It’s no stunning revelation to regular readers that I think that there is an appalling lack of critical thinking skills amongst the so-called “experts” who make up the tech press. With very few exceptions the default process for the tech media seems to be to run stories without the slightest hint of investigation, verification, or even independent thought. Case in point, a story that began making the rounds last week about Apple exerting it’s DRACONIAN CONTROL to remove all WiFi “sniffer” applications. A typically craptacular example of the “reporting” surrounding the issue can be found in this article at the Cult of Mac blog. To quote:
Apple sent a note to the developer of WiFi-Where on Wednesday saying their app has been removed because it uses “a private framework to access wifi information.”
What this private framework is, neither Apple nor the developer explain.
The problem is the second sentence. Apple, of course isn’t explaining what the “private framework” is, because Apple hasn’t offered any fucking comment on this situation. Nor should they. Apple rejects hundreds of applications a week. They owe explanations to the developers, but not to random bloggers and journalists. More importantly though, Apple did explain why they shit-canned the apps. They “use private frameworks.” Now, remember that all of this communication is being relayed though the developers themselves, but it should be blindingly obvious to anyone styling themselves “experts” in iPhone related matters that “private framework” means the same thing as non-public APIs. Regardless of the idiocy being promulgated by fools like Erica Sadun, using non-public APIs in iPhone applications is specifically forbidden by the iPhone Developer Agreement. Nothing that Apple is doing here is in the least bit “suspicious.”
If this sort of fuzzy thinking was relegated to just the usual link-bait bloggers it would be one thing. The problem is that this meme has been co-opted by other reporters and pundits who should damn well know better. I’m not talking about legitimate debates over whether Apple’s control of the App Store is overly restrictive. I’m talking about otherwise intelligent people who are willfully ignoring the difference between Apple enforcing (albeit belatedly) one of the few hard-and-fast rules that the App Store has and them arbitrarily banning tittie apps. It’s honestly infuriating.
During one of the early Angry Mac Bastards podcasts, my man Peter Cohen screamed the following phrase. “OCCAM’S FUCKING RAZOR QUINCY, HAVE YOU HEARD OF IT?” I desperately need to extract that clip and start spamming it to the people perpetuating the conspiracy theory model of Apple’s business practices. Seriously you lack-wits, the simplest explanation really is usually the right one. Sadly that means that I have to go with the theory that the majority of the tech media are just criminally incompetent, rather than my preferred theory that they are part of a Reptilliod advanced mission to drive the rest of us insane, but so be it.
