Writing for the Huffington Post, Bill Robinson jumps up on stage, grabs the microphone, and declares he will let Apple finish, but Sony was the greatest innovator of all time.

“Apple, the Great Innovator? Nope, Sony Is the Original Innovator” (indirect link and tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody)

That’s not an unreasonable claim. It’s just kind of a shame that Robinson makes it in such an unreasonable manner.

I’m tired of hearing how Apple is the most innovative organization on the planet. Blah, blah, blah.

Great lede. Positively Safire-esque.

Comparisons of Steve Jobs to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison by tech-clueless papers like the New York Times are idiotic.

Right! You should listen to the tech analysis of a publication that features “Chelsea Handler Reveals Which Celebrities She ‘Hated’ Talking To” in its sidebar instead!

Edison is probably a stretch. You’d have to fuse Steve Wozniak to Jobs to get Edison and such experiments have, alas, been banned by several international treaties. But Ford? Ford didn’t invent the automobile or the assembly line, he just popularized cars and dabbled in antisemitism. As far as great Americans go, give the Macalope Steve Jobs any day.

Let’s be real.

Oh, yes, let’s.

In the development and design inventory of Apple, what do we have? Some computers—a Newton. Some MP3 music players. Some phones. Oh yeah, iTunes.

This is what we in the Apple jerkery business call “a tell.” There’s no rational reason anyone could think this is the sum of Apple’s contributions so, yeah, he’s just here to be a jerk.

Granted some of these featured ground-breaking design and technology inside. But many of them such as the iPhone were just more expensive extensions of previously existing products like the cellphone.

Right. The iPhone was pretty much like every cellphone that came before it other than being more expensive. And it didn’t change anything like, oh, say, how every single smartphone has been designed since.

Look, Finland’s Prime Minister is going so far as to blame Apple for its country's economic woes for introducing the iPhone and crushing Nokia. So, the nation of Finland respectfully disagrees.

Simultaneously, these products were and are commodities...

Not like automobiles.

...if they booted up, played your music and allowed you to talk and text, that’s all that mattered.

Sure. Except not at all. If that were true, Apple would be out of business. Or, really, never would have been in business in the first place. And people would be happily buying Nokia phones.

Why in the world some people have to have Apple everything and pay through the nose for it is beyond me.

Ha! Stupid Apple rubes! Paying too much for your computers, tablets, and phones!

Aaaaand then selling them later and getting more than the price of the competitor’s product. The Macalope got $200 for his first-generation iPad three years after its release. Please point him to the “competing” device that was a) available in 2010, b) could do what the iPad did (as elegantly and had as many apps) and c) had a net cost of $300 plus tax and the time value of money.

Cannot. Be. Done.

This is the inconvenient truth that “Apple devices cost too much!”-istas ignore.

What are not commodities in Technology are the devices Sony Medical makes.

Smaller markets tend not to get commoditized because there’s no scale. Hence, Apple sucks.

They save lives, empower doctors and patients, save money and give a better quality of life. Let’s see iPhone 6 do that.

OK, and while we’re going about the business of asking devices to do things they weren’t designed for, let’s see one of their medical devices place a phone call or post a tweet or play Kingdom Rush.

Robinson goes on to describe all the myriad inventions that Sony made that make them the awesomest company evah. OK. Maybe to date they have brought more innovations to market than Apple. The Macalope has never argued otherwise and he has a head shaped like a Classic Mac.

But what have they done for consumers lately? Not much even by Robinson’s reckoning since all of the consumer innovations he lists are 20 or more years old.

These inventions, absolutely dwarf Apple’s, ill-gotten, hardware contributions to kids and affluent adults.

The adjusted price for the original Walkman in today’s dollar is about $489. You can get an unlocked iPhone 5c for less than that. It’ll play music, too.

Now remember when we were keeping it “real”? Because Robinson doesn’t.

After all, which would you rather the doctor operating on you be using? This: [picture of some microscope thingy] Or this: [picture of an original iPod]

Uh, well, yes, if a surgeon tries to operate on you with a digital music player you should probably start drawing up those malpractice suit papers. Sadly, there’s no equivalent legal recourse for pundits who make such ridiculous comparisons.