| Home > Of things Mac > "Fair and balanced" tech reporting: what certain technology pundits have in common with Fox News, and that news isn't good. |
| "Fair and balanced" tech reporting: what certain technology pundits have in common with Fox News, and that news isn't good. | | Date Created: 23 Jan, 2007, 07:26 AM |
 So I've been ill in bed most of the weekend, and stayed there Monday trying to overcome fever and sore throat from a suspected flu of some sort. That's the problem when you have people traipsing into your place of work bringing all sorts of bugs with them.
My bedroom where I am recuperating is not equipped with a TV, so with the Powerbook and wireless ADSL2+, the next best thing are the free movies and podcasts to watch and listen to via YouTube, alluc.org (beware if you suffer epilepsy with all the flashing ads.) and iTunes (I'm really enjoying my discovery of NPR's Wait, Wait.. Don't tell me!)
So in the middle of the day, having got some extra sleep late morning, I finally got to see on YouTube the documentary "Outfoxed", a 2004 expose of the relationship between the GOP and the Fox news network. (A review here).
The secondary aspect of the video was also about influence, that of Fox executives deciding the issue of the day for the affiliate stations, and how "guests" would be invited to return - to go on to become resident experts - if they took a certain line of thinking.
Now when I had cable-TV at home before I dumped it as an atrocious waste of money (noted in a 2004 blog entry here following my discovery of BitTorrent), it delivered to me the Fox network, given the cable service was that of Foxtel, an Australian consortium partly owned by News Corporation, the owner of the Fox Network, amongst many other media companies, as the documentary attests.
It always amused me that the Fox Network's mantra was to describe itself as "fair and balanced" and that its highest rating program should have a section known as the "no spin" zone, as if to reinforce the company motto.
Essentially, as I saw it, and Outfoxed reinforced it with telling examples, Fox news network uses the same means to manage challenges to its authority or purpose as Microsoft apologists - fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Or a "If you're not with us, you're against us" mentality. Sound familiar? The world feels safer if it's divided this way. In Clinical Psychology, it's referred to as "dichotomous thinking" one of the many forms of problem-making thinking described on handouts I give to patients as we work through their concerns.
Informing my reflections on Outfoxed, Americans and Britons need to be reminded perhaps that Australia also has in place a conservative government who has fully supported the War on Terror, and who also has troops deployed in Iraq. We too have been subjected to FUD these past five years, some say reaching scandalous proportions prior to the last election with the so-called "Children overboard" affair.
Australians, however, can be extremely cynical towards their politicians as we don't possess a strong sense of nationalism, nor have we granted "Commander in Chief" like powers on our Prime Minister. Unlike American politicians, not having served in the military means no loss of brownie points. Australians in general have a healthy disregard for people in uniforms, and our following the US into Vietnam decades ago still sits uncomfortably in the national psyche, such that Australians were amongst the first to see the Iraq situation going that way sooner than many in the American media were prepared to say.
So now you know my mindset as I awake early again coughing and spluttering to read Rob Enderle's latest FUD regarding the awful year Apple will have in 2007. He disses the iPhone as expected, suggesting the LG Prada will trump it (merely because it too has a touchscreen) before going on to rave about Vista and its imminent release.
You know he's clutching at straws when his article, published in the context of an online tech journal, starts by saying what a great gaming platform Vista will be, performing as well as stand alone game boxes.
As I read his article, I am struck by its similarities to how Fox News handles conservative versus progressive issues and spokespeople. Claiming to be fair and balanced (aren't all technology consultants?) yet overlooking or minimising certain aspects of the story or confabulating. Or merely giving the interviewer what they want to hear in order to be invited back for another time (see Macdailynews for this flip-flop, to use the political term exploited in Outfoxed)
He labels Apple's OS X Tiger an "aging system" in the following context, where he notes Leopard, Tiger's replacement, wasn't mentioned at the Macworld keynote:
"(It) means Apple will have an aging operating system on aging hardware that probably won't get the needed refresh until mid-year if Apple hits it (sic) dates -- and given the lack of Leopard content at MacWorld, the company probably won't hit its dates."
