The years have not been kind to Apple’s critics. Here are fifteen laughable predictions that show how Apple has been going out of business since 1984. [ABOVE: Image c/o The Trad. Special Apple-themed clothes from the ’80’s. I wonder how Apple’s new fashion execs feel when they look at these?] Says who? “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” Dell CEO, Michael Dell said this in October 1997. These days he says he was “misconstrued”. Floppy thinking “The iMac will only sell to some of the true believers. The iMac doesn’t include a floppy disk drive drive for doing file backups or sharing of data. It’s an astonishing lapse from Jobs, who should have learned better… the iMac is clean, elegant, floppy-free–and doomed.” Hiawatha Bray wrote this in the Boston Globe, 1998. I wonder how he felt about the loss of SCSI support? If decline looked like this “The biggest long-term problem with moving to an Apple platform is that the company is in decline.” Rob Enderle said this in October 2003. He makes a business getting it wrong, for example… HP iPod “The expectation on the iPod is that HP’s version will probably outsell Apple’s version relatively quickly.” Enderle gets it wrong. Again. Da Bomb “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks.” Writing in Bloomberg in 2007, Matthew Lynn proved his grip on the cutting edge of tech. ‘Fess up “Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game.” Wired in 1997 — even Wired admits it was wrong. The coach “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” Steve Ballmer in 1997. He’s into sports now. I hope he’s not a betting man. Why? “There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.“ The world’s least objective Apple scribbler, John Dvorak, said Apple couldn’t succeed in a mobile industry “dominated” by Motorola and Nokia. What happened to them? You’re fired… “Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput.” Sir Alan Sugar told the Daily Telegraph in 2005. What’s in store? “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.” David Goldstein of Channel Marketing Corp said this way back in 2001. Linux lovers “Certainly by…2005, possibly by the end of 2003, Linux will pass Mac OS as the No. 2 operating environment.” IDC’s Dan Kusnetzky wrote in 2002. Is Android Linux? Take a Trip “They only have 60 days left to either come up with something or they will disappear.” Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research will be forever judged by his statement. Ignorant bliss “I use both iOS and Android, and it’s getting hard to say which provides the better experience.” Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky tells us he never installs a software upgrade and doesn’t fret about security. Waffle “Current market shares and sales trends would indicate that all is fine, but actual product lack of growth and development might hint that the Apple is rotting from the inside.” John Benjamin made it to MacObserver’s popular Apple Death Knewll Counter with this slice of wishful thinking. Cook “Under Tim Cook, Apple is trying to squeeze as much profit as it can out of the products that Apple created under Steve Jobs.” Peter Cohan (not to be confused with the eminently respectable Peter Cohen) makes Macalope’s hate list for slamming Cook’s attempts to keep Apple profitable. In the coming weeks you’ll get to read lots more Apple critics waxing lyrical while getting it all wrong. Feel free to add the most amusing statements to the comment thread here. 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