This week the news is all about the announcements out of WWDC, but let’s turn the clock back to last week when Business Insider alumnus and Forbes “contributor” Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry was telling us (again) how dumb Apple is—this time writing for CITEworld. Possibly he keeps writing for different sites because he has to stay ahead of the logic police who have a warrant out for his arrest on multiple violations.
Disaster.
Since this deal was first leaked almost a month ago, Apple has made enough profit to cover the cost of the acquisition, without taking into account the fact that Beats itself makes about $1 billion a year in revenue.
With disasters like these, who needs successes? Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion and never got a dime out of them.
Oh, so, the answer is clearly that Google needs disasters like Beats. And, hey, Google made a great acquisition with Nest. It had a lot of things Google needed. In the Macalope’s opinion, it’s probably a better deal for Google than Beats is for Apple, but that doesn’t make Beats a bad deal.
As countless observers of the business world have noted, the world’s great companies all seem to decline after their founder or early leader leaves.
Like, nobody even talks about Disney anymore. Dead. In. The. Water.
Apple is “is a fractal design,” wrote über-Apple blogger and fan John Gruber after Jobs’ resignation as CEO.
That may seem like a simple pejorative, but it’s true. To supplement his blogging income, John Gruber drives for Uber.
John Gruber drives for Uber.
Gruber. Uber. Uber. Gruber.
It’s time to stop kidding ourselves.
SnackWells cookies are still just cookies! They’re not health food! You’re living a lie, Gladys!
For all his outstanding talent and his great personal likability, Tim Cook has revealed himself as what we knew him to be in our heart of hearts all along: A suit MBA.
Those two years at Duke are apparently more important than the 16 he’s spent at Apple working hand-in-hand with Steve Jobs. It’s also where he developed his passion for Mickey’s Big Mouths. True story.
He is the Steve Ballmer to Jobs’s Bill Gates …
Indeed, Monday’s keynote was the Apple equivalent of Ballmer’s signature “Developers! Developers! Developers!” speech.
And by the “Apple equivalent” the Macalope means it was 100-percent classier and 900-percent less sweaty.
The reason we now know this to be indisputably true is because Apple just spent $3 billion to buy the Beats headphones company, a deal that makes no sense whatsoever.
Wait, a couple of weeks ago you said it made sense for one reason, that Apple needed to do something. That’s a lousy reason, of course, but at least try to be consistent.
Gobry gives the standard “Beats headphones suck!” line and—very odd, this—does not mention Jimmy Iovine once. Now, if it were strictly an acquihire (“acquire” + “hire” = oh, God, Silicon Valley is destroying the English language), you could argue that $3 billion is a lot of money but, wait! Don’t answer yet! Because for a limited time only Beats Electronics will throw in Dr. Dre, Trent Reznor—which, eh, you know, package deal—some fashionable hardware of questionable audio quality, and a very nice streaming music service with great discovery features.
Now how much would you pay?!
Well, $3 billion, that’s how much.
It just makes no sense whatsoever for Apple to buy it.
You said that. Like nine times. In two different articles.
It just makes no sense.
Why, a casual reader might get the impression that Gobry thinks this deal does not make sense!
It’s the most un-Apple-like thing Apple has done since… since… since the last time it was run by a man not named Steve Jobs.
Which would be when the company acquired NeXT. And we all know how that turned out.
Total disaster.