Another year, another set of narratives to violate. Last year I shared the post, It's Time to Stop Doubting Apple, based off a column in the now-doomed Mashable. Apple had been beat up in the tech press for a couple years now, starting in full from people I respect around the time when the Apple Watch came out. The idea behind the original post is that the tech media sometimes can come off as out of step with mainstream public opinion. That while the tech press has nit-picks here and there, overall people are pretty happy with Apple.

I want to look back at 2017 and see if things were different. I'm sad to report that so far the tech press hasn't caught up.

Bloomberg violated it's own narrative right out the gate in 2017 with these back to back stories.

January 26 - Apple iPhone Price Under Pressure as Buyers Seek Cheaper Devices

Five days later...

January 31 - Apple Sales Beat Estimates on Demand for Latest iPhones

Let's look at more coverage...

Tech Journalists Losing things

Remember #DongleLife? The forced hashtag from apparently absent-minded tech journalists who simply can't keep track of anything. Apple introduced lots of dongles and doohickies this year so this really confused them.

NYMag: A Good Way to Not Lose Your Headphone Dongle

TechCrunch: All the ways you are probably going to lose an AirPod

Apple's fastest growing product category. pic.twitter.com/d1sel4N5Yc — Drew Breunig (@dbreunig) October 28, 2016

Countless posts and tweets from tech journalists forgetting their dongles at home, etc.

AirPods

Remember when AirPods were announced? Apple makes the best wireless headphones in the world, instantly solving the most annoying aspect of regular Bluetooth headphones. How did the Tech Media react?

Narrative

They look dumb.

THESE ARE $160?! That is insane, and now I am back to being mad at Apple, which is my usual state of being. I would definitely not spend $160 on these, especially when there’s roughly a 90 percent chance you will lose one of them, or when, as I mentioned before, a crazy person plucks them from your head.

You will lose them.

The above post by MarketWatch does a good job pulling in the worriers in one post. I haven't lost mine yet...

Nilay Patel: The AirPods are so much better than the competition that it is unfair to competitors

No one else has access to the simplified pairing and management APIs Apple uses to make the AirPods and other Apple W1 products work better on iOS, so if you want the simplest wireless headphones to use with Apple products, you have to buy Apple. If you’re Doppler Labs and you come up with a killer competitor to the W1, you’re still stuck with Bluetooth, unless you convince Apple to open up the new API hooks in iOS and macOS so your chip can use them, too.

Narrative Violation

CNBC: Apple's AirPods appear to be sold out ahead of Christmas

CNBC: Apple AirPods will explode in popularity next year, KGI says

Apple will ship 13-14 million AirPods in 2017 and 26-28 million units in 2018, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said.

Google goes on to release Pixel Buds, Samsung goes on to sell some lightly-advertised wireless headphones.

Apple Watch

Apple Watch had a pretty strong year, and I think the narrative was largely matched with reality. The narrative didn't catch up until Apple Watch series 2 and the collapse of Android Wear. Remember, the first Android Wear device received an 8.1 at The Verge. It took three years for the non-LTE Apple Watch Series 3 to finally catch up to that product with an 8.0 of its own. Insane.

Narrative

CNET: It's time for the Apple Watch to support Android

If Apple wants to win the smartwatch race, it needs to swallow its pride and embrace Google's platform.

The Verge: Apple’s luxury watch dream is over (2016 article, cheating)

The Verge: Android Wear now belongs to fashion brands, not gadget nerds

9to5Mac: Apple Watch sales make it top smartwatch in Q1, but trail basic wearables from Fitbit & Xiaomi

Dan Seifert: ANDROID WEAR 2.0 REVIEW: GOOGLE'S SECOND SWING AT SMARTWATCHES

7.1

Narrative Violation

CNBC: The Apple Watch is now the number one watch in the world

9to5Google: Android Wear disappeared from the Google Store today and no one noticed

CNBC: Fitbit ‘golden era' is over as Apple Watch regains top spot in wearables after near two-year absence

this thing has been available for less than a month and it's already getting a 30 percent discount.



android wear watches are terrible. https://t.co/hBzYUUOcwJ — santos l. halper (@dcseifert) December 15, 2017

iPad

iPad had another banner year. The introduction of the less expensive iPad $329 will likely nip the "Chromebooks are dominating schools" narrative soon, but that will come in time. For now, let's look at where the narrative was, and what reality looks like.

