For The Guardian, Juliette Garside writes Five ways Apple has lost its bite, but it’s more like five ways Apple journalism has lost its bite, namely: unfounded speculation, lack of insight, intentionally downplaying achievements, removing context, and rewriting Apple’s own history to suit.

Right from the off, the article sets out its agenda:

The breathtaking expansion of the world’s most successful technology company has skidded to a halt.

Had this been a fact, fair enough, but:

Tonight Apple is expected to post its worst financial results for a decade, with profits falling for the first time since 2003, and revenues flat on last year.

This article was written before Apple issued its financials. Also, “worst financial results” is a loaded statement without context. Worst in what manner? Certainly not revenue. And although profits are down on the previous year, they’re way higher than any previous Apple year. The context here is therefore “profits down compared to the same quarter last year,” which Garside failed to state, but then she didn’t even have the figures to hand when filing this piece.

It’s less than two years since Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs, but Apple’s creative juices appear to have dried up.

Again, there’s no context here, and this also rewrites Apple’s history. The inference here is Apple having not disrupted a new industry recently, in the manner the company did with tablets and smartphones. Tech hacks seem to have a version of Apple in their heads that does something new and amazing at the very least once a quarter. In reality, Apple since its earliest days has only very slowly unveiled new products, and has slowly iterated on its successful (and sometimes less successful) lines.

Go right back to the Apple II and move forward from there. Since the late 1970s, how many truly revolutionary products has Apple released? You could argue the original Mac, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, certainly. How many more? If you can double that list, you’re still talking an average of something new and amazing every three or four years.

It continues:

For two decades the soft-spoken Alabaman has been very much part of the firm’s success, but Wall Street is now rife with (albeit not very credible) rumours that the search for his replacement has begun.

Unfounded speculation.

Cook’s tenure has had its positives: appalling working conditions at Apple’s Chinese factories have been tackled and a readiness to apologise for mistakes has helped the company appear less arrogant.

But the things that made Apple great – the innovation, the ability to make software and hardware that “just work”, and the faultless industrial design that created some of the best-looking consumer electronics ever made – appear to be slipping away.

Intentionally downplaying achievements.

Garside next moves on to the internet’s favourite thing: the numbered list. It’s a pity this wasn’t on Business Insider, whereupon it could have excitingly been presented across five separate slowly loading pages, for no reason at all. The numbered list in this case is the five ways Apple’s lost its bite, because presumably moaning about Cook wasn’t one of them. Here, Garside does have some decent points, but they’re too often buried under unfounded speculation, lack of insight, intentionally downplaying achievements, removing context, and rewriting Apple’s own history to suit.

1. Never making a television or getting Apple TV right

I’m still to hear a single credible argument why Apple should make its own television. Perhaps such a unit could be a success, but it strikes me as an extraordinarily difficult ask. People rarely upgrade televisions, and having a plug-in component that could be upgraded (as many have suggested) doesn’t seem very Apple. Also, the so-called second screen is rapidly becoming the first, and Apple already has a commanding lead in that field. So a low-cost conduit—the Apple TV—backed up by some decent content (iTunes, Apple TV ‘apps’ and iOS apps with AirPlay) seems a better bet.

Garside does get a nugget right, in that Apple needs to do more regarding content, but the assertion

Apple must work harder than it did shaking up a bloated and complacent music industry

suggests there’s something to work with, and it’s pretty clear the television and film industry is doing everything it can to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot and argue the customer guided the bullet by their evil psychic piracy powers.

2. iCloud being beset by syncing issues and instability

I’ve no complaints here. Although Garside moans about the expense of iCloud compared to its rivals and ignores the potential it offers in terms of integration, she’s spot on regarding its technical issues. Had the entire article been like this, I wouldn’t be writing mine. Still, in terms of arguing why Apple has lost its bite, iCloud isn’t a great example. It’s arguable in terms of web services Apple never really had any bite at all—it’s always been a gummy toothless wannabe trying and failing to grab hold.

