Daniel Lyons

"I hate to say it but Apple may end up reliving [with iPhone] its nightmare experience in the personal computer market — that is, arriving ahead of everyone else (in 1984) with a device that was really cool and really well built and really showed what the platform could do, but then keeping everything closed and thereby ending up a niche player."

"The Pre represents only a first shot. Rubinstein and his engineers are already preparing a family of devices that will run on the Palm Web OS. Could it be that Apple has staked out an early lead with a breakthrough product only to be passed by others? It's happened before."

"We had hoped a tablet from Apple would do something new, something we've never seen before. That's not the case. Jobs and his team kept using words like "breakthrough" and "magical," but the iPad is neither."

"Steve Jobs has created his own precious little walled garden. He's looking more and more like Howard Hughes, holed up in his penthouse, making sure he doesn't come in contact with any germs. Now Google is saying, hey, nice garden, have fun sitting in it. By yourself."

"Apple's big weakness is its control-freak nature and insistence that there is only one way to make a smart phone. No matter how many carriers sign on to carry the iPhone, in the long run, Apple has again set itself up to be a niche player in smartphones, just as it is in PCs."

"Despite all its bluster about innovation, Apple has become a copycat, and not even a good one."

"Apple might sell a lot of watches to the faithful, and no doubt the bozos will line up outside stores again just because they love to stand outside in lines. Look at me! I'm so techie!"

"Jon Ive is off the fucking rails and the only person who could rein him in is no longer among the living. ... no way would Steve have ever been so vulgar as to be driven around by a chauffeur in a Bentley, like a modern-day pharaoh. ... Jon Ive is 47 years old, secretly running Apple, and dangerously out of control."

"I still have no desire to own [an Apple Watch], or even any desire to go to the Apple store and look at one or hold one in my hand. ... The only question, it seems to me, is this: At what point can Apple Watch be declared a swing and a miss?"

"People who cover Apple figured this racket out a long time ago, which is that if you become cozy with Apple and never criticize them, they will give you some access."