Diary of a Mad Man

Congratulations to Chris Maxcer of MacNewsWorld. He’s the winner of our “Stupidest Sentence of the Day” Award:

Because of advertising, by starting with the awesome foundation of the product itself, Apple can charge premium prices and still manage to capture the mindshare of everyday consumers.

That sentence is almost perfection. It makes no sense, it’s logically inconsistent, it has no relationship to reality and it’s poorly written – BRAVO!

Cult of Android managed to “sneak” an article into the RSS feed of Cult of Mac, forcing me to read it. Bastards. But I’m glad I did – I hadn’t fulfilled my Recommended Daily Allowance of The Stupid and this article pushed me over the top.

Right from the start, the writer shows he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. The title of the article, “Now Is The Perfect Time For Google To Submit Its Maps App For iOS” shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what is going on. Absent everything else, does anyone believe that, if Google Maps was “ready” for iOS 6, Google would withhold it?

Don’t get me wrong – I think Google should hold it back for “competitive advantages”. But the author seems to think Google has it all ready to go and it’s just a matter of submitting it.

He says:

I believe now to be the perfect time to turn the other cheek.

What does he think this is – Church Camp? Companies don’t “turn the other cheek” – they compete to try and win mind and market share from their competitors. If Google thought they could do either, they would release an app. They won’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Google has been in no rush to submit its Google Maps app to Apple

This ignores the reports from real journalists who have been saying that Apple and Google were working on the next version of Google Maps but there were various sticking points.

there are also millions of users who absolutely love there iPhone

Hire a copy editor. I’m just saying.

Now is the perfect time for Google to rescue iOS users from Apple’s emotions and rise up to become a hero of services.

You play D&D too much.

(Tim Cook) has inadvertently broken the facade that anything Apple is better.

That “facade” is only there for MacMacs and Android Fanboys. In the real world, we recognize that while Apple has done more remarkable things than any other company in the past decade, they are not omnipotent – they make mistakes.

It’s now clear to all that Google Maps is a much better service.

That may be true for Android users but, without feature parity, it’s not true for iOS users. On iOS there’s no doubt that Google Maps was the redheaded stepchild. Apple recognized they needed a better app and, if Google didn’t want to provide it (under terms suitable to Apple) then they would have to make their own.

Should Google submit its Maps app (with turn-by-turn navigation)

Are you not paying attention? This was exactly one of the issues where Apple and Google couldn’t agree.

Google will solidify itself as the top dog for maps services — something that will not soon be forgotten, no matter how much work Apple does to its own Maps.

No – it will be forgotten the instant Apple solves whatever problems, real or imagined, people have with Maps.

October 5, 2011 is the day Steve Jobs died. On or about October 5th, 2012, we will be inundated by stupid, pointless, poorly thought out, poorly written articles about Jobs, his death, the anniversary and Apple. Here are some of the headlines I bet we’ll see. Add your own in the comments:

“One Year Later: How has Apple changed?”

“Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs”

Apple is better off without Jobs”

Apple is worse off without Jobs”

“Before and After – a Critical Look at Apple”

“Jobs’ Death – What Apple doesn’t want you to know”

“Would Jobs be alive if he had taken this Miracle Pill?”

(OK, I’m stretching on that last one…)

Congratulations to Flixel, the latest app to send me pointless notifications completely unbidden and therefore, it gets deleted immediately.

Hey developers – STOP DOING THIS. It pisses off users.

(Full disclosure: Sulia has approached me to do a paid gig for them)

Check out Rob Enderle’s latest on Sulia.

Enderle takes a mildly interesting tech story (that of Apple’s products being sold in Iran even though there is an export ban) and turns it into a bigoted, ignorant and offensive screed about how all Iranians are terrorists.

I can picture an Apple ad in Iran “Death to the US, except for the wonderful new MacBook Air. Whether you are designing the next nuclear bomb or training your little terrorists, this magical product is portable, beautiful, and it fits easily under a Burka.

Isn’t it about time the tech press, Sulia included, ostracize this cancer of the industry and make him crawl back under the rock he sprung from?

Harry Marks posted this on Twitter:

As usual, he makes some good points and I encourage you to read his piece.

But some other things Manjoo said made me want to comment. First of all, the entire premise – “the iPhone sure has become boring, hasn’t it?” – is easy to answer. No, it hasn’t. It’s still the one device I carry with me everywhere. It’s my primary camera, a communication device and all around “connector to the world”. The iPhone may be boring to a jaded technology columnist but for the vast majority of users, it’s still a wondrous device.

He says:

the iPhone is a mature product, a gadget that has maximized its potential.

I love when pundits say this but especially about Apple. Every time someone makes that statement, it comes back and bites them in the ass.

If you have an irrational loyalty to Apple, you might well demand, What more do you want out of the iPhone?

I have no loyalty to Apple, irrational or otherwise and yet, I’d still ask the same question. Manjoo wants “more” from the iPhone but he has no idea what that is. He responds to his own question with:

it’s already so great that I can’t imagine how it can become any better.

Ummm…..okay….

Manjoo goes on to use Google as an example of a company pushing the future of technology. While that can be argued, I have a hard time working up much enthusiasm for their still-in-development digital goggles Manjoo raves about. I don’t get excited about anything that is “still in development” and more exactly, nothing from Google with that tag. How much tech have we seen come out of Google’s development labs that remains in permanent beta or that hangs around for a couple of years before Google shuts it down? Not that there’s anything wrong with that but I’m not basing any excitement or commentary on vapor or beta wares.

This is the funniest sentence of Manjoo’s piece:

after getting to try on Sergey Brin’s own pair for about 20 seconds—I couldn’t contain myself.

Wouldn’t that be fairly described as being a “fanboy”? Yet he dings others for their “irrational loyalty to Apple”.

And this is the most confusing line:

Google Glass will allow people to experience the digital world without becoming distracted from the real world

Seriously? Most people can’t use their smartphones without being distracted now. Do you really believe that a magical device attached to your face won’t be distracting!?

I have high hopes that these glasses will save us from our tech-addled selves.

Wait…WTF? What the hell makes him think we won’t become even *more* tech addled with Google Goggles on? AT least now in order to use your iPhone, you have to “break contact” with the real world to pick the phone up and interact with it. You can choose to ignore the buzzing and beeping of the iPhone when you’re out with friends or in a meeting. Does he seriously believe that people will be less distracted/tech addled when they don’t have to pick their device up?

But the worse part is Manjoo’s penultimate sentence:

this is a company that has repeatedly wowed us by inventing the future we didn’t know we wanted.

That one sentence completely destroys his premise – that Apple is simply maintaining their place on top of the tech heap and allowing others to catch up. If past is prologue, he knows that Apple, at some point in the near future, will once again wow us with something we didn’t even know we wanted.

Unlike Manjoo, I’m not bored by the iPhone’s past, present or future.

Bored with the iPhone?