Hat tip to Time Tech writer Harry McCracken this morning. His article cheered me up no end. He goes through a brief historical list of experts or journalists who have stated that "Apple must…" in order to achieve success.
A few brilliant examples:
"Apple must launch NFC in the iPhone 5.
Decreed by: Brett King on May 10, 2011
Why? With NFC technology increasingly important for mobile payments and other applications such as data-transfer-through-bumping, "it’s either that, or let Google change everything and rethink your iPhone branding strategy."
What Apple did: It didn’t build NFC into the iPhone 5, 5s or 5c. At this point, I suspect that few holdouts expect it to arrive in any future model.
Aftermath: Mobile payments via NFC haven’t turned out to be as big a deal as many folks once thought they would…though of course, it’s possible that they’ve been hampered by the fact that iPhones don’t support them. Meanwhile, iOS 7’s AirDrop feature mimics NFC without requiring its presence."
"Apple must do a netbook now.
Decreed by: Cnet’s David Carnoy on February 27, 2009
Why? "It’s the biggest growth category in laptops." And nobody’s spending $1,000 on the MacBook Air.
What Apple did: It never released anything remotely like a netbook, though I guess you could make the case that the iPad, at $499, was a netbook killer in disguise.
Aftermath: In October of 2010, Apple released much-improved new versions of the MacBook Air, which became very popular. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry, having found netbooks to be profit killers, decided to replace them with Ultrabooks — thinner, slicker, pricier laptops that paid the sincerest form of flattery to the MacBook Air."
