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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 ;)
at future shows. I think they will learn their lesson from the backlash they will get about this. MacWorld has had their own rumors, but they are not being barred.
These sites will just have to sit one out. I will be interested to see what happens at this show. Something big must going to be going down.
So? Apple can do what it likes. It runs the expo, and decides who gets the media passes.
It makes sense for them to not give special access passes out to those who they know are going to publish only the negative aspects of the expo. Obviously, they don't like bad press.
Really, they are just trying to get the media they allow special access to print more balanced reports. You can't say fairer than that!
But threatening the press is never good. "Never get into an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel."
It's their show, and they can do anything they want. Nobody's free speech rights are being infringed upon, since this is a private event. Apple is only trying to stop the wild speculation that diminishes the surprise of Jobs' announcements.
qslack.com
IDG was directed by Apple to blacklist the sites. Nathalie Welch, from Apple's PR group, directed which sites were on the list. I don't know where she got her list from, but it's interesting to note that she herself worked at MacWEKK magazine before coming to Apple, so this is in no small way one person calling the kettle black.
My guess is that Jobs told her to do it.
Kevin Fox
Does anyone else find it amusing that at the January Macworld Expo, not only did Apple goad users into rampant speculation with their 5 day home page teaser campaign (changing the home page tagline to "Way Beyond the Rumor Sites" and the like), but that, in the end, the night before the keynote, the story was leaked by Time Magazine, who let out pictures and an Apple-sanctioned expose of the new iMac and iPhoto?
The rumor sites had nothing on them in January, and for all Apple's teasing, it was their own media partners who fucked up, but you don't see Time or Newsweek getting their credentials pulled.
One has to wonder what the point of this action is. After all, the damage that a rumor site does is done by the time they would get anywhere that a media badge would get them, unless Apple's planning on showing the press something cool under an embargo date which, given the Time debacle, you'd think they'd be ever less likely to do.
Kevin Fox
Did you read the link? Here's quotes:
IDG: Dear Scott, Recently, you received an automated message from the registration system for Macworld Conference & Expo. This message erroneously stated you were registered for the event. We're contacting you to alert you to this system error, and we are unfortunately not able to offer you a media badge *snip*
GP: Unacceptable. I do not understand how this conclusion was made. Sure, there is the occasional "pre-Macwolrd Expo Predictions," but GraphicPower is most certainly not a rumor and speculation site. *snip*
IDG:Scott, We've done all we can to accommodate as many media as possible for Macworld. It's *never* in our best interest to turn away legitimate members of the media, such as GraphicPower, as your stories fuel attendance for future shows. However, Apple has tremendous pull over who we can allow into the show as members of the media. They deem GraphicPower a rumor site and, as such, demanded that we pull your media credentials. IDG World Expo cannot reverse this decision. Call me at 617-937-2532 and I'll explain the exhibits-only pass to you. - Rob
From the site: "Further research, phone calls, and e-mails turned up these facts:
"GraphicPower is not being singled out, but rather this blacklisting policy has been exerted on several Mac centric Web sites that are news and information sites, not rumor sites.
"The blacklist was given to MS&L only just Monday, and they had to scramble to notify press people who had received confirmation of their media status of the change.
Not everyone who has been blacklisted has even been notified.
The black list was compiled by Nathalie Welch of Apple's PR department.
"After a few hours of hell raising on my part, Robert Halpin of MS& L, was in a lot of very hot water with Apple for revealing to me via E-mail that it was Apple who deemed GraphicPower a rumor site. He begged me to give him the list of people who I had sent E-mail to regarding the press blacklist. Later still in the day, he changed the story, saying that IDG World Expo, not Apple, was pulling my media credentials because GraphicPower had not posted new content recently enough... an obvious lie given that he had already documented that it was Apple who compiled the black list."
And it goes on.. but it is clear that despite what IDG wants people to think, Apple had a big part in this.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Perhaps I am in the minority here, but we are only talking a press passes. Apple would be within rights to deny press passes to any particular person or group. They are not restricting overall access, just special press privileges.
Clearly, this is still a bad pr move... at least among the mac fanatics. But let's be real, we don't go to the rumor sites to read apple press releases. We (or at least I) like to surf the rumors sites for the pure humor, and occasionally a tip into what apple's thinking. Knowing of course that until 48 hours before the announcements the "information" has is more than often wrong.
But let's remember... This is really only pissing off the people that run the "rumor" sites who enjoyed (and rightfully) one of the few perks they get. For the average rumor site surfer, it means nothing. For the average mac user... less than nothing.
I think that this move is in line with apple's move from mac fanatics to well informed macintosh advocates. While this might piss off some people, in the end, I think the over all trend is good for the OS...
but this doesn't ban them from the show.. it just revokes their press pass. Well that is NORMAL.
Press passes are handed out to those whom you want to report on the activities.
Nothing is stopping any of these poeple from going to the show and reporting on everything anyway.
with all this Positive Press....
it makes me want to switch...
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
someone with cool clothes and a girlfriend?
That was classic intercourse!
I like rumor sites a lot. I read a number of the Mac rumor sites religiously because I'm constanly curious to find out what's next and when. But I support Apple in doing whatever it needs to to cut back on the flow of future info. Why?
Back when I was a mere bouncing boy I had this wonderful portable computer called an Osborne 1. 1mhz cpu. Two floppy drives, a 300 baud modem and a CRT all running CP/M (DOS without subdirectories for you youngins). All this in a portable case the size of a suitcase. I loved the thing and did much productive playing of infocom games on it. (I had DBase 2, but could never figure out why I'd want such a thing).
