“When I switch on my Apple Mac, the first thing I see on the screen is a smiling face – the icon of Apple’s operating system. It seems apt. Once the technology world’s underdog, Apple has become the consumer power-brand of the 21st century, a company that knows what real people want from their cutting-edge gadgets,” Julia Pierce writes for The Independent.
Pierce writes, “Apple has had reason to be cheerful. But the happy face on the screen of my MacBook laptop is starting to look more like a pained grimace. In recent months, court cases, faulty products and bad PR have taken the shine off these objects of consumer desire. Could the unthinkable be coming to pass? As David has become Goliath, has Apple lost its cool?”
Full load here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Leo” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: This piece should be used in university media classes to illustrate how to generate a hit piece. The Independent: Yellow journalism at its most obvious.
I don’t know if “Yellow Journalism” is the right term, but this is definitely a hit piece.
seriously, that steve jobs dude got mental issues, he behaves like he is a god or something, totally pathetic.
I won’t hit any related link so they won’t get what they want!
when’s the last time the startup image on a mac was a smiling mac?
How old is the machine this guy is using?
Umm, OS X systems do not boot with the Smiley face. The boot and the Apple logo pops up. OS 9 Machines and earlier had the smiley face, how old is this guys “Mac” makes me wonder if he really even owns an Apple product.
He’s using System 7.1
The first thing she sees on a MacBook is a smiley face? MacBooks use OS 9?
The first thing I see on any version of OS X is a dark gray Apple logo over a light gray screen; then the Mac OS X startup window with . . . ah . . . an Apple logo.
Honey, if you’re going to write a themed piece, be sure to know your theme well.
Drivel.Drivel.Drivel. Julia Pierce don´t have a MacBook that boots with a smiling Apple-face. Liar and pseudo-journalism. In Norway we call it Agurk-nytt. ( cucumber-news)
There’s something going on with men and the ass.
I can’t remember the last time i rebooted my PowerBook and actually looked at the screen, but isn’t the Mac OS logo on the splashscreen? That’s the one with the split dark blue/light blue faces that are smiling?
Okay, enough with the nitpicking…
This is clearly a “I want some hits on my never visited web site, so I’ll write a glaringly negative ‘story’ about Macintoshes and lure the clueless devils, thus boosting my hit count and allowing me to get a Frappuccino™ at Starbucks© while skateboarding home from ‘the office’ ” kind of article.
No dice, slacker…
Court cases are no basis of success or lack thereof. I could sue apple for not making blue iPods anymore but that wouldn’t mean a damn thing.
As far as faulty products go, it seems that in most cases if there are issues with Apple’s products they tend to fix them both on the manufacturing side and on the consumer end rather quickly.
Cool is a relative term.
Apple will always be cool as long as there are Dells, Gateways and Microsoft.
“But the happy face on the screen of my MacBook laptop is starting to look more like a pained grimace.”
An obvious lie. Yes, cucumber news. And not a radish in sight.
Geir werner,
Speaking of Norway, what intbdd ss, your take on the Consumer association extorting Apple to open it’s iPod system to Microsoft. How much do you think Microsoft paid those government workers?
This guy needs to look at Dell and then he’ll see why Apple systems are cool.
LAME
Unless he’s running OS 9 on that MacBook, he’s talking utter sh*t.
MDN is the real hit genrator. 99% of the articles here are just fluff.
“There’s something going on with men and the ass.”
I think that pretty much sums up how everyone on this thread feels about that article. Well done!
in a related story, said writer just woke up under a tree with a damn long beard.
What, like MDN has never written a hit piece like all of those articles that were deliberately designed to goad political opponents on both sides in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential Election.
The biggest problems with both parts of this piece in The Indy is that they’re typical of the Anglo-Saxon ‘build them up, knock ’em down’ school of thought and that the research is slightly outdated.
For instance, there is no acknowledgment of the judgement of the French courts that the proposed ‘anti-DRM’ law is unconstitutional and there is this kind of nudge and a wink that Apple must have been aware that FoxConn was mistreating its workforce and was directly responsible for the behaviour of its suppliers. It’s strange that the press in my country never seems to research the behaviour of British companies who have ‘off-shored’ with the same vigour, but I’m not sure I’d expect them to do anything else.
