Tone Down the Hyperbole You Vapid Twats!

August 5th, 2008, by The Angry Drunk

Ok, so July 2008 isn’t going to go down in the annals of Apple his­tory as one of the company’s bet­ter months. The Mobile Me launch was han­dled badly at best, iPhone 3G demand exceeded sup­plies by a retarded mar­gin (oy to have that prob­lem), iPhone devel­op­ers are still unbear­ably shack­led by the “fuck­ing” NDA, and Apple was abysmally late with a set of secu­rity updates. No one who isn’t a com­plete and utter tool would argue that any of the above-mentioned issues is a good thing; but really, does every sin­gle story involv­ing them have to end with dire warn­ings of impend­ing Apple-doom?  

Yes, Apple screwed the pooch big time on a few dif­fer­ent items here, but they’ve fucked up worse before, and I’ll bet you a shiny dime they fuck up worse some­time in the future. Look at this as a learn­ing oppor­tu­nity. In the mean­time, here’s a des­per­ate plea to the “jour­nal­ists” out there. Tone down the FUD and breath­less hyper­bole; it only serves to insult your read­ers’ intel­li­gence and make you look like a ninny. Thanks.

PS:

Apple is either “all mar­ket­ing and PR” or “has worth­less at PR.” Pick one, you can’t have both.

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  • http://www.the-wabe.com/ Rob

    I sus­pect the rea­son the tech pun­dits are doom ’n’ gloom about Apple is that they’re tired of kick­ing the Vista puppy and nobody else has done a spec­tac­u­lar flame-out in the interim.

    It’s been a slow news month. I’m actu­ally get­ting things done at work.

  • http://www.the-wabe.com/ Rob

    I sus­pect the rea­son the tech pun­dits are doom ’n’ gloom about Apple is that they’re tired of kick­ing the Vista puppy and nobody else has done a spec­tac­u­lar flame-out in the interim.

    It’s been a slow news month. I’m actu­ally get­ting things done at work.

  • http://ripragged.blogspot.com Anonymous

    Yeh. Everybody wants to have it both ways.

    We should have a Rip Ragged/Angry Drunk sem­i­nar to which we invite some of these idi­otic punditbots.

    We could let them have it both ways. Maybe all three. Hell, we could make them airtight.

  • http://rip-ragged.com/dross Rip Ragged

    Yeh. Everybody wants to have it both ways.

    We should have a Rip Ragged/Angry Drunk sem­i­nar to which we invite some of these idi­otic punditbots.

    We could let them have it both ways. Maybe all three. Hell, we could make them airtight.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Apple is great at PR, they’re not so good at com­mu­ni­ca­tions. PR is eas­ier, it’s a one-way street: I’m telling you some­thing I want you to know when I want you to know it in the for­mat I want you to get the infor­ma­tion in and exactly the con­tent I want you to have.

    Communication is a two way street, and requires actual lis­ten­ing, and when it comes to busi­ness com­put­ing issues/IT issues, Apple can be a tad deaf.

    From what I can see, while the DNS patch issue was just appalling, AD is right in that it’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. That’s the real prob­lem: These spe­cific instances are a sign of a bad process at Apple, and that wor­ries me far more than any sin­gle symptom.

    But even with access to a spe­cific Apple team, really talk­ing to Apple is not easy. When your reps say “yeah, it’d be nice if they listened”…

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Apple is great at PR, they’re not so good at com­mu­ni­ca­tions. PR is eas­ier, it’s a one-way street: I’m telling you some­thing I want you to know when I want you to know it in the for­mat I want you to get the infor­ma­tion in and exactly the con­tent I want you to have.

    Communication is a two way street, and requires actual lis­ten­ing, and when it comes to busi­ness com­put­ing issues/IT issues, Apple can be a tad deaf.

    From what I can see, while the DNS patch issue was just appalling, AD is right in that it’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. That’s the real prob­lem: These spe­cific instances are a sign of a bad process at Apple, and that wor­ries me far more than any sin­gle symptom.

    But even with access to a spe­cific Apple team, really talk­ing to Apple is not easy. When your reps say “yeah, it’d be nice if they listened”…

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    @John C. Welch: John, You’re absolutely right regard­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Apple’s issues with it; but I still think that the vapid twats in the blo­gos­phere are mak­ing the issues worse than they could be.

    Let me expand:

    I think that it’s fair to say that the issues Apple had last month/this month break down into 3 major categories:

    Consumer: Mobile Me, iPhone launch issues Developer: “Fucking” NDA, App Store wierd­ness, etc Enterprise/Business Support: Security Updates

    In an ideal orga­ni­za­tion these func­tions would be seg­re­gated with dif­fer­ent peo­ple han­dling com­mu­ni­ca­tion as needed to the tar­get audi­ence. Certainly at Dell or HP you wouldn’t expect the chumps on the phone in India to know any­thing use­ful about server sup­port; nor would you yell at you busi­ness rep about prob­lems with your $300.00 con­sumer POS home box.

