Bloomberg Betty Liu asks the important question of our time.

“Is there such a product that could really save Apple?”

Bungie teases its next game — titled “Destiny” — saying a glimpse of it will come “in the next few days”.

Frog blast the vent core.

John Paczkowski for AllThingsD:

In India, Apple sells iPhones on the open market, not through carriers that subsidize them and in so doing lower their selling price. And while India is among the fastest-growing wireless markets in the world, it’s also highly price-sensitive. That’s been problematic for Apple, which has traditionally been unwilling to cut prices to drive volume.

But recently Apple has been working with Indian distributors to offer installment-based payment plans for the iPhone.

As I said on the panel I was on at Macworld/iWorld Expo: the Ultimate iFan Event and Monster Truck Rally, if Apple can find a way to sell a cheaper iPhone and still make money, it will. If it can’t, it won’t. (I’m deep.)

It may cut into its margins a bit, but it’s not going to gut them to chase market share. They were able to shed features in the iPod line to make cheaper devices and maintain a high market share, but you can’t really do that as much with smartphones. Still, they may find a way to use their experience, leverage with suppliers and wads of cash to make a device that’s cheaper to produce and doesn’t suck.

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Not only can I ruin The Talk Show, I can ruin other podcasts as well, in this case Mule Radio’s Let’s Make Mistakes. Indeed, not only can I ruin a podcast with John Gruber on it, I can ruin a podcast with his wife on it.

I’m versatile, I tell ya.

John Kirk writing for Techpinions about how Windows has been left behind in mobile:

According to Canalys, Apple – despite being supply constrained – sold 22.9 million tablets for 49% share, Samsung shipped 7.6 million tablets, Amazon shipped 4.6 million tablets for 18% share, and Google’s Nexus 7 and 10, combined, shipped 2.6 million tablets.

I know where Apple sells their tablets and I know where Amazon and Google sell theirs. But where does Samsung sell their tablets? I’m surprised that carrier stores and Best Buys are enough to get them even in distant second territory. I assume most of their sales are outside the U.S. because I can honestly say that while I’ve seen a number of Kindle Fires in the wild and a few Nexus 7s (including my own), I can count the number of times I’ve positively identified someone with a Samsung tablet on one finger.

Guess which one I use.

It’s my index finger. What were you thinking?

Seriously? Who counts like that?

Kontra outlines some things Apple might do.

Apple will inevitably tackle most of these, but only in its own time and not when it’s yelled at.

In the mean time, Apple’s detractors spend their time trying to figure out who Apple will bring in from the outside to replace Tim Cook. When any of these do ship, they will sigh and say it’s too little too late. And Apple will probably sell them by the truckload and continue to make obscene amounts of money.

Jim Dalrymple notes that Apple’s iPad business is quite strong despite reports of its demise. I really do wonder if people (and some analysts) think Apple’s actually selling fewer iPads than it used to because its market share is down.

Jim finishes with this:

The more I look at the stories about Apple in mainstream media, the more I wonder about the news organization’s agenda.

I’m not sure if this is what Jim’s implying, but I don’t believe news organizations have an agenda against Apple. What they have is a bias toward conventional wisdom, narratives that are convenient and tell a “story”, even if that story isn’t exactly true.

Apple, after riding so high, must fall. “What goes up must come down” is a compelling and easy narrative to follow. Humans have been writing it since the Greeks wrote about Icarus and probably before. Cockroaches, crows and squids will probably write it about us after the robot-zombie-Bieber apocalypse.

Apple hit the top, it was the largest company in the world. So it had to come down.

Even if it didn’t.

Macworld has posted the full audio of a panel featuring Dan Moren, Lex Friedman, Serenity Caldwell and myself where we speculate on what Apple will shoot out of its product cannon and into our faces in 2013. See if you can spot the joke I stole from my pals at You Look Nice Today.

Tim Bajarin:

If any one thinks Apple has stopped innovating then I have a bridge in NYC that I would like to sell them.

Hey, I could be wrong, but as I’ve pointed out, people said the exact same thing just before the first iPhone came out. I don’t know the timing, I don’t know the product, I don’t know if it’ll suck or not. But I’ll be very surprised if they don’t still have some tricks up their sleeve.