10.08.10

Gemini version available ♊︎

Apple Distorts the Media

Posted in Apple, Deception, Microsoft at 5:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe!” ~Dorothy Parker

Summary: A closer look at how Apple is fooling a lot of people and how it impedes sharing amongst its very own customers

TECHRIGHTS oppose non-Free software, but it particularly antagonises Apple and Microsoft because they actively suppress use of Free software. They even sue those who make Free software available. Apple — like Microsoft — is a marketing company. It’s in a business of taking commodity PCs (produced in the far east), putting on them an operating system that Apple hardly developed (Apple likes to exploit Free software and it hardly produces any of its own), and then selling it for a high price using perception management, currently the illusion that Mac users are somehow better than their fellow men/women. Apple sells arrogance and it spends an enormous amount of money brainwashing the public in the same way that large fashion brands do (and the cost of brainwash passes to the customer, who pays for these false perceptions to persist). Apple can only ever reach a tiny niche on the desktop because prices are kept artificially high. Without a high price, the whole “I’m rich cause I have a Mac” rhetoric would evaporate.

“There is nothing particularly advanced about hypePad and it lacks some basic functionality which goes almost a decade back.”hypePad is a good example of how fake hype gets generated (sometimes with help from unethical marketing firms [1, 2]). There is nothing particularly advanced about hypePad and it lacks some basic functionality which goes almost a decade back. But anyway, that’s not the purpose of hypePad, it’s not about functionality; it’s more of a fashion item, it’s also a status symbol. Its perceived value is what’s supposed to elevate the perceived value of its user (not owner, as it is not possible to truly own such restrictive gadgets).

Gawker has just published some recent examples where Apple is suspected of manipulating media coverage:

For a man who assiduously avoids the news media, Steve Jobs is incredibly skilled at exploiting his leverage with the press. So skilled, it’s alleged, he turned a top newspaper into a key tool of Apple’s public relations.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler this morning published a fascinating compilation of stories that Apple may have planted in the Wall Street Journal to distract people from bad Apple news or, in one case, to bolster the company’s buzz and profits. Former Apple marketing manager John Martellaro has written about how and why the company conducts “controlled leaks” to news outlets like the Journal, and there’s reason to think the articles cited by Siegler fall into that category; each served a key role in helping Apple move beyond bad news or sharpen the impact of its good news.

[...]

Making the cheap iPad sound expensive, January 2010, WSJ: Citing analysts, who themselves cite anonymous sources, the Journal reports that the iPad might cost $1,000. This number makes the iPad look all the more incredible when it debuts at $500, which seems like a bargain in comparison to the earlier figure. Siegler suspects Apple leaked the $1,000 figure, presumably either to the analysts or by indicating the Journal that it would safe to cite that number.

[...]

Fair enough; the idea that Apple fed these stories to the WSJ is speculative and backed by circumstantial evidence. Siegler, unlike Swisher, was never part of the traditional journalism establishment; the writer rose up out of the ranks of indy bloggers, algorithimically boosted by Techmeme, plucked out of obscurity by VentureBeat, then artfully poached by TechCrunch. He speaks, in many instances, for the paranoid rank-and-file engineer who knows nothing about how the sausage of journalism is made, but is deeply suspicious of it, and sees conspiracies everywhere.

And who is to say said engineers are wrong, or even misguided? You don’t get too far into the God’s honest truth with an operation as tight-lipped as Apple without a little conjecture and dot-connecting.

Some of the above is too obvious and here is news about Apple rejecting the sharing of files (be it legal or not):

Just a few days ago we broke the news that the first BitTorrent app had been allowed into Apple’s App Store. The developer managed to get it approved despite Apple’s hatred towards BitTorrent. Unfortunately, the fun was soon over as Apple has already kicked the App from the store. The developer is not giving up that easily and hopes to convince Apple they’re wrong.

Given Apple's proximity to the entertainment giants (with financial investments too, via staff), this is not surprising and it’s also why it’s dangerous to let Apple gain power. Apple managers were never too sympathetic towards sharing, let alone software freedom. To them, “freedom” means censorship (as in “freedom from porn” as Steve Jobs put it) and "open source" means code/developers that can be exploited. Contrary to common belief, Apple also abuses (some of) its staff.

Do not allow Apple to manage perception more than it already does. It’s not Disneyland.


