Well Played, Apple

I’m surprised someone actually said this, but I just wanted to note that one of our writers attributes the success of the iPhone 4S to the timing of the death of Steve Jobs, remarking quite crassly that “Jobs dying was one of the best things to ever happen to Apple” and that he’s pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to write this article if “all the Apple fanboys [didn’t have to] run out and buy one because their hero [didn’t die yet].”

Thanks for clarifying.

So, want to back that up with $40 that the iPhone 5 won’t break a million on its first day, with the man’s death no longer being such a huge sales asset capable of making even an incremental update the best seller of all phones ever by that point?

I didn’t say I believed that, but what I do believe is that the figure would be plenty high enough for this to have been regarded as a big success having exceeded expectations had the man not died recently, just as I believe the iPhone 5 will be a success whenever it touches down.

Though it’s hard to prove the first half of that, the iPhone 5 selling well would mute your contention a good bit. Understood about your not wanting to gamble, but that bet’s on the table for Murani or D-Money if you guys would rather let me double down though feel free to close the tab now obviously.

Yeah I heard that about the turtlenecks. Wild stuff. Kind of makes one think that the “takeaway” from that is that the iPhone 4S would not have sold well if the guy hadn’t ever lived.

Not to split hairs but I said that the phone would have been a success if Steve Jobs were announcing it rather than dying beforehand, not that it wasn’t a factor in anyone’s mind.

The stock rebounded later in the day, only off a few points.

Lots of things got people talking about this particular phone, including that it didn’t look any different and wasn’t the iPhone 5 and that some guy named Tim Cook would be unveiling it.

I’d put more stock in those at Apple making these macro decisions than the blog and Twitter analysis you did which is partly why I’m obviously confident the next phone will sell well in spite of the blunted Jobs effect and mock turtleneck prices crashing.

I also think it’s a better phone. I like pixels.

Also, it’s the latest Apple phone. People like having the latest iPhone. On top of that, it’s been a while since the last iPhone release, like 33% longer a wait than usual. That would make more people more antsy to get the new thing.

Also, there are ton of more consumers in the smartphone now than there were in June 2010. I don’t know, maybe something like twice as many. A lot more.

A lot of Blackberry owners don’t want Blackberries anymore and decided they’d get the next iPhone.

It’s on three major US carriers.

For the fanboys and nerds, it’s got a better screen (resolution would be very important to me), dual core, maybe the best camera and some other stuff.

If you were attributing a large spike in something like cancer charity donations to Steve Jobs’s death, you’d find no disagreement with me. But to single that out as the make-or-break-it factor behind this thing being a success, or even one to easily measure, to me just sounds somewhere between questionable and completely wrong. And to say you can’t respond to that while letting your true feelings out without being rude or ignorant would be impossible for you, well, that may put us in the agree to disagree territory.

Hey, what’s with spelling fanboy fanboi? Isn’t using the word at all fruity enough?