Author: CARS Staff

Apple announced a new product today, which analysts and Mac followers have already judged to be doomed to failure.

“This new Apple product is seriously deficient,” wrote Tristan Fisk of Mac-A-Licious in the web site’s wrap-up of today’s announcements.

“It lacks several key features that our reporting indicated it would have, and is not as feature-full as competing products from other vendors. Apple has missed the boat on this product. It will never sell.

“And, of course, it’s priced too high.”

This phenomenon – currently being played yet again out on web sites throughout the Mac community – has been applied to numerous Apple products since the failure of the Power Macintosh, such as the original iBook, the iPod, the 2002 iMac, the iPod mini, the iMac G5, the original Mac mini, the iPod nano and the video iPod.

“Logicians call this ‘Dvorak’s Razor’,” said the New York Times’ David Pogue.

Also know as Apple Cubism, Pogue said the maxim states that the simplest explanation for any new Apple product is that it will fail.

“It’s also called ‘Lazy Apple Pundit’s Disease’,” Pogue said.

Despite the volume of electronic ink spent upon the subject, it was uncertain if these Apple nay-sayers were talking about the iPod Hi-Fi or the Intel-based Mac mini.

“Actually, I’m not even sure myself,” said Wayne Hesten of Macs-Ahoy, who wrote an entire column on the subject of the certain doom the latest Apple product faced.

“Does it matter?”

After recent news reports of a OS X worm and a Safari security flaw have made the rounds, a number of young Mac users report being contacted by a youth group advocating Internet abstinence as the best method of staying safe from such problems.

According to a pamphlet put out by the group, the Internet Abstinence Alliance promotes keeping computers off the Internet, ostensibly to prevent the spread of malicious software.

At an outreach session sponsored by her group, 19-year-old Internet Abstinence Alliance coordinator Mary Macmillan said that the Internet is a filthy place that people should avoid at all costs.

Macmillan said “The only true way to be safe from viruses and worms and malware and hackers and men who treat you nice until you let them into your ‘special gift’ and you suddenly realize they just want to grope you and paw at you and do all kinds of unspeakable things to you… some of them in places that I didn’t even think were possible… I mean… there’s not a lot of room in the back seat of a 1978 Honda Civic… you have to hitch your leg up over the seat and push it against the window and then brace your upper body using the stick shift. The whole thing’s not easy, particularly if there are more than three of you in the car. Not to mention any farm animals. And he said not to mention the farm animals because that would be an extra five years.”

Noticing the horrified expression on the faces of her fellow Internet Abstinence Alliance members, Macmillan cut her description short.

“Well. That’s what I hear, anyway.”

Macmillan said that few Mac users have responded to the Internet Abstinence Alliance’s outreach program, which sources said invariably degenerates into an anti-smut diatribe.

“Mac users are filthy perverts for the most part,” Macmillan said.

This comment prompted most of the attending Mac users to get up and leave.

“Perverts!” Macmillan yelled after them.

Now seated alone in the middle of about 20 folding chairs, Macworld magazine’s Peter Cohen raised his hand.

“Um… someone said there were going to be cookies.”