Usually I don’t use this blog as a rant but after today’s MacWorld keynote and seeing how news outlets treated these small updates as the biggest news item of the day, I couldn’t pass this up.
I didn’t report on the Steve Job-less keynote at MacWorld because: it was already reported elsewhere and I was shopping at the time of the keynote. In case you haven’t heard of the announcements, here’s what was released:
- iLife ’09, with online editing of documents
- 17′ MacBook
- DRM-free music store with various pricing
These announcements were leaked earlier as well as some rumors that were never announce (iPhone nano). In other words, it was a snooze fest. Maybe it was the best idea for Steve Jobs not to do the final keynote at MacWorld.
I’ve heard this story from several different news outlets today and it makes me mad how the news media reports on stories about Apple.
Amazon, Rhapsody and Naspter already have DRM-free music stores. The Amazon music store already has various pricing as well. How come this didn’t make the mainstream news? Do you really think you’ll be able to get songs for 69 cents a track? The cheapest song on the Amazon music store is 79 cents. It’s because no one does any investigation into news stories and media outlets take every word that Apple spoon fed them and reports them as truth (See last MacWorld Keynote when Steve Jobs stated that Apple was the first MP3 player with Wi-Fi and see Archos and SanDisk go ballistic.)
It gets worse when reporters think they know technology tricks and pass it off like there technology-savvy.
While waiting for The Daily Show, I was watching WTTG (Fox 5) 10PM news here in Washington. A story was reported that Best Buy would be selling re-manufactured iPhones for $50 less than a new iPhone. You were still locked into a required 2 year service agreement with AT&T. The anchor said in the transition before the next story (which was about Georgetown turning down the Apple store front design for the 3rd time) “unless you jailbreak the phone”
First off guy who wants to be on Fox News but can’t and has to do local news in Washington, YOUR STILL LOCKED INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH AT&T. Yes, you can jailbreak your phone. However, your still lock into an agreement with AT&T.
I’ll jailbreak my 3G phone, which people are reporting that the jail-breaking process doesn’t work on some phone, so I can use it on T-Mobile and pay the $200 termination fee and sign up for another two year agreement with T-Mobile only to not be able to use my applications from the iTunes store and have my phone completely stop working when Apple released a firmware update.
Sounds logical.
Also Fox 5 anchor who thinks he’s cool because he passed along a great tip to viewers, AT&T and T-Mobile use different frequencies for 3G speeds. So in reality, your 3G phone will be going from a broadband network to a dail-up network.
Since all the major news outlets uses Macs in their newsrooms and use iMovie to create stories to air, it wasn’t a major surprise that these small updates were treated as the biggest story of the day.
I guess people were tired of the conflict between Israel and Palestine and wanted more feel-good stories, like the endless coverage of President-elect Obama’s kids going to school for the first time in D.C.