So, according to this kind of thinking (yes, there is a clinical term for it), without Leopard on show to dilute the iPhone announcement, there is sufficient evidence that Leopard will be delayed, yet again. Yet again? Sorry, couldn't help myself, since Enderle's article is about Vista, and so delayed releases were foremost on my fevered brain. As for ageing hardware, the whole range has just been re-equipped with Intel CPUs, and there is no evidence of new models or further updates being delayed or not on the drawing boards.
What about his iPhone pronouncements? Enderle took his time releasing his views on the web, no doubt fearful they would be drowned out in the cacophany of other naysayers.
Of the LG Prada as competition: "LG has a lot of phone experience, so the Prada probably will be more reliable, initially, than the iPhone, and the Prada co-brand should help with its exclusivity image. It will show up in Europe next month and probably benefit a lot from the iPhone hype that is already driving coverage for it. Initially, it will debut in Europe only, but expect to see a few of these find their way to the U.S."
Except they're unlikely to be compatible with much of the American cell networks but at least you'll have an exclusive brick to tout around with you. Pairing up with Prada is a calculated risk in order to bring cachet to a new product at a high price. It looks, when not in operation, like an iPhone: large wide screen and no visible controls. But the rest is, like most of Enderle's article, guesswork in the guise of authorative comment: FUD in otherwords.
More: "Because the iPhone is still months off, many who might have otherwise purchased an iPod in the first half of the year will likely hold and wait to see this thing before they purchase. That should put a drag on iPod sales on top of what typically comes after a really good quarter -- and its fourth quarter 2006 was a really good quarter. A lot of folks have new iPods as a result, and these people won't be buying new ones anytime soon."
So which is it Rob - iPhones won't sell because people already bought iPods Q4 2006 and so don't need another iPod in June 2007; or people didn't buy iPods in 2006, would have in 2007 Q1 or Q2, and are now waiting until June 07 to see the iPhone in action?
You know, as I recall, people said (there's another Fox expression) that the iPod-mini when introduced would canibalise sales of full-sized iPods, especially at its retail price on release of $259, or perhaps it was the other way around: "For another few dollars, you can get a full sized iPod with 15GB, not 6GB in the mini".
Of course, we know what happened in that situation, don't we? FUD was once more trumped, only this time we get a chance to remember the things "people say" due to the joys of the Google cache, where you can dissemble but you can't hide your stupidity and lameness as a tech. commentator.
You kind of get the feeling after a while that Enderle and others of his ilk must think that Apple and Jobs in particular only focus on aesthetics and put no effort whatsoever into product planning. Did Jobs lie to us when he said the iPhone has been at least two years in the planning and execution?
Perhaps he fibbed a little when he said he's announcing it at Macworld so that it's he who confirms its existence, rather than the FCC who must grant its approval as a telecoms. device. I mean that's true, but there are perhaps a couple of other reasons to pre-announce, something not yet seen in Apple's DNA, as I wrote in my previous blog entry.
One: it gives the under-25 group who live on their mobile phones time to save for the iPhone; incessantly pester their parents and friends that it would make an ideal 21st present/graduation gift/commencement gift/going to the first job gift/time to find their Moto Razr packaging and accessories to sell on eBay in May, etc.
Two: it gives competitors six months' notice, something some writers have said is madness on Jobs' part, to come up with as good a product. Hmm... how possible is it that Jobs' is supremely confident that his "five years ahead" statement from the keynote will hold true for a least six months, such that even with his "suicidal" advance warning, the incumbents still come up way short.
Except this time, what they tout as breakthrough now has to be seen through the iPhone filter: Does it stand up to the iPhone's useability and features test?
To which, at a later-in-the-year special event, Jobs can say, "Even when we showed them what we had, and gave them a huge heads-up, they still couldn't match us, much less beat us. It's called innovation folks." |
The iPhone will sport in years to come a succession of Apple spin-offs each using a subset of its many, yet to be fully described, innovations. It will be much copied, poorly emulated, and leave the LG Prada to be the Zune of its day.
Much like what will happen to certain high rating programs on Fox come US elections in 2008. |
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