Apple Knocks Into the Echo Chamber

Here comes the pile on... Apple's manufacturing slipped up and sent out a small batch of their full size iPods with a virus on them. Bad in terms of quality control; they should have never been affected by this and I'm sure internal processes have tightened to prevent this problem in the future. And I'd absolutely agree they should take responsibility to resolve the issue and to provide assistance to anyone who fell victim to an actual infection.

But the big deal in the blog world? An off-color remark where Apple states: "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

Now the pitchforks are out and a good lynch mob has formed for their dig at Microsoft's rather vulnerable flagship OS. There are tens of thousands of viruses out there that target Windows but everyone is so worked up about Apple's tongue-in-cheek comment.

But the fact is this is a really silly affair. When blogs start engaging in this, it tarnishes the best of the blogosphere. After all, we've had big stories appropriately hit the echo chamber in blog world that mattered. Two recent events that stand out are the HP's spying scandal and the new Windows Vista retail license restricting users to one machine transfer. I'd even consider that Apple, despite its lack of online presence, has had to be more responsive due to blogs describing hardware problems (intermittent shutdowns, discolored iBooks) that may not have come to light otherwise.

But get a grip, we have bigger things to worry about than Apple's little jabs at Microsoft. I mean does everyone forget the history here? The lemmings ad, C:\ONGRTLNS.W95, etc. have been part of Apple's list of taking the piss of their Redmond competitor. Can the skin of these complainers be any thinner?