Sixty days ago today, Apple watchers received some startling news: Without an iWatch, Apple will disappear in sixty days which is today. Well…it will take time. Well…a lot of time. Well…they won’t actually just vanish in sixty days. Well…it might be best to let Death Knell Prognosticator Trip Chowdhry lay it out for you himself, from Bryan Chaffin's Apple Death Knell #64 entry:
They [Apple] only have 60 days left to either come up with something or they will disappear,” Mr. Chowdhry told CNBC. “It will take years for Apple's $130 billion in cash to vanish, but it will become an irrelevant company … it will become a zombie, if they don't come up with an iWatch.
See? Even he isn’t sure. But Apple didn’t come up with release an iWatch, so whatever possessed him to deem Apple both “irrelevant” and “zombie” has now come to pass. Never mind that if Apple had something to show off there’s a good chance it wouldn’t happen two weeks before Apple usually shows stuff off at WWDC. Apparently sixty days is some sort of hard limit—clearly there’s no way that $130 billion could buy Apple 75 or even 90 days before they “vanish” because the iWatch is so vital for Apple’s future that delaying even two weeks beyond the 60 day limit would be untenable.
What a tragedy it is that Apple will now become a zombie company lurching from profitable irrelevant quarter to profitable irrelevant quarter, for even if that iWatch is released tomorrow, it is still day sixty-one, which according to Mr. Chowdhry is too late to do Apple any good.
And if it's released this fall? Please. Apple will be a faded memory by then, something we trot out from time to time over drinks to remember the good ol' days.
I’ll miss this Apple community of users and fans and developers that have all contributed to enriching my life with fun and friendship. I’ll miss getting to write thoughtful pieces about a technology company that made things interesting for awhile. It was super fun and I’m very sad I’ll now have to switch to Windows and buy an Android phone since Apple couldn’t be bothered to release the iWatch in an arbitrarily allotted timeframe. I guess I’d better go see what Samsung phones were released while I was writing this article.