ParisLemon

While many people are linking to Forrester Research CEO George Colony’s “Apple = Sony” post (fine, I will too), I’ll focus on Josh Lowensohn’s breakdown of said post (which is actually longer than Colony’s post).

Lowensohn, like myself, apparently read the post and wondered what the point was. Colony wasn’t saying anything new. Nor was he diving deep into something that many people are wondering (can Apple continue to thrive in the post-Jobs era?). Instead, “Colony, to a great extent, is following the classic formula of the provocateur,” Lowensohn notes.

Exactly. Apple just had another massive quarter (the 2nd record-breaking one in a row under Tim Cook, mind you). Someone has to be the contrarian to soak up the pageview glory. Colony, it seems, took one for the team.

Some will charge me with doing the same thing about Microsoft the other day. But I actually look at the numbers and the trends and draw a conclusion (in 5 years, Microsoft will be an enterprise company, not a consumer company).

Colony does none of that. Because Apple’s numbers support nothing beyond the company being basically unstoppable. So Colony turns to sociology.

The upside (for him) is that if he’s right and can boast about it in the future (as I so often love to do). Maybe it helps his company (“Hey, that guy knows what he’s talking about — remember the Apple = Sony post?”). The downside is that if he’s wrong no one will remember a sub-500 word blog post about a topic a thousand others wrote first.

Win/win.

What about this? What if Apple isn’t like Sony? Or Polaroid? Or Disney? Or even Apple circa 1985? What if this Apple is completely different? 

At best, that wouldn’t be an easy sub-500 word post. At worst, it would be a boring post without much to say.

Everything fails. It’s just the way the world works. Maybe Apple falls in 3 years. Maybe in 5 years. Maybe in 20 years. Maybe in 50 years. Maybe in 100 years. No one stays at the top forever. It’s the easiest prediction in the world to make because eventually, you will always be proven right.

But after two absolutely insane quarters for the most successful company in the world, why predict it now? 

Because the actual data points in the opposite direction, but everyone is bored with reading how Apple is just destroying everyone else. You know, the truth.