Slashdot Mirror
Apple Blacklists "Rumor Promoting" Publications
Billy_D_Goat writes "Talk about control, Apple has now decided it can block users from recieving media passes at MacWorld Expo It blacklists these users by deciding if they run "rumor promoting" publications. This includs the webmasters of sites which have little to do with rumors or speculation such as Graphicpower.com/." Probably
just bitter cuz Steve's thunder seems to get stolen at every show, and
their lawyers can't seem to stop it ;)
It must be sooo hard for Apple to deal with having such an enthusiastic fan base that they're willing to go to such great lengths to get previews of products. I feel sooo sorry for Steve Jobs and crew that they have to "put up" with this kind of thing.
I think I'll stick to PC hardware and Linux instead of a company that obviously doesn't value its user base.
I, for one, couldn't care less about what Apple is trafficating with the press badges and who's going to get the scoop of what's cooking in Cupertino. For some time, I just gave up on the rumors of what's happening on the platform. It's not that I don't like the Mac. I own an entry level iBook. But I'm getting tired for lake of interesting software (games), slow overpriced systems, and inability to deliver when new stuff is announced (3 months later and sometimes with features that get removed.) Last time I visited an Apple store, I almost ran away: I am scared of hospitals and was almost terrify about the look of their clinical displays. One goes to wonder why the sales people are not dressed in white blouse.
The fact that Apple is secretive about stuff is no news to the community. After all, Steve was very unhappy about the latest coup with the iMac and looks at what's happening to his buddy Scott from Sun when the whole speech was online one week before he gave it to the Linux keynotes. This is not really good PR. But this is also a double sledge hammer. When the ipod came out, no third party accessories were available for the little device because Apple didn't want anybody to know about it. It takes time to manufacture stuff when you are a little shop and you want to make good margins. This is also somewhat killing the inventive side of addon shops. When the mac color scheme switched from Flowerpower to white, all the 3rd party ended up having tons of accessories that looked totally out of place on the pasteurised looking device. You can even still find blueberry and lime usb ports in some shops. Yuk!
Plus, it's not like it's gonna big and change the world (like the last time they said that, this was when they introduced the ipod.) If the g5 was out, we would have Mot and IBM all bragging about it just to slam back Intel and AMD way before it makes it to the mac platform because prices would be still too high for Apple to make the type of fantastic margin they can achieve with G3 and G4 (chips that are solely used in network gear beside them). So maybe another gizmo that works only on the mac platform (for sure) or a software bundled with the machine that competes (and kills) another group of developers all together. Imagine if Apple had as much market share as Microsoft. That would be called anti competitive and Jobs would be the tyran. But wait, it's obviously time to ship 10.2 (aka Jaguar) a year and half after the original OS, and finally come up with something that was on the specs announced at the 10.0 release. The only trouble is that it won't work well on system that were bought last quarter. Insanitely great marketing folks! Thanks to the community I happily run Linux on my 2001 iBook. No need for rumors to do that, let me tell ya.
PPA, the girl next door.
--
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.