“Officers from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office kicked in a journalist’s doors and confiscated computers,” Carr reports. “Apple didn’t do the kicking, but it apparently filed a complaint — not seeking the return of their phone, which they had already retrieved, but information.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apparently, Apple’s engineer is not allowed to report to police that his phone was stolen and the authorities are not allowed to investigate when a stolen prototype of product in which at least tens of millions of dollars are invested is purchased by a gadget blog for five grand, taken apart, photographed from all angles and plastered all over their site. This doesn’t help Apple’s competitors at all, no industrial espionage or any other laws apply, and it’s all just harmless prank.
Carr continues babbling in print, “Perhaps the law is on the side of Apple and that of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, California’s high-tech crimes task force, which served the search warrant (Apple is represented on the public agency’s board)… Regardless of how the law shakes out, the optics are horrible for Apple. Anybody with a kilobyte of common sense could have told Steve Jobs that the five minutes of pleasure that came from making a criminal complaint against journalists would be followed by much misery.”
“The iPad, a gorgeous device for displaying content, has become something of a metaphor for the hermetic kingdom of Apple,” Carr reports. “A seamless device that can’t be opened, it has no apertures for input and is animated mostly by purchases from Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: As if the Dock connector port, Wi-Fi and/or 3G, and Bluetooth don’t exist. Dummy wants a floppy slot.
Carr continues, “Then again, it will take you anywhere on the Web, unless it involves the use of Adobe’s Flash software, which Mr. Jobs has found wanting. The churlishness about Flash again goes to the issue of control, of wanting to have dominion over all aspects of the customer experience.”
MacDailyNews Take: You really shouldn’t write about a subject, if you don’t understand it well. Of course, that rarely stops The New York Times. Flash is banned from iPhone OS devices for several reasons, none of which are churlish:
• Apple believes that all standards pertaining to the web should be open; not closed, 100% proprietary products like Adobe’s Flash
• Apple wants users to experience reliability, security and performance; none of which Adobe’s Flash can offer.
• Apple’s products offer long battery life; Adobe’s Flash is a battery hog (before it maxes out your CPU(s) and fan(s) and then crashes)
• Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers; there is no “hover” on an iPhone or iPad
• The type of “write once, deploy everywhere” software that lazy Adobe wants to help developers produce results in lowest common denominator apps that fail to take advantage of individual platforms’ strengths.
Carr continues, “More broadly, Apple’s behavior and choices in the Gizmodo affair threaten to interrupt the séance between the company and an adoring press, who have looked past all the frantic secrecy and reverently stared in wonder at what was eventually revealed behind the curtain. The media’s crush on Apple has always been an unrequited love affair.”
MacDailyNews Take: Seriously? Carr needs to do some research. He can start by looking up the meaning of the word “séance” and then by moving on to Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” open letter, before contemplating how a million iPads sold in the first 28 days equates to “horrible optics for Apple.”
Full nonsense – Think Before You Click™ – here.
MacDailyNews Take: With this kind of mind-numbing dreck splashed across their fishwrap, it’s no wonder that The New York Times’ circulation plummeted 8.5% in the last year alone.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “JES42,” “TowerTone,” “jmmx,” “Brian A.,” and “Citymark” for the heads up.]
Oh brother… well at least I have learnt a new word…
churlish |ˈ ch ərli sh |
adjective
rude in a mean-spirited and surly way : it seems churlish to complain.
How can I get a job like that? I’d love to blubber on about topics I don’t understand and get paid to do it.
just truly sad…
There ARE some fine writers who work for the New York Times and political leanings aside (and the flood of haters will no doubt populate this thread)…
This is just truly BAD reporting. It’s not even journalism really. It’s just hit whoring disguised as something insightful.
Having been in journalism for over 40 years..I’d fire this guy on the spot for a piece like this
@Warren,
Hey, I did the same Spotlight search. Never touch a dictionary any more.
god I love the way you rationally & completely tear apart this guys obviously uninformed tirade.
I like the word, “churlish”.
From now on, I’m going to be more churlish.
Carr would get better results with a ouji board…
Pseudo reporters, calling themselves “journalists” to get perks are hearing the sound of footsteps with this event. Many blog posters like Chen, Lam and Diaz of Gizmodo are no more reporters than I am. And their boss said as much. It seems David Carr has something to fear as well.