Also the logic of the pieces are relatively flawed: I’m not sure anyone’s opinion of Microsoft has gone up because of Bill and Mel’s philanthropy, much of which was fuelled by illegal monopolistic practices that for which Microsoft is still being penalised.
I don’t think it’s ‘yellow journalism’, it’s just bad journalism.
unthinkable?
no mac is cooler than a wicked fast pentium 4 with REAL megahertz and win xp media center edition and a REAL man’s remote that you can actually use instead of lose like that tiny apple toy.
too many mac laptops cacthing fire or getting hot or whatever it was, too many osx virus proof of concepts–which IS proof, look at the name.
real cool means products that dont scratch up easily, you dont see microsoft music players getting scratches, they use scratch proof plastic so why not apple?
only a few mac heads ever thought apple was cool, the rest of us know white is soooo boring and sad, look at dell if you want to see an all in one thats better/faster than imac, it looks like POWER!
lame core duos run cool because they r SLOW, look at the mhz, so what are you buying except “the cool factor” or should I say the “cool aid factor.
apple don’t even put their logo on the front of the imacs like dell does, ashamed you think, why put the name across the back like that?
Ampar –
For a lot of guys, you could say it pretty much sums up life in general.
“no mac is cooler than a wicked fast pentium 4”
A wicked lot of chicks dig me too as you guys have probably assumed by now because I know how to act cool and talk to a woman in a way that makes her feel special and also respected like the time I went into the library and there was a wicked lot of old chicks in there and I knew they would be wicked smart so I would have to appeal to their intellectual side which is cool so I went and found the biggest book I could find and dragged it over to a desk right in the middle of the library and I picked it up way over my head and dropped it onto the table and it made a wicked loud crack when it hit the table which was awesome because there was a chick sitting right next to the spot I picked and I guess she was reading because the horrifying clapping noise scared the crap out of her because she jumped and made a wicked loud EEEK which was cool because I could see she was starting to warm up to my boyish charm so I really tuend it on and told her DID YOU PI$$ YOURSELF BECAUSE IF YOU DID THAT’S COOL wicked loud which was cool and that’s when she started playing hard to get and she got up and moved to a table that was wicked far away but before she did she went over to the librarian’s desk and whispered something to her and I could tell she was telling on me because they were pointing at me and I started getting a little bit upset and I decided to act nonchalant by reading that book I picked out but it turned out that that book totally sucke because it just had a wicked shtload of maps and I couldn’t understand them and the writing was wicked small and I kept getting more and more nervous because that librarian kept gawking at me especially when I got bored of reading and just started opening the book and slamming it closed which was wicked loud and that’s how I knew it was cool but finally I had it with that librarian so I stood up on my chair and told her LOOK DAMMIT TAKE A PICTURE IF YOU’RE THAT FKN FASCINATED WITH ME I’LL PUT AN END TO YOUR NOSEY WAYS MIND YOUR BUSINESS I’M JUST TRYING TO STAND OVER HERE AND IMPRESS CHICKS BUT NOT YOU BECAUSE YOU PROBABLY SMELL LIKE THE ATTIC YOU STUPID JERK and I bucked up and put my head down like a running back and took off and I was going to smash into her but good except it took so long for me to get to the other side of the library where she was that I missed her entirely but nailed the top of my head directly into the side of her heavy wooden desk and it made a cracking sound even louder than the childish noises I was making with the book I had selected to peruse and she had a globe and four giant books about sweetbreads on her desk and they all slid off and smashed me in the head which totally sucked because I think I cracked the top of my skull again and it makes a sound like the box of fruity pebbles when I shake my head and I was lying on the floor thinking about how I always get screwed in situations like this and maybe I’m going to start looking for a counselor or an advisor to help me control my rage because I started yelling at the librarian HEY YOU STUPID OLD LADY FIGHT FAIR FIGHT FAIR GIVE ME A FEW MINUTES TO GO SMOKE A BUTT AND STRETCH MY LEGS AND HIDE IN THE BACK SEAT OF YOUR CAR AND WE’LL SETTLE THIS ONCE AND FO- and that stupid librarian hit me four times in the leg with her four foot ruler and she took off her shoe and used it to take out seven of my teeth and now I’m never tipping another librarian no matter how good the lapdances are
Correct me if I’m wrong but 10.0 to 10.1 still had the smily face in question and it was replace with the Apple symbol in 10.2.
No. Steve and Apple are cooler than ever you frickin’ idiot.