Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if someone is being intentionally stupid or simply a bad writer. John Martellaro at The Mac Observer often makes me ask that question.
I know John personally. He’s a nice guy. But he probably writes more articles that are factually, logically and grammatically awful, incorrect, and poorly thought out than anyone in the Mac Community. His column today, “Apple is Now Forced to Build a 7-inch Tablet“, is no exception.
First of all, the idea that Apple would be “forced” by the market to make a product is laughable at best. Martellaro’s premise is the assumption of ”the success of the Amazon Kindle Fire…” with no evidence of that “success”.
He says:
Apple can no longer sit idly by and watch this part of the market get gobbled up by a competitor.
Why not? There are all kinds of market segments Apple has shown no interest in competing for any number of reasons. Apple is a tightly focused, relatively small company. They can’t and don’t want to be in every market segment imaginable. They are very picky in choosing only those segments they can dominate and exploit – not to mention make 30-40% margins on.
Confusingly, Martellaro argues against his own premise:
it’s likely the huge sales surge of the Kindle Fire will be over after Christmas, and the sustained viability of the product in the dark days of February remains to be seen.
He again talks about the “huge sales surge” of the Fire with no evidence of such. But he also says it’s “likely” that (unproven) surge will be over after Christmas. Why would Apple want to make a product with an effective sales time frame of only a few months?
Martellaro continues with:
What can’t be denied is that Amazon has found a chink in Apple’s armor.
It absolutely can be denied. Saying the Fire is a “chink” in Apple’s armor is like saying netbooks are a chink in sales of the MacBook Air. It ignores the fact they are different devices targeting different markets and consumers. It can easily be argued those who want a Macbook Air wouldn’t be satisfied with a Netbook. The same can be said for the Fire/iPad.
Proving Martellaro doesn’t even read his own website, he says:
A million Fire’s sold per week is evidence of Apple asleep at the wheel.
It looks like this is where Martellaro is getting his Fire sales figures. It’s a shame he didn’t read or at least comprehend the Mac Observer story he linked to.
As many others have pointed out, Amazon announced last week they had sold a million Kindles – not a million Fires. Amazon has not yet broken out the numbers to tell us exactly how many Fires they have sold but, you’d have to imagine that if the numbers where as large as Martellaro thinks they are, Amazon would have made some kind of announcement. He continues with:
It’s just plain rare for a company to sit back and excuse itself out of a market and potential earnings.
No, it’s not. This is Apple we are talking about. They have shown on any number of occasions they are perfectly happy letting other companies fight over the low price conscious customer – a point Martellaro himself makes in the same paragraph, once again arguing with himself.
In my opinion, it’s easier and smarter to argue facts, data, logic and concrete information than it is to write a column where you’re not only bereft of the above, but one where you actively contradict yourself. But that’s just me. Looks like it works for Martellaro.