Silicon Insider:The Core Truth on Apple

B U R L I N G A M E, Calif., Oct. 3 -- A couple years ago I wrote a fairly massive tome covering the entire history of Apple Computer up to the return of Steve Jobs. There were two things I noticed during the years I spent researching and writing the book.

One was that Apple fanatics were almost entirely devoid of long-term memory — no matter how many times the company exploited their ardor, or hoisted shoddy products on them, or simply ignored them, they would instantly forgive and forget everything once the news out of Cupertino turned positive.

The second was that Apple Computer’s history was not a narrative line, but a series of circles, in which the company repeated the same victories and disasters over and over. Hence the title of the book, named (appropriately after the entrance road to Apple Headquarters), Infinite Loop.

There was a third thing I learned about Apple came after the book was published. It was that Apple true believers — “Macolytes” I called them — will not bear any criticism of their company or its co-founder.

Thus, like Mike Moritz (The Little Kingdom) before me and Alan Deutschman (The Second Coming of Steve Jobs) today, I was accused of everything from being an agent for Bill Gates to being consumed with jealously for my old elementary schoolmate Steve Jobs. It was even suggested that I was enemy of human liberty, having sided with the dark powers of totalitarianism (i.e., Windows)

For that reason, I doubt that anyone who is true Apple fanatic, who has drunk the rainbow Kool-Aid and who thrills at the very words “Think Different,” will believe a word I have to say. But for everyone else, here are the thoughts of someone whose first computer was an Apple III, and who has studied, written about and even worked for, Apple literally since the day it began.

The Bloom is Off the Rose

Let’s start with the announcement last week from Apple that its fourth quarter earnings would be “substantially below” Wall Street estimates — as low as 30 cents per share instead of the predicted 45 cents. Worse, this softening was not geographic, as Intel’s had been in Europe, but everywhere.

September demand from the education market — long Apple’s mainstay — for the iMac was a disappointment, and the new PowerMac G4 cube hasn’t jumped off store shelves the way Apple (and reviewers) predicted.