You know summer is about over when kids are going back to school, your favorite baseball team is teasing you with a wildcard run that will inevitably sputter out (okay, maybe that’s just the Macalope) and Apple announces its fall iPhone event.

We are just over a week away from the unveiling of the iPhone 14 so if you have anything you wanted to say about it, now’s of course the time to get it off your chest. No sense in waiting until the thing gets announced. That’s just a sucker’s bet.

According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives has a few forecasts about the iPhone 14 that the Macalope finds interesting. First, Apple has ordered 90 million iPhone 14 units. If you can remember as far back as, oh, June, then you will recall that 90 million was the generally accepted number of phones Apple was expecting to sell. Then Apple’s good friends at DigiTimes talked to Trent outside the Gas-N-Sip and Trent said “No way, bruh. Apple’s cutting orders by 10 percent, bro-ster. Global supply chain slowdown, bro-derbund.”

Now, before you castigate DigiTimes for trafficking in spurious rumors, you should know that Trent was the guy who first poured a Red Bull into the knock-off Slurpee they sell at the Gas-N-Sip and is therefore known as the creator of the Power Slush.

So… yeah. That guy.

Anyway, then it was rumored that, no, Apple is actually going to sell more than 90 million, 95 million iPhone 14 units, according to the Taiwan Economic Times. Now along comes Daniel Ives who says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about, it’s 90 million, it’s always been 90 million, please just read his meter and move on to the next house like the old meter reader used to do.

Ives calls this launch “another pivotal moment for Cupertino”, presumably a reference to such seminal city events as the opening of the R. Cali Brothers Feed Mill in the late 1800s and of De Anza College in 1967. It is, as he notes, rather remarkable that in the midst of a global supply chain slowdown Apple is able to get pretty much as many units as it wants pretty much when it wants them. Of course, it helps to be the largest fish in the aquarium, a fish that somehow also has a lot of money to throw around. A money shark, if you will.

No, not a money whale, Kevin! Whales aren’t fish! Try to keep up with the metaphors!

Sheesh.

We will have to wait until next Wednesday to see whether or not the iPhone 14 comes with such questionable features as faster charging speed, reverse charging capability and the Macalope’s current favorite unicorn, satellite connectivity. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, the latter rests solely on Apple coming to terms with carriers on a workable business model for the feature. That doesn’t sound like such a big problem for a money shark to overcome. But, then, you don’t get to be the money shark by not being a shrewd negotiator. If you give away too much on every deal, then you’re just a shark.

The Macalope isn’t sure why every year’s Apple event has to be make-or-break for the company, but at least this one looks like it’s going to be make.