Apple, Who Sucks Your Balls ??

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=616831&cid=24224769

The journalism community in general-and tech journalists in particular-discourage free enterprise and real competition. They are the worst kind of bandwagon-hoppers and hero-worshippers. No wonder the public does not think highly of the profession.

This thought is triggered by the ridiculous over-coverage of the Apple iPhone in a market full of new phones that get zero coverage from these same people. The Swedish Neonode, for example, brings out a laundry list of incredibly unique features, and it gets only a few mentions. The same goes for little Helio.

While a lot of this can be blamed on the fact that Neonode and Helio don't have the same buzz machine Apple has working for it, that should be beside the point. I say this because all of the hotshot big-market journalists-especially the ones working for large-circulation daily newspapers-brag about how they are not influenced by PR people and they like to do everything themselves. Meanwhile, they all flock to PR-driven Apple. Which of these jokers has written anything in detail about the Samsung iPhone lookalike?

And where are the editors in all this? A few opinion makers, hand-selected by Apple to get phones in advance with the expectation of a glowing review, and the editors think this is just peachy? And they wonder why blogs are so popular. Perhaps it's because you can get a less-corrupted opinion.

The Apple situation is the worst example, though. To me, it's almost a case of "Let's see how far we can go with these bozos." The corporations have already managed to use dubious nondisclosure agreements to get the media to do what they want, when they want. Complaints such as mine usually result in someone saying I'm jealous that I am not handpicked by Apple to do its bidding, of course. I think not. Another reaction will be for people on the handpicked list to criticize the product gratuitously, just to show they are objective. But why are they so preoccupied by Apple in the first place?

This same obsession happened with Microsoft during the heyday of computer magazines. All of a sudden all anyone wrote about was Microsoft. Readers would complain that everyone was on the Microsoft payroll or that the company got so much attention because it "advertised a lot." I'd always laughed at these accusations, since Microsoft hardly advertised at all. Why buy a cow when milk is free? They didn't have to advertise since they were getting it free from the editorial staff.

The irony is that giving too much attention to Microsoft allowed the company to take over the place; there was nobody left to actually advertise, and all the computer magazines shrank in size. Everyone then blamed the Internet. When people do that I hand them a copy of Vogue and ask why it's so thick. It's because there is a lot of competition in the fashion business. One company has never been held above the rest to the detriment of the others.

by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17, @03:16AM