Direct link

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, May 28, 2023



  2. Daniel Stenberg Knows Almost Nothing About Gemini and He's Likely Just Protecting His Turf (HTTP/S)

    The man behind Curl, Daniel Stenberg, criticises Gemini; but it's not clear if he even bothered trying it (except very briefly) or just read some inaccurate, one-sided blurbs about it



  3. Links 29/05/2023: Videos Catchup and Gemini FUD

    Links for the day



  4. Links 28/05/2023: Linux 6.4 RC4 and MX Linux 23 Beta

    Links for the day



  5. Gemini Links 28/05/2023: Itanium Day, GNUnet DHT, and More

    Links for the day



  6. Links 28/05/2023: eGates System Collapses, More High TCO Stories (Microsoft Windows)

    Links for the day



  7. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 27, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, May 27, 2023



  8. No More Twitter, Mastodon, and Diaspora for Tux Machines (Goodbye to Social Control Media)

    People would benefit from mass abandonment of such pseudo-social pseudo-media.



  9. Links 28/05/2023: New Wine and More

    Links for the day



  10. Links 27/05/2023: Plans Made for GNU's 40th Anniversary

    Links for the day



  11. Social Control Media Needs to be Purged and We Need to Convince Others to Quit It Too (to Protect Ourselves as Individuals and as a Society)

    With the Tux Machines anniversary (19 years) just days away we seriously consider abandoning all social control media accounts of that site, including Mastodon and Diaspora; social control networks do far more harm than good and they’ve gotten a lot worse over time



  12. Anonymously Travelling: Still Feasible?

    The short story is that in the UK it's still possible to travel anonymously by bus, tram, and train (even with shades, hat and mask/s on), but how long for? Or how much longer have we got before this too gets banned under the false guise of "protecting us" (or "smart"/"modern")?



  13. With EUIPO in Focus, and Even an EU Kangaroo Tribunal, EPO Corruption (and Cross-Pollination With This EU Agency) Becomes a Major Liability/Risk to the EU

    With the UPC days away (an illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo court system, tied to the European Union in spite of critical deficiencies) it’s curious to see EPO scandals of corruption spilling over to the European Union already



  14. European Patent Office (EPO) Management Not Supported by the EPO's Applicants, So Why Is It Still There?

    This third translation in the batch is an article similar to the prior one, but the text is a bit different (“Patente ohne Wert”)



  15. EPO Applicants Complain That Patent Quality Sank and EPO Management Isn't Listening (Nor Caring)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German (here is the first of the batch); the following is the second of the three (“Kritik am Europäischen Patentamt – Patente ohne Wert?”)



  16. German Media About Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) and the European Patent Office (EPO)

    SUEPO has just released 3 translations of new articles in German; this is the first of the three (“Industrie kritisiert Europäisches Patentamt”)



  17. Geminispace Continues to Grow Even If (or When) Stéphane Bortzmeyer Stops Measuring Its Growth

    A Gemini crawler called Lupa (Free/libre software) has been used for years by Stéphane Bortzmeyer to study Gemini and report on how the community was evolving, especially from a technical perspective; but his own instance of Lupa has produced no up-to-date results for several weeks



  18. Links 27/05/2023: Goodbyes to Tina Turner

    Links for the day



  19. HMRC: You Can Click and Type to Report Crime, But No Feedback or Reference Number Given

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were reported 7 days ago to HMRC (equivalent to the IRS in the US, more or less); but there has been no visible progress and no tracking reference is given to identify the report



  20. IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, May 26, 2023



  21. One Week After Sirius Open Source Was Reported to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for Tax Fraud: No Response, No Action, Nothing...

    One week ago we reported tax abuses of Sirius ‘Open Source’ to HMRC; we still wait for any actual signs that HMRC is doing anything at all about the matter (Sirius has British government clients, so maybe they’d rather not look into that, in which case HMRC might be reported to the Ombudsman for malpractice)



  22. Links 26/05/2023: Weston 12.0 Highlights and US Debt Limit Panic

    Links for the day



  23. Gemini Links 26/05/2023: New People in Gemini

    Links for the day



  24. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, May 25, 2023



  25. Links 26/05/2023: Qt 6.5.1 and Subsystems in GNUnet

    Links for the day



  26. Links 25/05/2023: Mesa 23.1.1 and Debian Reunion

    Links for the day



  27. Links 25/05/2023: IBM as Leading Wayland Pusher

    Links for the day



  28. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 24, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, May 24, 2023



  29. Links 25/05/2023: Istio 1.16.5 and Curl 8.1.1

    Links for the day



  30. Gemini Links 25/05/2023: On Profit and Desire for Gemini

    Links for the day


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts