Apple may be forever doomed, but it’ll never Fold

The year is winding up and the holidays are upon us. As this is an extra busy time for this be-horned beast (ever try wrapping packages with hooves?), let’s take a quick look at several stories that caught the Macalope’s eye this week.

First, our good friends at Samsung (disclaimer: not friends, not good) sure do talk about Apple a lot, don’t they? You get some real “I feel bad for you.”/“I don’t think about you at all.” energy out of this relationship. Once again they’re running an ad that mentions Apple, and again for not selling a foldable phone. Which is definitely a thing that users are crying out for because, uh, it folds?

The Macalope doesn’t really know what the advantage is supposed to be. Samsung is running this ad in the U.S. because its sales are flagging so talking smack is all they have left. Indeed, Apple’s share in the U.S. continues to rise year after year as Android’s continues to fall. Earlier this year, Apple went over 50 percent share in the U.S.

But, you say, Macalope, haven’t you long said that market share isn’t as important as profit share? Indeed, thank you for bringing that up, imaginary reader who’s been paying attention for 10 years instead of surfing Instagram while eating Fiddle Faddle and drinking copious amounts of Hi-C. The thing is, Apple took a whopping 78 percent share of the premium phone market.

At least Samsung is trying something different. Xiaomi, voted by its high school senior class as “most likely to kill the iPhone,” would apparently not know how to design phones at all if the iPhone didn’t exist.

There goes that Macalope again, you say, claiming Apple can do no wrong. Wow, why so sassy all of a sudden, imaginary reader? Just try to remember who created you. You are a being of the Macalope’s own devising and he can undo you just as easily as he made you.

Hey! Where are you going?! Get back here!

Man, the Macalope should not make imaginary readers so fast. Now he’s never gonna find him.

IDG

Anyway, can it be a coincidence that, shortly after meeting with Tim Cook at Apple’s headquarters, Elon Musk took a page from Apple’s App Store book and banned linking to competing social media platforms? The meeting was ostensibly for the purpose of mending the rift developing between the artist formerly known as the world’s richest man and the artist currently known as the world’s richest company.

Apple, of course, is famously known for not allowing developers to put links to alternative means of paying for their apps in the apps themselves. Was Tim Cook dropping pearls of wisdom? Nah, it’s just a coincidence. Probably.

At any rate, Twitter has now apparently rolled back the rule, because not everyone can get away with saying it’s their way or the information superhighway.

Finally, a French court has fined Apple $1 million for “abusive app store practices”. Well! That will show them! For about a minute and a half. Because based on Apple’s revenue for the previous quarter, that’s how long it takes the company to make $1 million—a minute and a half.

It’s almost as if this fine and the one previously levied by the Netherlands were designed to sound big to the likes of you or the Macalope but are laughably small for a company like Apple.

It’s almost like that.