Poor Apple. It must be really hard for the company right now. As reported by yours truly (in a suitably bleary late-night manner), iPad sales ‘disappointed’ during Q2 and were ‘below expectations’—assuming you’re an analyst and don’t really have a clue, but like to play games with Apple stock by flinging your guesses at the internet, like a monkey throwing poo at a zoo.

But what about the iPhone? Henry Blodget already told us on Business Insider that Apple’s device was dead in the water. According to Apple’s Q2 report, here’s what ‘dead in the water’ looks like:

The Company sold 18.65 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 113 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

“Fuck,” said Steve Jobs, surprisingly candidly. “Apple really is totally doomed. Despite second quarter revenue of $24.67 billion and record second quarter net profit of $5.99 billion, and us selling every iPad we can make, those analyst guys are always right, so we must be heading for a pretty big fall in Q3.” Jobs also added that the iPhone, having sold 18.65 million units in the previous quarter, was to be immediately cancelled “because that Blodget guy seems like he knows his stuff, and so I guess he knows something we don’t”.

Oh dear—my apologies. I appear to have accidentally tapped into a collective-consciousness wet-dream of Blodget’s and every analyst who reports on Apple. I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.

Here we go again. Before bed (I’m writing this gone midnight, because I need help), I checked into the BBC and saw a slightly odd standfirst on the Apple Q2 earnings article:

Latest profits for the computer giant Apple beat most hopes with a 113% rise in iPhone sales—but iPad sales disappoint.

From what I can tell, iPad sales have been insanely swift over the past few months, but, no, there it was in grey and white (the BBC doesn’t like contrast in its text): the sales ‘disappoint’. Clicking through, there’s a little more detail:

Apple’s figures were not uniformly positive. It sold 4.69m iPad tablet computers in the quarter, below expectations.

Clearly, I’m an idiot, because 4.69 million iPads sold seems pretty damn good to me (and Apple commented: “We sold every iPad 2 we could make”). So whose expectations were these sales below? Our chums the analysts, of course—those happy campers who pull whatever figures they fancy out of their arses, and then yell at Apple for being rubbish when the company fails to match their pie-in-the-sky estimates.

If you care, CNN Money provided an exciting overview of analyst analysis (i.e. guesswork) regarding iPad sales. The range was from 8.8 million and bottomed out at 5 million. This is, presumably, why Apple selling 4.69 iPads is somehow ‘disappointing’ and ‘below expectations’, despite the fact any competitor selling anywhere near that many tablets in a quarter would be cause for a year-long celebration.

Update: it’s also worth noting that these are the exact same analysts that initially predicted doom and gloom for the iPad, suggesting Apple would sell about 17 in total, if it was lucky. As The Macalope said to me on Twitter:

Apple disappointed the analysts who suck at estimating.

A really nice article by Ben Brooks on the most important benchmark ‘bullet point’ in computing rapidly changing in recent years.

Years back:

Growing up there was really only one bullet point on computers that I cared about: clock speed. I knew that the faster the CPU, the faster the computer. This drove my buying decisions […] for many years

And now:

Battery life is the new benchmark—it’s the first thing that I look at on any new piece of hardware. We can now, finally, make the reasonable assumption that both the hardware and software is fast enough on most devices—so now what matters is portability

I largely agree. I think there will always be people who consider chip-speed, RAM and other technical aspects of a device of paramount importance, but they will continue to diminish in number. However, while computers and mobile are mostly ‘fast enough’ and ‘powerful enough’ for a typical user’s requirements, you can bet most people would bite your arm off if you could double the battery life of their tablet, smartphone or laptop tomorrow.

What on Earth Happened to BlackBerry, by Farhad Manjoo over at Slate Magazine, nicely sums up why RIM’s having trouble coming to terms with the current era of mobile technology:

When they talk about RIM’s strengths, the company’s leaders like to point to their “CIO friendliness.” The trouble is, being friendly with CIOs doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Nowadays people don’t ask the tech guy which mobile gadgets pass muster. Instead, tech guys look to employees to decide which gadgets to support. RIM’s strategy—to infiltrate companies as a first step to becoming a mass-market hit—has been eclipsed by the Apple approach, which is to infiltrate schools and homes, and then hope that regular people nag their IT guys to let them use iPads at work, too.

Those bastards at Spotify are coercing people into paying for music, rather than getting a musical moon on a stick for free, the bastards. In Upcoming changes to Spotify Free/Open, the greedy swines rattle on about setting fire to your free account, and quite literally punching you in the face until you cough up for a subscription.

Spotify CEO Jens Ivantyourmoneysson said:

We’ve got this deal with record labels that involves hiring a combination of ninjas and boxers. The ninjas will sneak into your house at night and let in the boxers, who will punch you in the face until you agree to a subscription.

Sitting in his underground lair, watching his gigantic Spotify ROCKETODOOM being created, stroking a white cat, he then continued:

If you don’t do this, you’ll have a broken nose and we will also curb your listening habits. You’ll now only be able to play a track for free up to five times; on the sixth, it will spray salt into your eyes, your computer will explode and we’ll send round the boxer again. You’ll also be limited to ten hours of free Spotify listening per month, but we will aim to ensure you get unlimited punches to the face.

When asked by a journalist about how Spotify could do such a harrowing thing to users who’ve supported Spotify since the start by launching the app and listening to music, for free, with only the occasional interruption from advertisements, and doing nothing else, but doesn’t this smack of pure greed, and won’t people just go back to piracy now, and, you know, I was going to get a paid account—honest—but I’ve now changed my mind because of your evil plans, Ivantyourmoneysson quite literally exploded on stage.

A subsequent joint statement from all major record label CEOs read:

Hahahahahahaha!