3. Apple Maps being pretty rubbish, and not optional

Boom! And we’re back to good points buried under rubbish. Apple Maps was indeed sub-par, and Apple should have done better. Garside also says something I’ve long wondered not only about Apple but about big technology companies in general:

The faults were so glaring […] that one wonders how well the chief executive studied his own product before approving its release.

But Maps is now actually a fairly good app for certain tasks (turn-by-turn in the car, say), and the circumstances of why Apple dropped Google’s data have never (and will never) be revealed, but it’s pretty clear that prior to Apple’s own Maps app, the Google-backed one was woefully behind the equivalent on other platforms. Somewhat ironically, the mess of Apple Maps resulted in Apple’s mobile platform ending up extremely strong from a mapping standpoint, with the release of Google’s own app and others.

Again, though, is this a case of Apple losing its bite? It’s not like Apple hasn’t offered other high-profile disappointments in terms of software. Just recently, Siri and Final Cut X come to mind. Also, like Maps, they offer good foundations on which to build, but Apple’s never been that great at retaining interest in the long term over many of its software products. Look at the OS X versions of what were once the iLife and iWork apps…

4. Hiring a retail chief who didn’t realise Apple stores are showrooms

A first proper hit, and we’re only at the fourth of five reasons why Apple’s lost its bite. The hire of Browett was truly baffling to Brits who’d seen his previous work, although amusingly lost on any Americans who’d not visited a PC World and initially lapped up the PR rather than took notice of the screams of anguish from across the pond.

It’s perhaps too early to say Apple’s truly lost its bite when it comes to recruitment of major players, but this was at the very least a mis-step and so deserves to be on the list.

5. The iPhone 5 only really having a slightly bigger screen

And we crash back down to earth, with the wonderful:

It may be one of the fastest phones in the world, loading video and spinning through web pages at record speeds, but reviewers complain that the screen is too small

[citation required]

In reality, tech geek reviewers moan that every new iOS device isn’t an Android device, rather than weighing up whether or not it’s relevant for the target market. Even if Apple were to release an iPhone with a massive screen, reviewers would whine it’s not as big as the latest Samsung, which by that point would probably cover most of Wales.

Others have caught up too, with Nokia and Samsung making cheaper machines that work just as well.

Vague statements offering no insight are the best! It’d be like writing “The Guardian’s technology columns aren’t worth reading because others write far better content,” but that would just be mean, and so I sure hope no-one does that.

So really the numbers are all wrong. The Guardian’s piece is more like “One way Apple’s lost its bite and a bunch of unfounded speculation and link-bait,” and my piece is more like: *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*.

Give it a year and there will be no facts at all in anything written about Apple. And I’ll need a new desk.

Further reading: Just How Did Apple “Journalism” Get This Bad? by the brilliant and wise Ian Betteridge.

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.

Federico Viticci writes for MacStories:

I’m not as anxious about backups as I used to be. With the move from local storage to cloud services, I feel comfortable knowing that my documents always exist somewhere.

His caveat is important: Viticci primarily works on small files that don’t require local storage and he uses a lot of cloud-based services (Gmail, Plex, iTunes in the Cloud, Rdio, Evernote). Still, I find the idea of only running a weekly SuperDuper back-up pretty chilling (along with his statement that his documents exist “somewhere”). I’ve been hit far too many times by hardware failure to rely on such a system, and so here’s my current set-up, which I’m just about happy with:

• Current work in Dropbox.
• Daily incremental bootable back-up to SuperDuper at about 1 a.m.
• Additional weekly back-up to SuperDuper on a Friday night.
• Important documents saved to CrashPlan.

I say ‘just about happy’, because I wanted to add Time Machine to this mix (for ongoing versioned back-up), but Time Machine just didn’t work with any of the hard drives I had to hand. (Subsequent Twitter-based discussions also suggested Time Machine currently has some pretty major bugs that can lock up OS X Mountain Lion in some circumstances, which happened to me a few times before I ditched the app.) I’d also be happier if everything was in CrashPlan, but until British broadband gets out of the stone age and offers decent upload speeds, I have to be a little more selective.

