Last week, Apple announced its financial results for the first calendar quarter of the year and if you had read some of the punditry in the days before the announcement you may be eligible to join a class action suit for a case of whiplash.

Some people, you see, can find a cow patty in a pile of unicorn ponies, no matter how small a patty it is.

“Apple iPhone: Large Unexpected Slowdown In China.”

Sounds bad!

…what I’m going to report next is truly a large downside surprise in sales.

[shines flashlight under chin]

AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEE!

What follows, however, are numbers indicating iPhone sales were up 155 percent year-over-year in January (not a typo!), up 320 percent in February (still not a typo!) and then down 10 percent in March (and also not a typo). The article sagely tells us to “focus on March”. Nnnkay.

Takeaway: very troubling indeed.

For its part, Apple says there will likely be a decline from the March quarter to the June quarter, basically because the March quarter was so amazing, but it still expects “revenue to grow strong double digits year over year” next quarter. So, you might hold off on burning those AAPL stock certificates, at least for just a little while longer.

The author of that piece spent the next couple of days indignantly asking people in the comments if they read the article or just the headline. Presumably because writing salacious nonsense in the headline is fine as long as you don’t back it up in the article.

Another piece said, “[Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google] and techs looking very vulnerable, says SocGen’s Edwards.”

Look, if you don’t jam these negative pieces in right before earnings come out, when are you going to jam them in? After? That’s absurd. No one would read them then!

A third told us, “Why Apple Could Lay An Egg”

The only egg Apple laid was of the golden variety, notching a record second quarter.

As if foreshadowing poor results that never materialized wasn’t bad enough, it appears that pundits are also back on their “production cuts” B.S. (baloney sandwiches). At least they’ve switched it up a bit and it’s not about iPhones this time.

“Apple reportedly cuts AirPods production as competition weakens sales.”

This report comes from Nikkei. Nikkei, you may remember, is the outfit that told us how no one liked the iPhone X because Apple was cutting production and then told us how no one liked the iPhone XR because Apple was cutting production. And then it turned out people actually did like those phones quite a bit. Still, you should 100 percent believe them this time because learnin’ things is for those big city types and you’re too smart to fall for that!

It certainly must be because of “increased competitive pressure” and not at all because the company is widely expected to launch new AirPods sometime soon. Whatever the case, Apple’s wearables revenue was only up, uh, 25 percent last quarter so it’s probably going to stop making wearables you’d imagine.

Apple certainly faces some challenges (just this week the trial with Epic over the App Store has begun). It always has. Someday it will likely fall from its lofty position but in the words of Batman in all those Harry Potter movies, it is not this day.

The Macalope may not have that reference right.