thomas fitzgerald.net

I bet you thought that the Consumer reports un-reccomending of the iPhone would be this week’s big Apple controversy (which seem to be a regular feature of the technology press these days), but no. It’s that Apple moderators removed discussions of the report from the Apple support discussions. Oh the horror I hear you say. It’s blatant censorship. Or as 9-5 mac puts it:

“Apple appears to be panicking in its reaction to the widely-reported antenna issue plaguing most iPhone 4s — in its latest maneuver to attempt to ‘unthink’ the problem, company moderators appeared to delete threads which referred to yesterday’s Consumer Reports findings — only to change their mind and open these discussions again a few hours later.”

Oh dear. Where to start. Here’s another one of those things that is blown out of all proportion, but of course, it’s such a loaded topic that daring to point this out labels you an instant fanboy, or even worse, an apologist. But what the hell, I’ve been labelled worse. You see, here’s the thing about the Apple support forums. They’re for support. In other words, for solving technical problems. Apple has been pretty clear about this on many many occasions and they regularly remove threads that are not about support issues, or are irrelevant to the thread they are posted in, but instead are discussing some blog post. It’s not because they are trying to cover up some issue, it’s because it is someone’s job and they don’t want to loose it. If you actually read some of them they’re not so explosive that they would have been worth covering up in the first place. Like I said, Apple does this on a regular basis. I suspect the forum moderators did this without thinking. It wasn’t a directive from Jobs or anyone else, it was the guys in some basement somewhere doing what they’re paid to do.

Apple isn’t the only company that doesn’t want to sell porn. Interesting how it’s not considered a “freedom” or “censorship” issue on the Playstation. I guess it’s ok for companies to decide what they want to sell or not sell so long as they’re not named after fruit.

Ted Landau has taken the time to respond. I’ll return the favour.

What struck me most about Fitzgerald’s column is how little of what he said had anything to do with what I actually wrote. He clearly had some arguments he wanted to present and intended to do so, even if what I wrote didn’t apply. What follows are some quotes from his column with my response.

• “I’m sorry, but that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” [written in reference to a quoted paragraph from my article.]

If this is so, Mr. Fitzgerald must lead a very sheltered life. Perhaps I’m too biased to judge my own writing fairly, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone would have trouble coming up with at least a few things that are more ridiculous. But why quibble? This is a minor point.

You’re absolutely right. It was a bad way to phrase it. But I like to write like I’m talking to someone, and who hasn’t said something like “that was the worst movie I’ve ever seen” or some such thing. I know you know I meant that, but hey, like you said, why quibble. Still, I don’t believe that at any point I made a personal insult to you, so bad form on the “sheltered life” quip when you know that’s just an expression. I was arguing with what you wrote, not with you.

From Gizmodo:

Page was speaking at the Google Zeitgeist forum yesterday in London, when he was asked about battery life. Throwing the blame on third-party developers, he said that apps are the reason people may not be getting a full 24 hours of battery life. Twitter and other social networking sites constantly connecting to draw new tweets or status updates are battery-draining for sure, but even without these apps running there are still problems.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was on hand to chip in that “the primary consumer of the battery life on these phones is the transmit/receive circuit. So tuning that and obviously figuring out a way to not use too much of that extends your battery life…and people bring in applications that are not particularly smart about that, which is what Larry is trying to get at.”

So what you’re saying is that Apple was right then ?

(Read Google: “If You Are Not Getting A Day [of Android Battery], There Is Something Wrong” – Android battery life – Gizmodo.)