Just when you think Rob Enderle can’t get any dumber, he goes ahead and surprises you. At least he keeps things interesting, I guess.
In his latest piece, Enderle writes how Microsoft “blinded vulnerable Apple with Windows 7”, as usual, it’s filled with the same backwards logic and asinine reasoning that have become dear ole’ Rob’s trademark.
Let’s get started shall we.
This is likely to point with Apple this month as they sit stunned that Windows 7 is doing so well and they are left looking foolish with products priced out of the segment. Their big news this week was a couple of PCs, a new keyboard and a multi-touch mouse. This last will likely go down in history as one of the lamest devices yet as they should know, given the iPhone, that touch is connected to the screen and not anything else.
And Enderle is out of the gate strong! Enderle clearly wastes no time in in showcasing his curiously non-existent ability to reason. First of all, Windows 7 just launched yesterday and before the day was even over, Enderle was already clamoring that it was doing so well as to make Apple look foolish. Now for all I know, Windows 7 will be a smash hit, but making such a bold statement on the day of the products release is a bit premature, if not downright idiotic. Second, how is Apple looking foolish here? It’s products are known to be priced higher, on average, than its PC counterparts. And speaking of being priced out of the market, perhaps Enderle would be well advised to take a look at how much Apple’s latest OS offering, Snow Leopard, costs in comparison to copies of Windows 7. Third, Apple’s big news this week wasn’t 2 new iMacs and a new mouse, but rather their most profitable quarter in company history. Fourth, it’s ironic that Enderle criticizes Apple’s new mouse for being touch based when a big selling point for Windows 7 is its support for multi-touch computer screens.
Seriously, what the hell is Enderle smoking, and where can I find some?
He continues,
Apple is clearly one of the strongest marketing companies in any industry and Steve Jobs is a considered to be a master while Microsoft in recent years hasn’t really seemed to be in their league.
Enderle, for whatever reason, is obsessed with describing Apple as a marketing company, as if millions of consumers are blindly buying iPhones because of clever advertising. Interestingly, though, he notes numerous times throughout the article that Microsoft’s Windows 7 push will be a huge success in large part due to Microsoft’s large advertising budget.
After a convoluted and somewhat head scratching history “lesson” about how Apple failed to capitalize on Microsoft’s mistakes with Windows 95, Enderle turns his sights onto Windows 7.
Windows 7 is coming out of the gate with only one known issue and that appears to be tied to problematic Flash update Adobe did in August that most may never actually see.
Wow, I’m sold! No serious bugs, problems or issues with Windows 7 on the day it launches? Now that’s amazing. Who would have ever thought that such engineering mastery was possible?!
Steve Jobs and Apple clearly planned for the same traditional behavior and were completely unprepared for both the quality of Windows 7 and the fact Microsoft has a war chest this time. Their near pathetic recent release of a couple slightly improved PCs and a couple peripherals showcases this. They figured they could easily skate through the next few months because, traditionally, Microsoft would be vulnerable and not able to fight back.
I’m starting to think that Enderle does most of his writing in a drunken stupor. I mean, how was anyone “surprised” by the quality of Windows 7 when copies have been available for months. Windows 7 largely looks to be a solid OS release, but to say that its quality caught Apple, ,or anyone, by surprise is ridiculous. Second, why is Enderle comparing the release of Windows 7 to Apple upgrading its hardware lineup?
After describing Apple’s upcoming challenge from the Motorola Droid, coupled with competition from Verizon heavily supporting Android, Enderle concludes:
Two good lessons here, even when you are on top it is very foolish to under estimate a competitor with Microsoft’s resources because they can actually get it right, and picking too many fights at once can take out the most powerful of entities just as it took out a nearly unbeatable Germany in the second world war.
Huh?
With Steve Jobs in Apple the firm can respond to threats like this one very quickly but only if they see it coming in time. I think they are likely to repeat the 1995 mistake and that means they probably won’t be either quick enough or effective enough to dodge this bullet. However, this is Apple after all and this fight is still young, it would also be very foolish to count them out early.
