aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Don’t count on the press

They won’t be poking the corporate giants:

I don’t hate Apple. I don’t even hate Apple-lovers. I do, however, possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade.

[...]

At least the techie readers of Engadget, free of the Apple mind-meld, recognize the V-iPod as a deliberately crippled by copy protection, low-res, underpowered video appliance that is merely Apple’s first try in the emerging market of video players.

The inordinate amount of attention paid to Apple’s launches must be, in part, a function of the company’s skill at throwing media events, stoking the rumor mills, and seducing the consuming masses. All this, plus the chatter-inducing creativity of Apple’s ad campaigns, and its practice of putting its machines in pretty boxes make writing about Apple products more interesting than assessing the latest iterations of the ThinkPad or Microsoft Office.

Podcasters are just as susceptible; maybe moreso. I listened to this schlock conversation with Eddy Cue, VP of Apple iTunes. A lesson in brochure-ware pablum. Don’t waste your time.

We’ve got to prod the press to poke.