Apple’s Q2 2013 earnings call is on its way later today. It doesn’t take a fortune-teller to know what’s going to happen: Apple’s going to get smacked. If the company’s sales have slumped, the stock will crash and the press will go nuts; if Apple doesn’t meet Wall Street’s loony demands (sorry, expectations), the stock will crash and the press will go nuts. The press will also go nuts if Tim Cook and chums don’t talk about a new Apple television, iWatch or iToasterFridge, despite Apple never talking about such things during earnings calls.

Roman Dillet’s latest TechCrunch article (which is surprisingly balanced for an article on Apple earnings) sums up the problem Apple has right now:

Even iPhone sales are now below analysts’ expectations. The company was supposed to sell between 6 million and 10 million iPhone 5 during opening weekend. In reality, it sold 5 million units.

That’s my emphasis, there. ‘Supposed to sell’, according to analysts, who, as I once said in a column for Macworld, are little more than guessers for the most part. Even if Apple’s grown since this point last year, it won’t be enough. Even if Apple announced it had in fact sold three iPhones to everyone in the world and a passing visitor from Alpha Centauri who will still be able to use the iPhone because the new antenna is now that good, analysts would grumble that, really, Apple should have sold four phones to everyone and is doomed for not securing the lucrative Proxima Centauri market.

So nuts to it. I’m going to ignore the baying mob and play Super Stickman Golf 2 instead, which will be fun on account of featuring 100 per cent fewer analysts and, despite it being a very silly game indeed, a significantly lower level of absurdity than exists in the current tech press.