Apple's intolerable smugness

I'm a fan of Apple and their products, but every six months or so I'm forced to become apologetic about my persuasions. This is because every six months or so, a Macworld convention is held.

The conventions are garish affairs, more about the company's image than about anything worth reporting; they are frequented by the kind of people capable of applauding the most fatuous of Steve Jobs pronouncements. More often than not these conventions are just vehicles of ridicule, used to poke fun at their looming competitor. Apple is nothing if not petty.

There is also much prevarication on display. Take, for example, the Macworld held in January this year, the one that announced the iPhone to the world. Of the many glib mouthings of Mr. Jobs at that conference, this one stands out for its utter lack of sincerity --

114, 000 viruses? Not on a Mac.

This is nearly a lie. Though there are currently very few viruses for Mac OS X, there's no reason why that should not change in a hurry. In fact, Kevin Finisterre of Digital Munition proclaimed, in January 2006, that he would show up one security flaw in Mac OS 10.4 Tiger for every day of the month of February, and then proceeded to do just that. Get this in your head, Mr. Jobs -- Macs can have viruses too.

All this wouldn't be so bad if Apple was really all it claimed to be, but it's not. Its incompetence at handling customer issues is well known, as is its lack of regard for post-release product flaws. As an example of the former, take the DVD burner issue of a few months ago. Apple released a firmware update for Macbook DVD drives in May 2007. By June, there were complaints from hundreds of Macbook users (including one from myself), who claimed that their drives were defunct as a result of the update.

Save for removing the upgrade from their servers, Apple did nothing to resolve the issue. Never mind the myriad complaints on three separate forums; never mind the suppressed indignation of Apple devotees; never mind the hundreds of people who weren't under warranty when they trustingly downloaded the update. Never mind the customer.

Apple also has a bad case of foot-in-mouth. After months and months of deploring Windows Vista at every possible opportunity, they released Leopard (their latest operating system) on Friday, six pm local time. By seven-thirty this forum already had its first entry -- a poor Apple zealot, while installing Leopard on his machine, encountered a hitch that refused to go away. The good man actually waited for half an hour hoping the installation would complete on its own, and perhaps went through a brief moment of denial before giving in and posting to the discussion board.

In the two and a half days since, there have been upwards of 350 entries to the board, and Apple, in response, has posted a makeshift solution that does not come close to resolving the issue.

Grow up, Apple. Seriously. Or shut the fuck up.