Comments on: Excitable Apple zealots fight back

By: Jon T

Jon T — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:55:35 +0000

Well, time has passed and it is fun to reflect on the comments above.

Bill, if you don’t feel a bit chastised, you should, with justification too.

I have had a reply from Darren Waters at BBC online tech, and as you might expect, he blindly follows Bill’s line throughout, defending it with little intelligent input whatsoever.

Just the BBC/Guardian little shits at work I’m afraid…

Don’t know why we bother to get involved really.

By: Harry Wolf

Harry Wolf — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:55:39 +0000

If Dan Eran sounds a little upset, maybe its because he has been tireless in writing heavily-researched articles and papers showing where Microsoft has been involved in many criminal acts that make our computing experience less pleasant, less open, and less useful.
Gates is the richest man in the world for 14 years running, and we have a criminal company to deal with.

‘Behind every great fortune is a great crime’ – Tolstoy

Daniel Eran Dilger’s research and knowledge blow you out of the water, Mr. Thompson – read his website and learn something – soon.

I have also written a letter of complaint to the BBC – I suggested that they hire someone younger and less of a hack, more of a web journalist.
Change or die, they say……

By: James

James — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:13:43 +0000

Daniel Eran IMO often displays that slightly hysterical paranoia that can afflict a certain type of Apple fan, but I read his site because his technical commentary is often excellent, and Microsoft’s long history of exceptional deviousness and sharp business practice means that is not always possible to completely dismiss his rather wild conspiracy theories.

Like many others I too think that once you strip out the hysteria, his technical argument is correct. There is no comparison between MS and Apple, and attempting to paint iPod/iTunes as a lock in is simply untrue. Apple supports the open file formats AAC and MP3, which means your ripped music can be transferred to many other players, whether approved by Apple or no. DRM is another story, but even there Apple’s is less restrictive than that of the competition. Windows media on a Zune, which incidentally does not even play those DRM tracks from previous MS licensed players can only be played on players licensed and approved by MS.

On the other hand, as I receive many Word documents and it is often important that they display 100% correctly, I am locked into MS Word, because no other WP understands all Word formatting correctly. Office uses proprietary file formats for everything, even its email database. That is what a proper lock in is, and Apple is not in remotely the same league.

By: Koen van Hees

Koen van Hees — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:14:39 +0000

Stop the name calling already.
An opinion piece either states facts and bias or instead states that “regardless of fact the author feels this way”. Bill seems to have written something from his underbelly without bothering with the facts.
Daniel has en enormous bias, he is Apple all the way. But he knows his facts and sells some rather good analogies.
That both resort to name calling is a bit embarassing to watch but as a journalist your best defense is facts.
The best thing Bill can do is to show the facts that support his feelings OR state that facts be damned, it’s just his opinion.
The applying of the terms Apple Zealots, Linux Zealots and Microsoft shills is just emotional defense. Again however, his defense lacks fact.
So as an avid BBC reader, I am still waiting for Bill’s real defense, either a nicely written “Bill of Bill’s Emotion” or some factual basis for his strange Apple-MS analogies.
Long disclaimer:
If you really want to know, I spend about 50% of my time in XP, the rest in OS X. Like most – but not all – scizo’s, I prefer OS X. I offer no facts to support that opinion. I am not overly fond of iPods and frankly hate DRM. It turned me off mainstream music consumption a long time ago, which is saying quite a lot for an ex-musician. My opinion (go look at facts elsewhere) is that Apple is not part of the DRM problem, and MS certainly is not part of the solution.

By: Maurits Lamers

Maurits Lamers — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:06:06 +0000

Why does it seem so difficult for most people to detach from their emotions and just keep it to simple and plain facts?

I will admit I don’t have all technical facts present, but I think the following can be said:

- The main object of the column was to note that there is some evidence that Apple is behaving like a monopolist, whether this is for user benefit or just plain company profit

- The programmers of RockBox have reversed engineered stuff to make it work with iPods. As far as I know, there is no existing public documentation on the iTunes file formats or the communication with the iPod, unlike the Microsoft Office file formats, for which the documentation has been made public for a while until Microsoft pulled the documentation back in. As far as I know, Apple did not reverse engineer the Powerpoint file format.

- The Open Source Movement is not against the existence of close sourced or proprietary software. Nevertheless, the existence of this movement has had a profounding impact on public services and governements, because they finally see that it is unwise to have the administration of an entire nation depending on one specific software vendor who doesn’t want to publish documentation about their file formats. This conclusion has made governing bodies also aware of the fact that for a healthy competition between companies, file formats should be more open.

As a conclusion: Mr Thompson, I always enjoy reading your columns. Thank you!

By: Jeff Dyer

Jeff Dyer — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:32:35 +0000

There’s no such thing as a “standard 3mm jack”. It’s 1/4, 1/8 or 1/10 inch. You must mean 3.5mm for standard personal music players.

Your techno cred diminishes with every post!

Tip – when in hole, stop digging.

By: Brich

Brich — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:36:00 +0000

I haven’t painted Bill as a MS ’shill.’ The non-standard jack on my iPhone is, indeed, an inconvenience; although it’s a non-issue with my little Belkin adapter that works great with the Sennheiser cans. Comparing MS Office with iTunes is certainly not analogous. Apple uses open standards like AAC, and its app will play mp3, wma and lossless AAC files; so it covers most standard audio formats. The crap MS Windows Media DRM lock-in is a joke that millions of ‘victims’ from Terre Haute to Tierre del Fuego are bitching about. If the majot labels would play ball, Apple would sell all of its music through iTunes without any DRM….where is MS on the issue?? Microsoft screwed its own users royally when it made a lame attempt to create a Zune-focused download strategy.

By: Bob Oliver

Bob Oliver — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:03:08 +0000

Bill makes a fair point – my children who have a mix of players get really raked off that they cannot use any player on any operating system and cannot have a single, easily shareable library.

Those responding seem to be ignoring the ordinary non-technical user who just wants to carry their music around with them – the sooner digital players get back to where cassette based walkman type devices were at the better. In those days you had a variety of players but one type of cassette and the big selling point was style, value and ease of use.
Apple’s iPod was a revolution in mobile music, in the same way the car was to transport but Ford is not the only car and nor should it be.

By: Tim Almond

Tim Almond — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:26:20 +0000

Microsoft has never had a judgement brought against it over the MS Office formats, so with regards to Microsoft being a predatory monopolist, it’s irrelevant. Their cases were brought over OEM pressure, internet browsers and windows media.

Regardless of what Apple invested in their infrastructure, they don’t have to close off their filesystem or create a non-standard jack.

It’s sad to see people defending this behaviour because it’s Apple and suggesting that Bill Thompson is somehow a Microsoft shill (which is pretty much laughable).

By: PatrickS

PatrickS — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:50:36 +0000

The best thing to do to make it clear to Billy that his recent fatuous article on the bbc.co.uk website is unacceptable is to do what I did.

Send an official complaint to the BBC – almost as good as “sending a letter to the Times”!