Narrative

ReCode: Apple may have already lost the battle to Google for a new generation of students

When I asked about how iPads — a product he uses at home — are used in school, I got rolled eyes, as if I were in the Stone Age. He explained how less useful and how more expensive iPads are for the things he does at school. He said their Chromebooks cost $200, while iPads are more than twice that amount and have no keyboard. ... When I asked each brother which phone they prefer, iPhone or the Android, both spoke up in unison and unequivocally said Android. They each reeled off a list of comparisons between the two operating systems that would make a reviewer proud. They both prefer Android because they like Google Voice more than Siri, and criticized the iPhone for its shorter battery life and no headphone jack. When I asked the 8-year-old which phone he liked the best, he said the Galaxy 7 because it was waterproof and had a curved display.

I'm just going to go ahead and violate this bozo anecdote with this statistic - A record 78% of U.S. teens own iPhones

Apple’s share of smartphone ownership increased for the fifth consecutive Piper Jaffray Taking Stock With Teens survey. Of >6,000 respondents, 78% have an iPhone, the highest percentage we have seen in our survey (up from 76% in Spring-17). The iPhone may have room to move higher with 82% of teens anticipating their next phone to be an iPhone, also the highest ever recorded in our survey (up from 81% in Spring-17). Android was the runner up with 13%, flat from the spring.

Couple of tweets about the new iPad and iOS 11. It is inferior to a laptop in almost every way, unless you like to draw. — Joshua Topolsky (@joshuatopolsky) June 27, 2017

Narrative Violation

Verge: Apple returns to growth as cheaper iPads boost sales

Marketwatch: iPad renaissance in schools and businesses boosts Apple results

The Mac





The Mac is probably tied with iPhone for violating the most narratives. The new MacBook Pro is bad. #DongleLife. "PCs are Cool Again." There was a real push to create a narrative about Apple's Mac business losing to Windows PCs, but what does it look like in reality?





Narrative





Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pros carry on the Pro moniker dishonestly. At least we should all hope that's the case — because if Apple actually believes that these new laptops are suitable and sufficient for intensive professional needs, then the company's long and happy relationship with creatives may be heading toward a calamitous breakup.









Quartz Media - Apple’s new MacBook Pro is proof Tim Cook doesn’t care about software professionals

While the media harped on the new MacBook Pro's, the narrative machine went all in on Microsoft's PR about the Surface.

The Verge: The PC is interesting again









The New York Times (the great Farhad Manjoo, in a moment of madness): How Microsoft Has Become the Surprise Innovator in PCs





Narrative Violation

Turns out the new Mac's sold pretty good

MacRumors: Apple's Mac Sales Up 25% Year-Over-Year in Q4 2017





Meanwhile on the Windows side...













In a leaked chart, return rates for Surface Book hit around 17 percent during its launch period, and remained above 10 percent for six months. Surface Pro 4 return rates also reached around 16 percent during launch, but dropped below 10 percent after just over a month. Conversely, Surface Pro 3 launched with 11 percent return rates that quickly dropped below 10 percent and have remained at roughly 5 or 6 percent throughout its lifetime. The Surface Book has suffered from consistently higher return rates than any other Surface product throughout the nearly two years it has been on sale.









iPhone





As we saw with the iPhone 7 and Bloomberg's coverage, sometimes the media shouldn't jump to bold conclusions that will immediately fall apart as soon as some real numbers come out. Unfortunately the tech media didn't learn anything, so we got coverage like this for the iPhone 8





Narrative

























Narrative Violation









Article after article from writers ready to declare the iPhone 8 some huge disaster. And as soon as Apple quarterly revenue came out, we see the iPhone 8 sold great. How many writers stop and say "huh, maybe I should wait until I write some explosive story about Apple being doomed until after the quarterly results come out?"





Other Items





Let's just run through a couple quick spots where Apple survived the narrative





Apple Services up 34% in spite of a narrative that Apple is terrible at services









Back to back troll posts from Josh Topolsky about Apple being bad at hardware and Google being good at hardware, quickly followed by flawless product launches from Apple and dramatically flawed product launches from Google





Conclusion

Apple had an overall good year. Every hardware device was up in surprising ways. Apple is quickly finding new revenue streams through accessories and services. All of the predictions about Apple losing out because of bezels turned out not to be true. Will things be different in 2018? Will iPhone X continue to get good coverage or will FUD like this post reign supreme? When HomePod comes out and smokes Echo and Google Home, will the tech media laugh at it until sales number come out?

I'll be here to follow up!

Reticulating poll splines...