Then came tell of a NEW Osborne coming out in, like, six months or so. And this one would run PC-DOS!!! Almost instantly Osborne went out of business. Their cashflow dies as people canceled their orders for "old" computers and planned on waiting for the new one. And along came this _other_ company selling their 'compaq' briefcase computers. I imagine Adam Osborne was pissed.
The moral of this story? Rumors can kill companies, and while Apple isn't small enoght for that to happen easily, I know for a fact that I've told people to "wait a month" to buy a mac based on rumor reporing of a new Powerbook coming real soon now. So, go Apple. Feel free to limit the rumor folks. And rumor guys, please keep working. I'd just die without my inside scoop.
... the Eric Cartman marketing tatic.
"You can't get into my amusement park!"
I'm not trolling...
Yes, yes you are. As a result, I'm ignoring your post save one point:
Everyone says look how stable the Apple OS is, of course, it only achived that by dropping all their old code and building upon BeOS.
Mac OS X has absolutely nothing to do with BeOS. Darwin is a combination of FreeBSD 3.2 and NeXTStep. BeOS got bought up by Palm, not Apple.
Assuming that statement in itself wasn't a troll to begin with, you may want to actually check your facts before forming yet another "Apple is only good because..." statement; like every other moron who dumps on Apple while not having actually used a Mac in the last five years.
Hippies smell.
First, I think Apple / IDG are smoking something funny if they think this is a good idea. I mean, yeah, Apple does have to clamp down on leaks and such. Anyone who doesn't understand Apple's necessity to do this really doesn't understand their business and should shut the hell up. But is this a good way to do it? Shit no.
After having said all that, l have a few comments on the "way to go Apple, shooting themselves in the foot again...This is why Apple will go out of business...The entire world is in chaos because Apple did it again!" crowd that has crawled out of the slashdot woodwork for this one.
Imagine it's, oh, five years ago. I come to the slashdot crowd and ask the following question:
What would Apple have to do to earn some of your business and respect?
Can you imagine? After the flames and guffaws died away I might get some answers like these.
"Sure. Call me when they open source some of their products."..."If they would only use more standard hardware I might think about it"..."If they had one or two killer apps that made everyone stand up and take notice"..."maybe when I can run Apache and Gimp on it. As if."
And let's flash forward to today when all of those ridiculous-sounding ideas have come true. Does the average slashdotter have one iota of additional respect for Apple? I've yet to see it. Frankly I think Apple could make a completely open source, totally off-the-shelf hardware-based, fit-in-your-pocket, fanless, never-crash, artificial intelligence, world changing computer that also levitated, kept your breath fresh and costs $1.99 and most here would sneer at it still.
Parting shot - Libertarians shouldn't use the Internet until they're prepared to discuss how a Libertarian society would have ever created it.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
that this says "Apache: Apple Blacklists "Rumor Promoting" Publications" Folks, although Apache may now run on OSX, this should be Apple. [mandatory complaint about suckage of editors here]
--pi
Did Apple install a surreptitious mod_macrumors to block out traffic to Mac Rumors sites.
Please change this to the apple section of the site. Hate the awful poop and purple color scheme for the Apache section
I don't work at Apple, but I do work with the press at my job a lot.
If this is like other trade shows, the media passes are free to the legitimate press (or are a lot cheaper than a regular attendance badge), and they offer special access to some events. Thus, one wants to limit access to the badges to legitimate reporters. Why would you want to do this? Oftentimes we'll talk to the press about stories "under embargo", meaning they can't publish information on something until a certain date. A legitimate reporter can be counted on to respect the embargo (though I can think of a case when they didn't, the bastard!), but some joker who pretends to be a reporter can't be counted on to do the same thing.
Apple is not blacklisting these rumor sites; someone involved in MacWorld Expo is just cracking down on giving away media passes to web sites that pretend to be real journalists. Oftentimes these web sites are basically being run by some guy who publishes unsubstantiated rumors onto the web. I don't read Graphic Power, but it's certainly not in the league as real media sites like Macworld, MacCentral, MacAddict, eWeek, CNET, etc.
Despite how these guys call themselves part of "the media", it takes a lot more than a domain name and a few articles to call yourself a journalist so you can get a media pass. Media passes are intended for journalists, and giving them away to every wank that can upload some screenshots and half-baked opinion pieces is unnecessary.
If someone were blacklisting the sites, they wouldn't be able to purchase a general admittance pass to the event at all. But in the Graphic Power story, they were encouraged to pay for the attendance fee to get in, like person who wanted to attend the show.
The web sites supposedly blacklisted are more like blogs than real news sites, and denying them a media pass makes sense to me. Next you'll have the geek that runs http://www.startrekfans.com or whatever demanding to be invited to press-only screenings of the new Star Trek movie.
To me this is a good illustration of why Apple is apparently not too happy with the fanboy sites. Even though these sites might sometimes might post something interesting (seemingly good for Apple), they can be a bad source of publicity if they aren't given the special treatment they think they deserve (like coveted media passes to a trade show). And as we all know, Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd. Nor Hell a fury, like a fanboy scorn'd.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Apple's market share is increasing, and they are one of the few consistently profitable hardware companies. I don't always agree with Steve's decisions either, but there's a chance he knows what he's doing.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
To my recollection--and checking a few "computer history" websites seems to back me up--Osborne wasn't killed by rumor sites, Osborne was killed by itself.
The new machine you're referring to was the Osborne Vixen. It could read PC-DOS disks but wasn't PC-DOS compatible; it was another CP/M machine, touted as being better than a PC (and perhaps given 8086 and even some 80286 competition, it was). The Vixen was preannounced by Osborne itself, nearly a year before they were ready to go into production (perhaps because the machine was actually being designed by a consultant rather than in-house). People stopped buying the Osborne 1 waiting for the Vixen, yes, and that did contribute a lot to Osborne's collapse, yes... but that contribution was Osborne's own fault.