Apple Grows a Pair [Humor]

Last year, Apple realized impressive gains in notebook sales due in part to the widespread appeal of Apple’s OS X Leopard operating system and a switch to powerful Intel processors. Yet, jittery investors have sent Apple’s stock plummeting over 35 percent in recent weeks over concerns that the company’s recent income growth will not be sustainable. These concerns are due in part to analyst estimates that Apple has saturated the market within its target demographic, namely urban professionals, academic snobs, metrosexuals, and Democrats. Meanwhile, Apple’s marketing vision has little or no appeal among the highly coveted demographic of professional wrestling watching, beer drinking, truck driving, meat eating men between the ages of 18 and 24. One Wall Street report estimates that while 98 percent of Barack Obama supporters own at least one iPod, only 1 in 10,000 NASCAR fans have even heard of Apple Computer.

In an attempt to make inroads into the largely untapped “manly-man” demographic, insiders report that Apple is poised to make significant changes to its marketing efforts in 2008. New commercials will ditch the popular Mac Guy in favor of Larry the Cable Guy. The debut of the new commercials will apparently coincide with the release of a new line of Mac accessories that specifically target alpha males. a product codenamed iBallz We have learned that the flagship of this new accessory line will be a product codenamed iBallz which will appear in Apple Stores beginning in Q2. While the details of iBallz have yet to emerge, Apple has recently filed patent applications for what appears to be a pair of realistic nuts with hardware appropriate for easy attachment to most Apple products. It seems that by growing a pair, Apple hopes its products will lose their wussy image and be embraced (figuratively not literally) by men.

While Apple has refused to comment, company insiders have informed us that Steve Jobs himself was the brainchild behind iBallz and fashioned the prototype in his own image. While iBallz will most likely only be available in flesh color at launch, future plans apparently include a brushed aluminum and a chrome version that will be more inline with Apple’s overall vision of design. It seems that plans are also in the works for scented iBallz that will come in a variety of manly smells like car wax, new truck, and scotch whiskey. Above are images of what experts expect the iPhone iBallz charm and iBallz for iMac to look like.

While no company has ever attempted to manufacture nuts for computers, attachable balls for trucks have been available for a while. In fact, one of the largest manufacturer of TruckNutz is already threatening to sue Apple for patent infringement should the iBallz come to market. Yet, our contacts at Apple insist that the planned iBallz do not infringe on any patents because their product reflects significant improvement over the models found dangling between the rear of trucks. Apple iBallz will be coated with a proprietary space-age polymer that creates a realistic look and feel previously unattainable. Moreover, it seems that iBallz will be environmentally friendly and made of over 85 percent recycled material.