It seems the heat has been getting to the brains of Apple geeks, and tempers are fraying not just here in Manchester but all over the Northern hemisphere.
Over the weekend, a couple of skirmishes have broken out across the globe in the Apple World.
It started last week when Steve Jobs – founder of Apple – phoned a New York Times journalist who was researching recent health scares and started using rather adult and obscene words towards him. The journalist a little taken aback, managed to compose himself enough to make use of this unexpected exclusive and was able to establish that Steve’s cancer wasn’t back – and then wrote a story pointing out that maybe shareholders should have found out before he did.
This was followed by developers of applications for Apple’s new iPhone – who can sell their programmes via iTunes – getting unsettled and rather vociferous. The code they need to use on the iPhone (known as the “SDK”), is apparently a little bit buggy and it’s making professional programmers look like idiots as their programs crash, sometimes crashing the iPhone with it.
I’d love to tell you exactly which applications cause problems, except Apple have placed a gagging order on all developers from sharing experience, code, known problems or even discussing the issue with bloggers, journalists or anybody except perhaps their therapist. By the sounds of it, some of them are really in need of a therapist right now, dealing with mountains of complaints about buggy software that they insist isn’t their fault.
Today it was the turn of fan boys who can’t handle groups wanting to ask questions of Apple employees about privacy and rights on the iPhone.
Until recently a local FSF-meister, Matt Lee has today been receiving threats and personal insults from Apple fans. Some have taken to posting an old address of Matt’s on to IRC channels – note to stalkers, I repeat, he doesn’t live in the UK any more – and generally being rather unpleasant.
This was provoked when the FSF decided to run a campaign of Matt’s conception targetting Apple stores with questions about Digital Rights Management, built-in tracking software, and proprietary software lock-ins. Legitimate questions, and Apple doesn’t seem to be answering them, so this might seem fair game.
Except genius bars are there for people with broken Apple kit (they do break, trust me), or unanswered questions about how to do things in software, to be able to go and get support from trained personnel. They’re not there for policy questions, per se.
As a result this was all too much for some and the inevitable blog posts, tech websites and general growling started. I’d post to some of them, but the language is a little rawer than can be linked to by a family blog like this.
A few ill-informed people suggested this “denial of service” against Apple stores across the globe was even more ironic because Matt was himself an Apple fan – except he clearly isn’t – and that perhaps he could be helped to see the error of his ways by “a visit”. Hmmmm. I think a few people need to get out of the sunlight and have a lie-down before this gets nasty.
I don’t know why the Apple empire has suddenly got so irate, annoyed and excitable in recent days, but I don’t like it. No doubt I could ask a Genius about what it all means, but then I’d be the next target of the trolls wanting to “visit” me.
Dim Sum Digital 