    Unfortunately Apple, as of yet, doesn’t get that they need to treat these audi­ences dif­fer­ently. So you get the same (lack of) com­mu­ni­ca­tion regard­ing a crit­i­cal DNS flaw as you do regard­ing an issue that effects a tiny per­cent of users of a ser­vice that itself is used by only a frac­tion of Apple cus­tomers. Is this bad? Of course. Does Apple need to do bet­ter? Hell yes.

    Now, this is where the vapid twats of the blo­gok­lein­bot­tle come in to really fuck shit up.

    The big prob­lem is your gar­den vari­ety click-whore “jour­nal­ist”, who doesn’t know a damned thing about devel­oper rela­tions or enter­prise secu­rity; but they read on Twitter that Apple is “fuck­ing” devel­op­ers and has major secu­rity prob­lems, so they’re damned well gonna work that into a few sto­ries. I mean, anti-Apple rants bring in the ad rev­enue, don’t they?

    The prob­lem there is that the well rea­soned, if stri­dent, com­men­tary about these issues; for exam­ple your and Glen Fleishman’s respec­tive arti­cles, get drowned out by the teem­ing mass of bull­shit being flung around by idiots who don’t have a clue what they’re talk­ing about. Of course, it doesn’t help that the exploit was in DNS, which no one under­stands anyway.

    I sup­pose the bot­tom line of what I’m say­ing is that, when the ratio of intel­li­gent com­men­tary on the issues to “oh my god Apple is doooomed” rants is run­ning (by my esti­ma­tion) about one to ten; then I’m not sur­prised when Apple (and more impor­tantly Steve) falls back on their safety zone response of “noth­ing to see here.”

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    @John C. Welch: John, You’re absolutely right regard­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Apple’s issues with it; but I still think that the vapid twats in the blo­gos­phere are mak­ing the issues worse than they could be.

    Let me expand:

    I think that it’s fair to say that the issues Apple had last month/this month break down into 3 major categories:

    Consumer: Mobile Me, iPhone launch issues Developer: “Fucking” NDA, App Store wierd­ness, etc Enterprise/Business Support: Security Updates

    In an ideal orga­ni­za­tion these func­tions would be seg­re­gated with dif­fer­ent peo­ple han­dling com­mu­ni­ca­tion as needed to the tar­get audi­ence. Certainly at Dell or HP you wouldn’t expect the chumps on the phone in India to know any­thing use­ful about server sup­port; nor would you yell at you busi­ness rep about prob­lems with your $300.00 con­sumer POS home box.

    Unfortunately Apple, as of yet, doesn’t get that they need to treat these audi­ences dif­fer­ently. So you get the same (lack of) com­mu­ni­ca­tion regard­ing a crit­i­cal DNS flaw as you do regard­ing an issue that effects a tiny per­cent of users of a ser­vice that itself is used by only a frac­tion of Apple cus­tomers. Is this bad? Of course. Does Apple need to do bet­ter? Hell yes.

    Now, this is where the vapid twats of the blo­gok­lein­bot­tle come in to really fuck shit up.

    The big prob­lem is your gar­den vari­ety click-whore “jour­nal­ist”, who doesn’t know a damned thing about devel­oper rela­tions or enter­prise secu­rity; but they read on Twitter that Apple is “fuck­ing” devel­op­ers and has major secu­rity prob­lems, so they’re damned well gonna work that into a few sto­ries. I mean, anti-Apple rants bring in the ad rev­enue, don’t they?

    The prob­lem there is that the well rea­soned, if stri­dent, com­men­tary about these issues; for exam­ple your and Glen Fleishman’s respec­tive arti­cles, get drowned out by the teem­ing mass of bull­shit being flung around by idiots who don’t have a clue what they’re talk­ing about. Of course, it doesn’t help that the exploit was in DNS, which no one under­stands anyway.

    I sup­pose the bot­tom line of what I’m say­ing is that, when the ratio of intel­li­gent com­men­tary on the issues to “oh my god Apple is doooomed” rants is run­ning (by my esti­ma­tion) about one to ten; then I’m not sur­prised when Apple (and more impor­tantly Steve) falls back on their safety zone response of “noth­ing to see here.”

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    @The Angry Drunk: Ha, my reply was longer than the post…fucking flu.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    @The Angry Drunk: Ha, my reply was longer than the post…fucking flu.