Tone Down The Hyperbole You Vapid Twats!
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.
Posted on August 5th, 2008 under Posts • Tags: Apple, iPhone, jackassery. • 
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August 5th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
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.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
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.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
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”…
August 5th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
@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.”
August 5th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
@The Angry Drunk:
Ha, my reply was longer than the post…fucking flu.