[dougster]

"The harsh reality is that Apple isn’t your friend—and even if it were,
it'd probably be the flaky guy who never returns your phone calls." Good article there -Scott.
Happy Holidays to all the Macworld staff and members.... and if you wished for a pony, I hope you get one. :D

[spinoza2]

Do a google search on ?brittany spears great singer? (did you get a million hits?), then do a search on ?neil young terrible singer?. Or try Bob Dylan. What conclusions will you draw from this? If we follow your impeccable google logic, then you'd conclude that Brittany belongs to the pantheon of legendary American singers (and Neil should be relegated to the dustbin of pop history).

Or how about this google search: ?mac leopard terrible problems?. Did you reach a million hits? If not, I'm sure you got a lot more than the ?thousands of people? you found with supposed MobileMe problems. What conclusion would you reach? Never, never buy a Macintosh computer! They're terrible machines full of problems, as google proves. Just do a search on virtually any aspect of the Mac OS or iLife or iWorks, etc etc, and you will find the Internet screaming with problems with this software. As a longtime Mac user, none of it is relevant to me because I have rarely run into problems with my Apple products. I have never lost data, my iPhone works like a Swiss watch, and Leopard has been a terrific OS enhancement for me. I would prefer to follow the statistics (millions of quietly satisfied MobileMe customers), and my own experience (the iPhone is a phenomenal device, indeed a game changer, much like the Macintosh was to computing in the mid 80s). If Macworld had put the MobileMe problems into the proper perspective, its reporting on it would have been more balanced.

But making the startup MobileMe problems into the proverbial mountain out of a molehill is good press for media outlets like the IDG-based publications (?for Dummies?), and maybe, just maybe, this plays into Apple's reason for distancing itself from Macworld (both the fair and the magazine).

[Chris Breen]

spinoza2 said:

But making the startup MobileMe problems into the proverbial mountain out of a molehill is good press for media outlets like the IDG-based publications (?for Dummies?), and maybe, just maybe, this plays into Apple's reason for distancing itself from Macworld (both the fair and the magazine).

Oh sure. And it's only because of this molehill that Steve Jobs, a man who rarely admits a mistake, said MobileMe was not up to Apple's standards and "It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence." And Apple gave out two free months of MobileMe to all its subscribers because Steve's just the kind of guy who gets pushed around by the media.

But whatever. Happy holidays to you and yours.

[Stephen123]

I think the weirdest thing in this article is Scott McNulty's claim that Apple is run by nameless "people wearing suits" and not by its chairman and CEO. If one where to take this seriously it is a striking, and rather preposterous, accusation of a massive criminal fraud, or more likely a paranoid delusion.
I presume that McNulty would claim that this sentence was not meant to be taken literally. In fact, I think that would be MacWorld's defense of most of the objective statements in this weird editorial piece.

[Splashman]

Yes, I thought that was strange as well. A little bit of class warfare (people who wear suits are evil), mixed with a whole lot of fuzzy implication, all covered with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge metaphorical alibi. Besides, I've never seen any of Apple's (or Pixar's) senior management in a suit, and if I had to guess, I'd say suits are a rare sight at the Cupertino campus.

But McNulty's meme makes for a better headline, more comment traffic and more ad revenue. Y'know, it's almost as if IDG is more concerned about profits than . . . Oh, never mind.

[Dan Moren]

Splashman said:

Yes, I thought that was strange as well. A little bit of class warfare (people who wear suits are evil), mixed with a whole lot of fuzzy implication, all covered with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge metaphorical alibi. Besides, I've never seen any of Apple's (or Pixar's) senior management in a suit, and if I had to guess, I'd say suits are a rare sight at the Cupertino campus.

I think Scott's references to the suits was indeed metaphorical, and not by way of an "alibi" either?sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, folks.

Quote

But McNulty's meme makes for a better headline, more comment traffic and more ad revenue. Y'know, it's almost as if IDG is more concerned about profits than . . . Oh, never mind.

eye-roll

[Splashman]

So when McNulty makes a ridiculous-on-its-face comment to support an otherwise unsupported opinion, it's metaphorical, and when I do it, it's eyeroll material.

I see. Clear as mud.

[Dan Moren]

Splashman said:

So when McNulty makes a ridiculous-on-its-face comment to support an otherwise unsupported opinion, it's metaphorical, and when I do it, it's eyeroll material.

I see. Clear as mud.

As a refresher: a metaphor is "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable."

When Scott writes that Apple is run by "people wearing suits," he's not saying that there's an actual cabal of people dressed in suits, hiding in the shadows and plotting with steepled hands?because, yes, that would be silly. Rather, he's saying that the business interests are the company's chief concern.

On the other hand, you wrote: "But McNulty's meme makes for a better headline, more comment traffic and more ad revenue. Y'know, it's almost as if IDG is more concerned about profits than . . . Oh, never mind."

Please point out which part of that is the metaphor.

[Splashman]

Sorry -- didn't mean to lose you.

I was not arguing that my point was metaphorical; I was arguing that Scott's point was ridiculous, and your justification for it just as ridiculous.

[Stephen123]

IDG shocks world, reveals it is a big corporation

Sure, I like MacWorld as much as the next blogger, but I have never been under any illusion that I am anything more than a pile of disposable income to MacWorld. While news and editorials are a very powerful driving force at the company, IDG is a faceless corporation that is run by people wearing suits, not editors and journalists (oh, the horror!).

The harsh reality is that MacWorld isn?t your friend?and even if it were, it'd probably be the flaky guy who never returns your phone calls.

[Lisamacnewton]

"Do what you love, the rest (i.e. money) will follow" seems to be what this company is doing. I could be wrong.....

[himbo]

Stephen123 said:

The shareholders are NOT the boss. This is a common misconception, but is not based in reality. The shareholders are people gambling on the ability of the management to make a profit. In any company where the shareholders are the boss, the shareholders are gambling on their own collective wisdom. This is a nonsense investment, because if they where that good at using their money to make more money, they should be doing that, not investing in someone else's decision making.

I suggest you spend some time educating yourself on investments and operations of a publicly-traded company, because you clearly do not currently understand it.

[dfs]

Sure, Apple is a huge corporation. But it has carefully cultivated the image of being a small David in a world full of Goliaths. Why? Because by doing this it has avoided any careful scrutiny of what otherwise might be considered monopolistic business practices: the Feds and state governments, interested in going after Microsoft, have regarded Apple as a welcome counterbalance and so have cut it a lot of slack. Couple of cases in point. Until the law was changed a couple of years ago, it was legal for a company to control the prices of its products at the wholesale level, but not at the retail level. But regulators chose to look the other way. And although a number of competitors (most recently Psystar) have claimed that Apple's restrictions of the OS to its own machines is somehow monopolistic, such claims have never been put to the test in a court of law because nobody has cared to allow that such claims may have merit. And both consumers and the press have uncritically bought into this image.

[People_Eater]

Headline is incorrect. It should read 'Apple Shocks World, Reveals it is a Moderately Large Corporation'

Not so long ago, Apple was a medium-small corporation. I think it's just barely qualified to be called "large" now, and it certainly isn't "huge" as corporations go.