Greetings from Eire’s drizzly shores.
Unfortunately, this isn’t going to win me any friends; and may well alienate some of my readers; but fuck it, it needs saying. The big news in the Apple/iPhone media last week and this week is the story of how Apple denied App Store Access to a program citing as the reason that the application in question duplicated functionality built into iTunes. This, of course has been met with the usual hyperbolic reactions ranging from approval to threats of mass developer suicide.
Now, get one thing absolutely fucking clear here. I’m not defending Apple’s stance here. If this is, in fact, going to be Apple’s policy going forward then the parties responsible should be hunted down and converted into Solylent Green until they relent. It’s stupid and short-sighted. That is, if this is an actual Apple policy.
See the thing is, so far, while I have read an ungodly number of blog posts and news stories about this, I have yet to read anything approaching the following:
An Apple spokesperson confirmed the policy.
Or maybe this:
When approached for comment, Apple denied the rumors and stated that a more defined policy would be forthcoming.
Or even this:
Apple declined to comment on the story.
The bottom line is, I have yet to see any indication that any of the so-called “journalists” covering this story have even made an attempt to speak with anyone at Apple about it. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you can argue all day long that Apple needs to be better about communicating, and I’ll agree with you completely. But that does not absolve “journalists” from performing the basic functions of their jobs. You cannot simply sit around and wait for Apple PR to do your job for you. Sadly, this level of “journalism” seems to be par for the course in the tech media these days.
No wonder Apple seems to hold you guys with such disdain.
Bonus: My Completely Speculative Take On The App Store Shenanigans.
Since this is my personal blog; and since I make no attempts to claim the title of “journalist.” Let me give my take on what is going on with the App Store approval process.
When I look at the applications that make it into the App Store; as well as the one’s that don’t; I don’t see a pattern of corporate dominance. Fuck, I don’t see a pattern at all. What I do see is a badly mangled process; that is probably being “managed” by the front line approval team. I have this vision of a cube farm full of Customer Service monkeys (not necessarily in the U.S.A.) making all of this shit up as they go along.
Is that a problem. Yes. Is it the problem the blogokleinbottle thinks it is? Not really.
Now, I’m off to eat some horrid Irish “cuisine.”
NY Times has tried:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/apples-capricious-app-policy/
Completely agree. Well said.
@Steven Fisher:
Good! At least one organization that styles themselves “journalists” was able to figure out how to do their jobs. Now let’s talk about Macworld, ZDNet, CNet, etc. Also note that when someone finally pulled their head out of their ass long enough to actually ask Apple what’s up the corporate communications department’s response basically amounted to “wha?!?”
Agreed. The speculation is hysterical. I must confess that I am enjoying the blogger sturm und drang, though.
I think I suffer from Schadenfreude Rubber-necker by Proxy syndrome.
The back-and-forth on this issue reminds me a bit of a year ago when folks who’d bought the iPhone v1 began caterwauling about the lack of apps, as though the device would be stuck in version 1 limbo forever. This was replaced by a bunch of caterwauling about iPhones having supposedly been deliberately bricked by a software update. Good grief.
Definitely agree about the state of tech journalism & this here app store thing.
As far as Irish food, I thought the Beef & Guinness Stew was quite tasty.
@Allanimal:
I’d kill for some Guinness Stew. Sadly every restaurant I’ve been to so far seems to have an obsession with (badly) copying French cuisine.
Journalism is dead. It isn’t just the “Night of the Living Enderles” in tech; it’s everywhere.
There is no objectivity in anything. The whole fucking media circus is “Us vs. Them.”
The good thing is that it’s funny to watch.
The killer is that long after the issue is resolved, people will remember the controversy and consider it unresolved.
Remember the delay between releasing OS X for x86 and the Darwin source code? Apple released after a few months, claiming they had ‘all hands on deck’ for the OS release and left cleaning the code up for open sourcing until afterwards. Seems perfectly reasonable.
Bloggers are still claiming their victory over Apple on this one – they believe that it was only the merry hell they raised that forced Apple to release the code. Apple, they claim, were shutting out the F/OSS developers because Apple hates any loss of control, blah blah blah blah.
My point (eventually) is that the crappy pseudo-journalists who write blogs would far rather rant about some controversy than confirm it from the company in question. In their minds, any controversy is already confirmed and slotted in with their personal biases. And so, long after an issue has been resolved, the mythology of the blogger effect lives on.