By The Angry Drunk
It’s extremely disturbing when I read something insightful on TechCrunch. Imagine taking anger-management advice from Mirror Universe James Kirk, or etiquette training from Tara Reid; something about it just seems off. So you can imagine the discombobulation I felt today when I read Anticipating the Apple Tablet: When journalism becomes fanfiction by Paul Carr. Paul makes a point that will be familiar to readers here and to listeners of the Angry Mac Bastards podcast. The short version is, “until Apple actually announces something, shut the living-fuck up about the Apple tablet.”
Paul truly nails it with these two paragraphs:
But until the official launch announcement comes, I would rather not hear another word about Apple and their tablet. Not because it isn’t news – but because so many of the journalists anticipating the launch have dropped any sense of responsibility to their readers and replaced it with cloying fanboyism.
They claim of course that they’re digging for facts – the name of the new product, its price point, its specs – because that’s what reporters do. Bullshit. What reporters do is find out things that people don’t want us to know. In seven days’ time Apple is going to announce the name of their product, its price, its specs and much more besides. Revealing those things seven days early isn’t news.
He’s exactly right. At this point the incessant coverage of the Apple tablet is science fiction at best, and worthless masturbation at worst. I mean, is it too much to ask that Apple actually announce the fucking thing before we go declaring it a failure?
By The Angry Drunk
I really do. It’s almost a certainty that at least once a week he will grind out a blog post that amuses me. The latest case in point is this one. In the post, Dave explains that he wants some “no-frills” hosting and gives a laundry list of the features that he requires. The funny part is that the way that he presents the list is exactly like a cranky old man trying to buy any reasonably modern product. “I don’t want a television with that new-fangled ‘High Definition,’ my old set worked just fine.” In other spots he just comes across as needlessly pissy. Seriously:
Don’t hype me. All the services I see advertised on the web are long on hype and closing the deal, but I usually can’t tell what they’re offering. Ridiculous.
Yes Dave, we’ll be sure to find you a provider who does no marketing.
But the real fun starts in the comments. Of course, a slew of nimrods show up offering solutions that don’t exactly match Dave’s lofty criteria. So, Dave being Dave, he gets all cranky and starts waxing Scoble-like about the good old days:
This isn’t personal because I think most people don’t bother to read the
post before responding.
They just read the headline and maybe skim the body and then start writing.
Makes it really hard to ask a question that might be even slightly off the
beaten path.
It hasn’t always been this way.
And if you read the other comments in this thread, you’ll see almost
everyone else has been doing it, even people like Stan and Hanan who have
been longtime contirbutors here. They didn’t answer the question I asked.
They told me what they do. But what I’m trying to figure out is how far we
are from services that can actually solve the problem I’m posing. Creating
an archive of our work that’s independent, affordable, and long-lasting.
So like I said, this isn’t about you — it’s about *us* — how are we ever
going to work together if even a simple question can’t be heard.
Oh Dave, don’t ever change.
By The Angry Drunk
O frabjous day! We finally have confirmation that Apple will, in fact, announce something on January 27th. Indeed, callooh! Indeed, callay!
What we know:
Not a mother-fucking thing.
What I predict:
I predict that an ungodly amount of ink and pixels will be spilled in the next nine days while the tech-obessed media attempt to glean some meaning from the artwork of the invitation. Ninety percent of which will be wrong. Also, Rob Enderle will be a douche.
What will be revealed:
That the person responsible for said artwork was, in fact, an eight-year-old girl.
By The Angry Drunk
Could this be the return of Crazy Apple Rumors?
By The Angry Drunk
…courtesy of Scoble. Short version: I’ve been to China twice in my lifetime. Now let me spend 1150 words pontificating about how business is done there. Oh, and my commenters are sycophantic dipshits.
By The Angry Drunk
Ok kids, I hate to interrupt the mutual masturbation of the blogoratti regarding Google’s announcement that they might, maybe stop assisting the Chinese government in their censorship activities after purportedly being targeted by Chinese hackers attempting to access information about dissidents. Really, it kills me having to be a downer on all of this felating of Google, but when TechCrunch of all places gets it right…well, that’s just sad.
Naturally, Scoble disagrees.
By The Angry Drunk
As if to taunt me, TUAW just ran another article from prognosticator extraordinaire Erica Sadun that boggles the mind: Enough already with the draconian NDAs, Apple. This time, instead of consulting her crystal ball about the mythical iTablet, Erica takes time out of her busy schedule of huffing glue to complain about the NDA that Apple has slapped on on the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. You know, the SDK that doesn’t fucking exist yet.
Enough of this crap. Speculation about a product that Apple almost certainly will introduce in the next month is one thing, but this blatant link-baiting is ridiculous.
By The Angry Drunk
Supposedly Erica Sadun is some sort of high potentate of the iPhone development community, which I guess explains why publications like The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) go to her for commentary. But, given the fact that she has the logical skills of a young-earth creationist, they should really stop. Case in point: an article posted today on TUAW titled App Store approvals and the tablet: why it matters. That’s right kiddies, it’s another article about unicorns.
Erica starts out with an observation:
When iTunes Connect returned after its Christmas break, developers noticed that things had changed quite a bit on the App Store approval front. Applications that had formerly taken ten to fourteen days to work through review were now getting processed in a couple of days or less. The upshot? Happier developers, better bug releases for users, and a healthier App Store ecosystem.
Good so far, this is factual and draws a conclusion that follows logically from the premise. The rail-jumping begins immediately after:
There’s another consequence of the new, speedier approvals: the tablet. With the device due to ship March/April (late Q1, early Q2), and no announced 4.0 SDK, developers were left wondering how they’d have the time to bring their software up to date.
Whuuuuuut? This is the point that, were this a trailer for a Wayans Brothers movie, we’d play the phonograph needle scraping over the record sound. How in Satan’s name do you go from the observed fact that Apple has tightened up the approvals process to the “fact” that there is a) an actual tablet product, b) it will have a March/April ship date and c) that it will run any variant of the iPhone OS, let alone the equally mythical 4.0 version. Seriously Erica, with prognosticatory powers like that, you should give up iPhone development and just play the fucking lottery.
By The Angry Drunk
Once again, Bruce Schneier shows the way on the topic of real security. People have to realize that the only way that terrorists “win” is if we live in fear.
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Brother, can you spare a dime?
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Quiet
If it seems quiet around here, that’s because I can’t find the motivation to fight against the flood of asinine iTablet unicorn speculation. When the tech media regains its senses, then I’ll start abusing it again.