually everybody that he and his company were an exception to a great many rules ...  It one day may be that exceptionalism rather than its technology that Apple will be remembered for.”

Maybe.  But there’s no doubt what Michael Wolff will be remembered for: naked contempt and shameless spite.

Derek Crockett in The Washington Times Communities:

“Once a top innovator, Apple might be on the decline”

“How quickly things have changed.  ... the iPhone 5 has fallen from its lofty position, and the Galaxy S4, Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, seems poised to conquer the mobile market.  Other Apple products are also threatened.  Apple’s perennial best seller, the iPad, a tablet that was once so popular that the word ‘iPad’ itself almost became synonymous with the word ‘tablet’, has as of late lost its edge.”

“[W]hen Q2 numbers are released, Apple, for the first time ever, might be looking at a year-over-year decline in iPad shipments.”

“[I]nstead of replying to Samsung’s challenge by introducing a new and more innovative product to the marketplace, Apple has asked a federal judge to add Samsung’s new flagship smartphone to the list of devices targeted in an existing patent lawsuit ...  That Apple, in lieu of innovation, has turned to litigation, should come as no surprise.”

“Although many might think it improbable for a company like Apple to fail, it has had many predecessors.  Montgomery Ward, Eastman Kodak, and arguably, Dell Computer, are all examples of companies that once were dominant in their fields and are now no more than shells of what they once were.”

Goodbye, Apple!  It was fun while it lasted.

“Apple Should Be Furious That It Has Such A Tiny Sliver Of The Smartphone Market”

“While it’s certainly important to be profitable, at some point it becomes obscene, and self-defeating.”

“[Apple fans] should be furious that Android ... is on more phones than iOS ...”

“[Are profits] really the best way to measure Apple’s success?  Is that really the best way to measure winning?”

“[Apple]’s failing consumers when only 18% of the global smartphone population has an iPhone.”

Don’t worry about it, Jay:  Consumers will buy whatever they think is best.  If that’s an Android phone, so be it.  Relax; there’s no problem here.

But the truth is that there are a great, great many people who try very hard for many, many years to do stuff like that, and never succeed.  And are middle-class the whole time.  Or possibly even lower than middle-class.  And also, many, many, many of the people who do something like that, who sell a condo for five times what they paid for it — they didn’t plan to do that.  It wasn’t like some sort of selfish scheme.  They just bought a condo because they wanted to live there; they thought it was a nice place to live, and then it appreciated in value dramatically.  Nobody knew it was going to, or it wouldn’t have even been for sale (or not at that price).  And then when it did appreciate dramatically, they decided, wow, I like this condo and I like living in this area, but hey, if other people are willing to pay five times what I paid for it, maybe I should just take the money and leave.  And so they do.

I think this whole mentality — that the people who are rich and successful are people who decided that they wanted to selfishly pursue wealth and success, and that the people who aren’t rich and successful are people who decided that they didn’t want to pursue that, and that’s why they’re not — there’s a tiny bit of truth in it, in that if you don’t even try to succeed, then of course you won’t.  You won’t be running a successful business if you’re not even trying to run a business at all.

But there’s also a gigantic amount of falsehood in the idea.  And I think that basically where the idea comes from is that the typical person’s experience is this:

I decide at an early age that I want to be rich and successful.  Why do I decide that?  Well, because really, most people do.  It’s just a very common thing.  Who wants to be poor?  Who even wants to be middle-class, and have to work some drudge job just to get by?  No — people want to be rich and successful.

OK, so I want to be rich and successful, and the idea that it might be a total crap shoot (whether I actually can) is just really too hard to face.  So I have to make myself believe that if I just sincerely try, I’ll be able to do it.  If I just really, earnestly try to become rich and successful, then it will happen.  Maybe not immediately, maybe not this year, but it will, and relatively soon.  The idea that it may not, that it probably won’t, is just too hard to stomach; it’s just too hard to face.

