maramine blog

Know what Apple should do with the massive pile of cash* it’s sitting on? Build its products in America.

*$81.57 billion last quarter

“Not long ago, if you wanted to take your business laptop on the road with you, you had to strap it on a burro. [Holds up iPhone] I can download 3 million vaginas in a minute onto this.” - Lewis Black

Jonathan Berger, former Apple intern, recalls a conversation in 2000 during which he asked Steve Jobs why he decided to return to Apple. Jobs’s answer:

When I was trying to decide whether to come back to Apple or not I struggled. I talked to a lot of people and got a lot of opinions. And then there I was, late one night, struggling with this and I called up a friend of mine at 2am. I said, ‘Should I come back, should I not?’ and the friend replied, ‘Steve, look. I don’t give a fuck about Apple. Just make up your mind,’ and hung up. And it was in that moment that I realized I truly cared about Apple.

Good thing Jobs didn’t make that call from an iPhone.

Via Daring Fireball

It looks like Facebook is finally winning a PR battle. Good for them.

Earlier this week, it was brought to light (again) that Facebook uses several of its smartphone apps to take all of your contacts and store them on its servers. Numerous sites ran with the news, but Facebook came forward and calmly pointed out the fact that it displays a disclaimer before taking a user’s contact data and storing that data on its servers.

Well fuck me! A disclaimer! My mistake!

Numerous sites that reported the news backed off, posting updates and new articles explaining that all this user outrage was misplaced. You bunch of peasant idiots! You did this to yourselves. There’s a disclaimer! A dis-claimer!

Let’s forget that not all versions of Facebook’s smartphone apps have had this disclaimer in early iterations. Let’s forget the numerous reports from people claiming they never used Facebook’s contact sync feature and yet STILL found their data stored on Facebook’s servers. Let’s also forget I fall into that category.

Here is Facebook’s disclaimer:

Zing!

If you clicked that pretty blue Sync Contacts button, you agreed that all contacts from your device could be “sent to Facebook and be subject to Facebook’s Privacy Policy.” Obviously, that also means you gave Facebook permission to store all of your contacts’ names and phone numbers on its servers forever, unless you manually delete them.

Obviously.

This, of course, is bullshit. The steaming kind. Facebook knows as well as you and I that agreeing to send your contacts to the company’s servers so that “your friends’ profile photos and other info from Facebook will be added to your iPhone address book” absolutely does not mean you’re agreeing to let Facebook store this data forever. Is there some clause in Facebook’s privacy policy that mentions this kind of douchebaggery? Probably. Does that make it ok? Probably not.

But you signed up for the service! You agreed to the terms! It’s YOUR FAULT!

Congratulations, you’re a contrarian.

If you think it doesn’t matter that Facebook is being sneaky with the disclaimer because it has the right to steal and store your contact data as per some barely-English legal jargon buried somewhere in its privacy policy, that’s cool. Rock on.

And if you believe that Facebook is being completely forthcoming with its users and explaining exactly what it intends to do with their data in the disclaimer above, regardless of its privacy policy, that’s cool too. No worries. 

In fact, just to show you I’m a good sport, let me take your car and get it washed for you.

If after an hour you find out that I’m keeping your car and not coming back, that’s OK, right? I didn’t steal it. After all, I told you I was taking it.

Every writer who covers tech gets accused of bias. These accusations most often come from young, passionate readers with strong biases. Oh the irony. I get comments and emails accusing me of being biased several times each week. Typically, I ignore them. Sometimes, I reply.

When I do reply, I try to be frank and also to use little-boy words under the assumption that most of the people who send these emails are young teenagers who read headlines and then draw conclusions. If my responses are too wordy, these kids will likely lose interest after a few sentences.

Below is an example of one such exchange. I publish this for young writers who will inevitably be accused of being biased. Repeatedly, in all likelihood. If this is your chosen line of work, you will often be inclined to defend your writing, but consider your approach. When I see bloggers publicly respond in the comments section below a post with aggression and insults, I shudder. It’s easy to be defensive but it is infinitely more productive—and less embarrassing—to explain to your accusers why they might be wrong.

If you must reply, keep it simple and honest. You will be surprised how often such responses will either silence your accusers, or even help them to understand why their feelings may be misguided. On numerous occasions, my responses have led to great exchanges and readers who become more loyal than ever.

From: [redacted]
Reply-To: [redacted]
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 04:49:22 -0400
To: Team <team@bgr.com>
Subject: CONTACT Bye Bye

Name: Chris [redacted]
Email: [redacted]

So,

I’ve been subscribed to your feed for ages. This morning I removed your feed and I felt I needed to tell you why.

You have some good content, but it’s eclipsed by your apple evangelism; which is totally biased and not professional. Please say you’re making money out of it, because it’s sad otherwise.

regards

Chris

—

[Response]

It’s easy for people unfamiliar with the way this business works to toss out the oft-misused “bias” accusation, but I assure you that if the bulk of our coverage focused on a company or companies that you favor, you would not believe us to be “biased.”

As it stands, BGR is a business and we have to write about what people want to read about. We cover numerous companies extensively, of course, but Apple is currently the most popular tech company in the world. As such, we cover them more than other companies for obvious reasons: this is what our readers want to read. Apple stories are almost always our most trafficked.

We’ll continue doing what we do, and we’re sorry to see you go. Thanks for being a BGR reader as long as you were, though, and hopefully when the tide turns and the bulk of our coverage focuses on the next big tech company, you’ll come back around to check out the site again.

All the best,

-Zach