El Guapo and PR have it right. I can’t believe there isn’t need for fact-checking in the media. Goes to show you can’t trust the media.
These people who are anti-Apple are not thinking… Apple makes most of its profit from selling you the hardware. Adobe and Google have a lot more motivation to have an “issue of control,” when it comes to software, web content, and user data. They have to make their profit somehow. Apple’s motivation is to create the best user experience possible, to sell more hardware.
It must kill people like David Carr, as Apple succeeds with iPods, iPhones, and now iPads. Even the Mac business is doing better than ever. It’s obvious that actual customers could not care less about such irrelevant and inaccurate ramblings.
“The media’s crush on Apple has ALWAYS been an unrequited love affair”
Perhaps Carr should also look at the past use of the word “beleaguered.”
ANother opinion/editorial piece accedentally making it into the NEWS section of the newspaper. Geez.
@informed
As Mark Twain once said, better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
=:~)
@ all mac fan boys.
i am as much a mac lover as the next one but this ny times writer does touch a few good points.. soo0000 what it was photographed.. soooooooo! good publicity, apple has most patents anyways… what can the competitors steal?? well they can go out and buy one themselves open it up and copy it. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? yes police went a bit overboard! yes apple is right to be pissed! yes gizmorons should have gave it back and struck maybe an exclusive first look or something around those lines! yes the guy who sold it should have gotten his a$$ kick!$
but in the end we all will still buy it, we all still support apple.
SOOOO MOVE ON. apple JOBS should openly shun gizmorons for their part in this.and all will follow!!
now lets move on and live!
and if anyone does not like my comments , sorry but thats my .02 cents!
ps
you know im right!
good day
@ Informed–
Apparently, you’re not as informed as you believe yourself to be.
1. If this is what they publish, then “fish wrap” may very well be a fair description.
2. Steve Jack has never hid his identity. He may have others working with him (I’m uncertain), but he is the name behind MDN.
Actually I pity the fish.
@Warren. I left school at 15 years old in England and I had already learned what ‘churlish’ means. I’ll bet my grandson who is in college doesn’t know. Then again he attended school in California. What a joke.
– David Carr’s column is not a news section; it’s a column. Most of MDN readers, not having read many newspapers, probably don’t know what that means.
– MDN doesn’t seem to mind quoting the NYT when it’s David Pogue’s column.
While I agree with MDN’s “takes” as far as this article is concerned, I also think that Apple needs to stay as far away from the Gizmodo investigation and possible prosecution as possible. The company is the 800 pound gorilla in tech now and is beginning to show some of the control freak qualities that might be tolerable in a small company but create animosity toward a large one, presumably because they give the impression of bullying. While there are very good arguments for Apple’s prudishness, its unwillingness to allow rejected apps to access the iPhone/iPad platform from outside iTunes, and its insistence on restricting apps created with third party development tools like Flash, Apple needs to apply it’s hegemony as gently as possible. Impressions count.
MND: you should add one more reason for not having Flash on Apple mobile devices: IT DOESN’T EXIST.
@mac user since 80’s
So, Apple had a prototype device stolen – cuz that’s what you call it after someone knowingly takes your stuff and sells it to someone else, you know ‘fences’ it and all – and got the police involved.
The moron who took the phone could have very, very easily returned it to Apple, if he’d been honest. But he wasn’t.
So Apple got the law involved. Which is entirely within their rights.
How does that make them churlish?
Funny thing about the law and the left… they mix as well as, well, oil and water! That is unless it suits them. Otherwise, damn the law! Not change the law…, Definitely not enforce the law…, but just ignore the laws that you don’t like! Kind of like that congressman that doesn’t care about the Constitution…
Would have loved to have an open mic in that SUV… eeek, an SUV! Aren’t they the gas hog, evil, environmentally polluting, overkill waste of a vehicle??? Hypocrisy abounds!
The media is completely clueless. How does it become Apple’s fault that some guy steals their prototype and Gizmodo buys stolen property. Sorry, but 99.99% of the world isn’t geek and they could careless if the journalist and Gizmodo gets charged with breaking the law.
I expect nothing better from the New York Slimes, as long as its left wing propaganda, true or fiction, doesn’t matter.
Only retards read that rag.
“The media’s crush on Apple has always been an unrequited love affair.”…… what universe has he been living in?