The incident that brought about my mirth was Apple’s new CEO (who came from a PC Manufacturer, namely Compaq and before that IBM) trying to pull off a Steve Job’s style comment. His comment was this;

“There is cannibalization of the Mac by the iPad, but we think there's more cannibalization of Windows PCs by the iPad - we love that trend.”

Now to many that is not all that funny, to me it is very funny. The story goes something like this. In 1994 when Windows 3.1 was the big Windows Platform on the market Apple announced the death of the PC. This was heralded by the print magazines of the day (the internet was not a mainstream media outlet yet). Then in 1998 we heard that the Mac was going to overtake the PC and that a new comer was going to eat into windows sales. This was an OS called Lindows.  The trend goes on and on; Apple has been trumpeting the death of the PC for more years than I can count. The problem is that the PC still represents over 80% of the market. I am not sure when Apple thinks this death is going to happen or why some of the mainstream media outlets are determined to push this theory, but they do.

Considering the record quarters for Intel and Microsoft I would hardly say the PC is dead. Do not get me wrong Apple is making money hand over fist, but much of that is due to their markup and the fact that they pay pennies for their labor force at the Foxconn plants in China (and yes I know that Dell and others have their hardware assembled there).

So the next time you hear some analyst or Apple claim the PC is dying or indeed dead; just remember that they have been trying to make this claim since 1994 and they have not managed to pull it off yet. If I had to look ahead into the next two to three years I can see a time when Apple’s popularity will drop off significantly. After all we have watched other companies that allowed themselves to believe their own press fail, I have no reason to think the same won’t happen to Apple.

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