Rip Ragged

The Macalope is one of my favorite bloggers. In the Apple blogosphere, he’s certainly my second favorite, right after me. In his most recent post, he rips into Rob Enderle. Rob Enderle has written something again.

Meh.

Enderle’s opinions suit those who pay for them. He knows nothing about business. He’s a lousy writer. The fact that he is considered credible by a largish subset of the computer business bodes well for Apple. His opinion validates the wrong opinions of a lot of stupid people.

Here are the things Enderle consistently misses.

The reality is that Apple makes and sells technologically superior products. OS X is built on a solid foundation and has been gradually improving for eight years. The only consumer market (read non-geek) competitor to OS X is a flavor of Windows. XP is pretty good, as Windows goes, but it’s dead. Vista sucks. SUCKS.

For Microsoft to develop a product as good as Leopard will take about eight years. They’ll have to start with a solid foundation and then build it over several iterations in to the technological marvel we currently enjoy on our Macs. Then, they’ll still be building a generic OS for numerous individual hardware vendors.

Eight years from now, Leopard will be primitive. We might run out of cats by 2016. Who knows? By then we could be into gemstones, constellations, or mollusks. Apple will still be designing its hardware and software into a single unit.

The technology that Apple sells is only available from Apple. Only a full tilt Windows geek can make a Dell running XP do what my Mac lets non-geek little me do routinely.

That is why Macs continue to sell like Illinois Senate seats. There is only one computer that does all the things you expect a computer to do. A Mac costs a little more than a cheapshit little Wally*World SPAM and Malware receptacle, so save up your milk money. People are doing just that.

So I for one am pleased and proud to know there are people like Rob Enderle out there. I love football analogies, so here’s one. Apple has their offense on the field. Steve Jobs is the quarterback. His offensive line is “The Whole Widget.” Behind that offensive line, Apple can run any back it wants to. They don’t need Shawn Alexander; Jason Alexander is good enough.

The defense is an all-star team from all over tech: Nokia, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Sony, SanDisk, Samsung. Best Buy and Circuit City are among companies that have players on both sides of the field – like Microsoft.

Each group is only defending the part of Apple’s team that affects their business model directly. Nokia is covering the iPhone; Dell is trying to beat Apple’s hardware while their hardware runs Microsoft’s software.

Apple is going to run the ball through The Whole Widget offensive line. Steve has announced the play. He has told the entire opposing team that he has The Whole Widget offensive line, so all he has to do is run.

The other team never fields an offense. The other team can only hope that in between scores, Apple will fumble the ball. That’s why there’s so much screaming and pointing at Apple TV. “Look,” they say, “Apple screwed this one up.”

Before anyone will ever again mount a serious offense against Apple’s technological hegemony, they’ll have to get their own “Whole Widget.”

In my game analogy, Rob Enderle is the fan in row 43 with his face and chest panted with the Windows logo. He’s drinking his fourth Miller Lite. He’s holding a cardboard D and a cardboard likeness of a picket fence. He’s drooling on himself. Behind him, a woman is fanning her hand in front of her face and scowling.

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I read the term “Zune Phone” in a recent post somewhere on the internet.

I laughed. I opened another beer.

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Some people think the economic downturn is hurting Apple. I don’t think so. People who wanted a Mac and can’t afford one, probably won’t buy a cheap PC. People who wanted a cheap PC and can’t afford one, probably couldn’t afford one in the first place. Apple loses a lot fewer sales in those scenarios than the other guys.

For the same number of dollars in profit Apple makes selling a single Mac, Dell has to sell a pallet full of like SKUs. Apple’s growth may slow a bit, but their financial health isn’t threatened.

Apple has complete control of its product and a big pot of money to ride out this financial crisis.

If I’m betting on who’s going to be leading the pack on the other end of this little fiscal glitch, I’m going to bet on the company with $25,000,000,000 in cash. It also tips the placement of my chips to know that Apple has at least a five year technological advantage on every competitor in every facet of every industry they compete in.

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Buy AAPL

As an absolute minimum: Don’t sell AAPL

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I have to be in class all day tomorrow and I’m out of beer.

Bad combination.

I guess that means it’s bedtime.

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An old wise man once said….

Never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity.