John R. Kirk, an Apple enthusiast and self-described recovering attorney, collects quotations the way some people collect Victorian ephemera. His latest enthusiasm: Apple “claim chowder” — dumb things people say about the company’s new products.
On Sunday, nearly two weeks after Apple’s September media event, he posted on his Tech.pinions site an alphabetical collection of Apple Watch quotes interspersed with gems from his own personal Bartelby’s — a compendium of 17,000 quotations ranging from cowboy wisdom (“Never miss a good chance to shut up.“) to Robert Benchley (“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”)
A sample from Apple Watch Claim Chowder under N for “Niche”:
Beautiful, but a niche product. ~ Forrester CEO, George Colony
The $350 watch market is niche at best. ~ J. Gobert (@MrGobert)
Gee. When have I heard this lament before? Oh yeah. Whenever Apple introduces a new product category. The $350 iPod will be niche, the $600 iPhone will be niche, the $500 iPad will be niche, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Some Claim Chowder from the archives:
iPhone
The iPhone is a niche product. ~ Nokia CEO Olli — Pekka Kallasvuo, 17 April 2008
The iconic Apple iPhone will either not exist or occupy a very small niche satisfying the needs of committed Mac fans around five years from now. ~ Eugene Kaspersky, Kaspersky Lab, 27 April 2010
iPad
The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I’ve seen and heard, this won’t be it. ~ John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch, 29 January 2010
For all the hype about an Apple tablet , it is at best a niche product. ~ Joe Wilcox, Betanews, 2 January 2010
The iPad will remain an expensive, niche device compared to all-purpose netbooks…. (N)etbooks sales will still far outstrip those of the iPad. ~ Preston Gralla, PC World, 30 March 2010
Kirk punctuates the “niche” section of his post with a few pertinent stats, including this one:
In Q2, Apple’s iPhone sales alone were larger than the revenues at 474 of the companies in the S&P 500 stock index.
Sunday’s post is the last (he promises!) in an exhaustive series Kirk began posting three weeks ago. See also:
1) Introduction
2) Events
3) Killers
4) Cynicism
5) Product
6) Evolutionary Or Revolutionary
7) Business Models
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
