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Does Apple seed it's own bad press?
Written By Ozone42 on Nov. 2, 2007.
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I've seen a lot of headlines lately about all the troubles with Leopard. The only one I've seen confirmed is the bluescreen install problem when you have a specific app installed before you upgrade. Yet I've seen two stories go across slashdot, several across techmeme, and a few others here and there. It makes me wonder.
It could be just that Apple users are more vocal, that certainly explains how they can be such a minority and yet still produce so much buzz good and bad. My other theory goes along the lines of "all press is good press."
Apple's have problems, like all computers. The difference is typically the problems are addressed more quickly and directly instead of persisting or being not addressable. It happens on both hardware and software fronts. The original iMac G5's had a bad run of logic boards that overheated and fried. The percentage of affected machines was very small, but it got a ton of press. Apple did the right thing replacing the broken machines. There was a similar issue on some G3 notebooks.
These are certainly big deals to those affected by them. Before I switched to using Apple products at home and work, I dealt with issues like these every single day. Sometimes it was with my home PCs, sometimes servers at work, often hardware. Sometimes it would be some obscure windows error, sometimes it would be a widely known windows error that was very specific. The issues rarely got resolved, I'd have to find a work around instead of getting something repaired or patched. I know I'm not alone on this either as I have many friends still working in the PC IT world.
So what is it about Apple that gets the media engines going? Is it because they have such a good rep, that any dirt is exciting? Is it just that people see Apple in a headline and want to click it? What do you all think?
touqen
Written Nov. 2, 2007 / Report /
I think Apple users are motivated by the fear that it might not "just work" and are doing everything in their power to maintain that delusion. </tongue-in-cheek>
dango
Written Nov. 4, 2007 / Report /
Being that Apple is the software and hardware supplier, there is total accountability. Where else do you point the finger at? In my opinion this is what makes Apple great and polarizing. I am among the loyal but I have no misconceptions, anyone or company can make mistakes or have problems but not many execute on a clear vision.
daxgti
Written Nov. 5, 2007 / Report /
They do say "Any publicity is good publicity." At least, I think that's how it goes. :P I agree with you that Apple users are prolly more vocal than the average computer user. I also think it has to do with everyone expecting Apple to fully live up to its own hype about how solid their machines are, how usable they are, so on and so on. As dango mentioned, there's no one else to point the finger at.