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

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).

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.

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.

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

"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."<p>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