Are you serious? This man gets paid to write this crap? He’s literally just rambling. Color me jealous.
Regardless of the outcome, we are seeing history made this week and it’s an amazing time to be alive.
Okay, it’s time for a drink.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 am
I don’t believe anything written about Enderle should be included under “punditry.” Just start using the more generic, “Nuts”.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Two words: paid shill.
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 am
To be fair, it seems that Enderle was not complaining about the mouse being multi-touch, but that multi-touch belongs on the screen, as it is on the iPhone.
Now that I have that out of the way, he is ignoring the fact that Apple’s MacBooks and MacBook Pros have their multi-touch on the TRACKPAD, which makes SO much more sense in context. You design the interface for the device, not vice-versa. Multi-touch does NOT belong on the screen of a desktop computer. GAAAAH! It irritates me to hear that argument.
And now, to be totally unfair—Enderle is an idiot.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
What I find amusing is that Adobe screwed up TWO product launches by delivering Bad Flash plugins. Of course, back in August, it was Apple’s fault for placing it on its install DVD, but now it is Adobe’s fault for doing the same thing. Go figure.
Can you see why Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone?
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 am
I refuse to give the man a click when that’s what he desperately wants.
Thank you for reading this drivel so I don’t have to.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 am
“It’s an amazing time to be alive” because Windows 7 just got released?!! You’ve got to be kidding me! We’re in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment is rising, millions are out of work, have been forced into part-time work, or given up looking–and he thinks this is an amazing time to be alive!
Agreed 100% that Apple clearly knew exactly what was coming with W7… just wait until more of the stories come in about the problems upgrading from XP to W7! W7 apparently works fine on new machines, but produces a disaster on upgrading. (Apple has, by the way, fixed the obscure, unlikely to affect most users, guest account hard drive issue in SL. But millions will have to wade through the morass and problems caused by trying to go directly from XP to W7!)
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
What stands out the most in Enderle’s opinion piece is that the man can’t write. Not only do we have numerous logic errors but we have to read through horribly constructed sentences. In the end, it’s amazing that anyone can make sense of what he’s trying to say.
To top it off, the whole thing is written in awkward time order. On one hand he’s talking about this as if it has already happened, and on the other it is written like some sort of prediction. Add in the reference to past events, which are never a good indicator of future events especially in business, and this is one confusing opinion piece.
It is true Apple miscalculated the impact of Win 95 but that transition was huge–DOS to GUI. This is a version of GUI to a newer version of GUI and not nearly so huge, which means it shouldn’t be nearly as dramatic nor have much impact on Apple overall. People will bag on XP for being old hat, but sadly for MS, XP is good enough for many people and they probably won’t upgrade until their current PCs until they need to be replaced. I speaking of consumers who buy every three years. Corporations buy on regular schedules and have purchased XP machines instead of Vista over the last number of years. I would expect they will stick to their schedules. But who the heck knows.
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Why are you even spending time with the fool Rob “Never Right” Enderle, the man whose “group” consists of him and his wife? His “analyses” (with the accent on “anal”) are laughed at by real professionals and the idiots who listen to him and lose their money are not going to pay attention to anything as reasonable as history or facts.
Let’s face it: he’s wrong so often he should be offered a job on Fox News (or MSNBC–your choice).
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Would you be shocked if a hooker you paid went down on you gladly? Then why are you shocked that Enderle would be quick to slurp on some Ballmer sauce and knock anything Apple?
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Wow! Some bizarre script there.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:25 am
I agree with ibobunot. Thank you for the executive summary, I don’t want to support that kind of “journalism” with a single click.
I think everyone should read Enderle here. If all Mac users boycott his crap hopefully he will eventually be out of a work because Windows users don’t read him. He’s nothing but a paid troll and we shouldn’t be baited by his idiocy.
PS. besides he is giving my name a bad name 🙂