Scoble vs. Apple

Scoble’s Mac crashed, Scoble rants — par for the course. (Earlier this year he had it out for me, too, but cooler heads prevailed.) But he did bring up a lot of interesting points, some sound, some not.

Robert, as someone in the media who works with Apple (just as I work with dozens, if not hundreds of other companies), here’s some of what you’ve got wrong (and right):

[At dinner with a bunch of "smart" entrepreneurs] “I tried to turn on my video camera. They all instantly shut up and said ‘no video.’” - You’re damn right they did! They’re smart, and they’re entrepreneurs. What person with a startup would want to go on a tear against a major company they might one day partner with, be acquired by, lose employees to, etc.? No smart businessperson — especially someone out on their own — would go on camera trashing Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc., unless they wanted to make headlines that might reflect poorly on them later. I doubt it’s as much to do with the cachet as you think.

If you want to hear people (trash) talk, talk to tech journos, whose jobs it is to be honest and on the record about tech companies. Let me put this another way: don’t be surprised all the time when people don’t want to go on camera for the ScobleShow, not everyone wants their every conversation and criticism preserved as public record.

“Apple has an ARMY of people who are anonymous who will come and call you every name in the book. I know.” - Oh yes, they definitely do, and they say the same to me. Although there are also tons of people on the other side of the camp who call me an Apple fanboy, so it’s good times. It’s the whole Mac vs. PC thing, and it’s so tiring. Besides, exactly what did you think was going to happen when you ranted about Apple? Bill Gates would send you flowers?

“The common thing about most of these comments is that it’s MY FAULT that my Apple machine is having trouble. See, on my Windows machine I’m willing to accept this.” - Wait, huh? You’re willing to lower your standards of what’s an acceptable user experience just because it’s Microsoft? No, no, man. You’ve got it the wrong way. Every company and product should be held to the same standards of quality. I don’t really care what they chose their hardware ecosystem to be like, crashy is crashy, good is good, smart is smart. But that’s besides the point. The point is all computers have failures, and you shouldn’t be angrier or more disappointed when it’s either your Mac or your PC. More…