So then I don’t become rich and successful.  So eventually I stop trying.  But I never let go of this idea; I don’t realize that it’s not really a function of how hard you tried, or how earnestly you wanted it.  There’s really an enormous luck factor.  A lot of people who didn’t even try might sell a condo for five times what they paid for it.  A ton of people who do try, are never able to do anything like that.

I never really let go of this idea that if you try to become successful, you will.  The reason I never want to let go of the idea is because I don’t want to believe that I’m never going to have it.  And maybe I haven’t really quit trying; maybe I’m still trying, although I try to keep the degree to which I’m trying a secret, because I don’t want other people to know when I’m failing.  I don’t want other people to know how badly I want it.  In order to keep trying, in order not to become so discouraged that I quit, or kill myself, or something, I have to believe that if you try, you will become successful.

And so when I look out at the world and I see successful people, I think, “Those are the ones who tried.  Those are the ones who decided that they wanted to be successful, much more successful than other people, and so they just went out and did it.”

And when I see the people who aren’t successful, I have to believe that they are people who didn’t try, who didn’t want that.  They were happy to have a middle-class existence, or a lower-class existence, or whatever they have.  And that’s why they’re not rich and successful, because they didn’t really want that.  And I have to believe that’s the way things work, because the alternative is to realize that I’m not likely ever to be successful myself.  So part of maintaining my belief that I can become successful while I’m still half-way young, is to believe that everyone who is successful, is someone who just decided to do it.  And went and did it.  And the people who aren’t, are the people who decided they didn’t really want that.

And then, applying that viewpoint, applying that belief — it’s a very, very easy jump from that, to thinking that rich people are selfish and greedy, and that’s how they got rich.  By being selfish and greedy.

“Apple’s fabulous success over the past decade or so — its creation of the iPads and iPhones that the world lusts over — is a large part of the reason it always gets the benefit of the doubt, whether deserved or not.  ...  Nobody really wants to hear anything bad about Apple.”

“Jobs was so persuasive that he could claim the sun was setting when it was actually rising, and everyone would nod in agreement.  On Tuesday, despite the overwhelming evidence presented by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that Apple engaged in dubious tax avoidance gimmicks, Cook claimed that Apple never resorted to tax gimmickry.”

“Cook spent Tuesday claiming that the sun was setting when it was actually rising, and, predictably, by the time the hearing had ended, most of the senators were agreeing with him.”

Glad to hear Cook’s a worthy replacement for Jobs, after all.

[T]he construction of a $5 billion palatial headquarters when the company is — at best — between hit products does reflect a certain corporate arrogance.

And just yesterday, here’s Michael McQueen, as quoted by Steve Colquhoun in The Sydney Morning Herald:

The next 12 months will be absolutely critical for [Apple], whether they can release another game-changing product like they did with the iPhone and the iPad.  It’s been a long time between drinks for them.

Cohan’s “between hit products” and McQueen’s “between drinks” slyly imply that Apple’s previous hits are in the past — dead or dying — and so the company critically needs new ones.

“Is shiny Apple rotting at its core?”

“[Apple] could be teetering on brink of irrelevance, expert warns.”

“Michael McQueen ... believes the inventor of genre-defining devices such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod could be largely irrelevant to people under 30 within five years.”

“‘The next 12 months will be absolutely critical for them, whether they can release another game-changing product like they did with the iPhone and the iPad.  It’s been a long time between drinks for them,’ McQueen says.”

Translation:  I just love the way “between drinks” implies “not currently drinking,” but I didn’t actually say that.

“Why Apple should develop Android apps

Apple’s app ecosystem remains a closed-loop, Apple-only affair.  But it’s in the company’s interest to change that.”

“Google, Microsoft, and others — have brought their apps to the iOS platform while Apple didn’t reciprocate the gesture.”

“[I]n the long run, it might be a bad idea for Apple to keep some of its key apps isolated on its own platform ...”

“Apple-only becoming less appealing”

Apple needs to port its apps to its rivals’ platforms.  So they won’t be “isolated” on iOS.  Where, oh where, does CNET find these geniuses?