Certain recent events have the Macalope reminiscing about some of his favorite hot takes that have come and gone over the years. And by “favorite” the Macalope means the most hilariously bad.
Let’s just limit this to the last 10 years, otherwise we’ll be here all night. Also, this is not an exhaustive list. The only thing exhausted about this list is the man/Mac/antelope who had to read these opinions.
First up, for no reason at all this week, the idea that Apple should buy Tesla and make Elon Musk the CEO.
These are two separate suggestions. First, that Apple should buy Tesla. Second, should make a man who publicly trashed a company he was taking a financial stake in and was therefore able to buy said stake for less. We’ll start with the first suggestion.
Should Apple have bought Tesla? No. Not at all. Yes, if Apple had bought Tesla, at least it’d be producing electric vehicles now. But it still wouldn’t be producing autonomous electric vehicles, which is what it really wants to do. And, no, it’s not “behind” on making them because no one else is, either. Even the guy who said for years his company was just months away from delivering them. The name of this person escapes the Macalope right now.
As far as the suggestion that Musk should be made CEO of Apple because Tim Cook is… boring or something… (Competence is so boring!) Yeah, sure. Much better to have a toxic narcissist who insists on shooting his mouth off on Twitter and loves to pick fights with the SEC. What? Could? Go? Wrong? The Macalope thinks the years between 2017 when this brilliant idea was floated and now have pretty conclusively driven it into the black hole at the center of the galaxy where it belongs.
IDG
Next up is Facebook Home. Every once in a while the Macalope remembers that this was a thing for a hot, disgusting minute back in 2013. If you don’t recall, Facebook Home was a Facebook-forward front end for Android smartphones. The thinking among certain congealed chunks of walking bio-matter was that Apple was “screwed” because of it. They claimed it gave Facebook “the upper hand” and would soon suck iPhone users away because who wouldn’t want to have their entire smartphone experience controlled by the company that has no regard for your privacy and taught your uncle how not only was the moon landing faked, the moon isn’t even real, you can totally see the strings holding it up?
The evidence for this claim of iPhone doom was that the Facebook Home was made by some admittedly talented ex-Apple employees and, at the time, Facebook had more users than there were iPhone owners. The thought that not every Facebook user was in loooove with the platform and would do anything for it apparently did not occur to those pushing this idea.
Facebook Home’s last major update was in December of 2013 and then, after somehow managing to fail at killing the iPhone, its source code was quietly dropped in a dumpster behind a Sonic on Route 100.
Well, probably not really, but who knows.
Lastly, remember the Fire Phone? Some people complain about the Macalope harping on the Fire Phone for years after its demise but everyone needs a hobby and it keeps him off the streets. Mostly. (On hot summer nights he still drives up and down De Anza Blvd. in his tangerine El Camino, just looking for fools who want to drag.)
When the Fire Phone came out in 2014 pundits predicted it would see “healthy rates of adoption” because of its “innovative features” like… um… well, who can remember, really? Some scrolling thing or something? Alexa? It would explode when someone said the word “union”? Hard to recall as it was canceled after just over a year.
Is continuing to bring these things up in any way important? The Macalope feels it is. Because punditry–including what you’re reading right here–is cheap and yet often still overpriced.