Still, my current system has the following advantages:

• Dropbox for current work ensures it can be accessed from anywhere I have a web connection, including through iOS devices.
• The daily clone is bootable, meaning if my Mac’s drive dies, I can get started very quickly by booting from the clone, ‘losing’ only whatever I’d so far done today on the local drive (mostly email, which I can easily enough get from CrashPlan).
• The weekly clone enables me to go back and grab files if I accidentally delete something or mess up settings, or if I download and install an iOS app update that turns out to be a train-wreck.
• CrashPlan is accessible online and updates as I work, providing an extra layer of security.

In addition, iOS devices are regularly backed up to the Mac, meaning their back-ups are regularly backed up.

I’m sure this all sounds mental to some people, but without my computer, I’m done for work-wise. I’m therefore ultra-careful about keeping my data safe; but so should you be, unless you wouldn’t be bothered one day if you tried to turn on your computer or a device and ended up faced with a dead screen.

Would You Pay $15 for a Better iOS Mail App? burbles Ashley Feinberg for Gizmodo today. This was provoked by Mail Pilot’s developer having the sheer audacity to charge fifteen whole dollars for an entirely new IMAP email client. THE NERVE!

Feinberg further prattled:

That price would be steep for any app

Really? For any app?

especially one that’s competing against multiple free, perfectly usable alternatives.

Because, as we all know, you’d have to be a total idiot to pay for an app where “free, perfectly usable alternatives” exist. Free, perfectly usable alternatives are always the best kinds of apps! Let’s never use anything apart from free, perfectly usable alternatives, such as commercial, possibly amazing, productivity-boosting, time-saving, value-for-money alternatives!

So the question is, are you willing to pay $15 for the app? Is any app really worth that much?

Clearly not, because developers don’t need to eat or pay mortgages or try anything new or do anything amazing. Really, they should be there to do our bidding and release apps entirely for free. Who cares that they’ll then have to stop developing as a job and instead do it in their spare time as a hobby? As long as we all get our “free, perfectly usable alternatives”, everything will be great!

I recently interviewed a number of game developers for an article on freemium gaming. Ste Pickford, co-creator of Magnetic Billiards (buy it now if you have an iOS device), was, like most developers I spoke to, broadly positive about the concept of freemium, free-to-play and IAP, but more guarded about the current realities. He was worried about the abuse of the system by certain companies, and said:

At the moment, the main danger is that the industry is implementing free-to-play poorly in many products. We risk alienating a lot of gamers with inappropriate, anti-consumer monetisation, which is a shame. We should be bringing all gamers along for the ride.

It feels like accountants are in charge at a lot of the developers making successful free-to-play games, where whatever is most effective at generating revenue is implemented, without considering whether this is revenue generated by people enjoying themselves, or generated by tricking, frustrating or exploiting players. I think the distinction matters in the long run.

I don’t think targeting kids—who perhaps aren’t spending their own money, or don’t appreciate the value of money yet—with $100 consumable IAPs is right, and will inevitably lead to heavy handed government legislation that will make things harder for all developers, even the ones behaving responsibly.

Said legislation hasn’t happened yet, but the BBC today reported that the UK’s Office of Fair Trading is now looking into games aimed at children that include IAPs, to ascertain how aggressively content (and, by extension, payment) is pushed, and to

find out if the games are “misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair” when they give people the chance to buy extras.

I imagine this will turn into an almighty scrap between lobbyists from gaming companies, parents who believe (rightly or wrongly) that they have been ripped off, and a British media always looking for a story that will drive traffic. But the knock-on effect at best is further erosion of trust in mobile gaming. As Pickford said to me, this kind of thing impacts not just on those developers who are exploiting players, but every developer that utilises in-app purchases.

As Pickford concluded:

 

At its best, free-to-play contains within it the ability to allow your biggest fans to spend more on a game they’re really enjoying than they would otherwise; while most console games are overpriced, I’ve had way more than $60 worth of entertainment from a few games that I played to death. That’s a good thing, when done correctly, and can incentivise developers to make better games. But free-to-play at its best is still a rarity.

That last point is something that needs to change—and fast—if mobile gaming isn’t to be irreparably damaged.