Salon – Farhad Manjoo – March 18, 2008:

Mossberg’s column ran for about 900 words; just 70 of them, or 8 percent, by my count, suggested anything even approaching negative criticism. Apple loved the review so much that it excerpted it in advertisements. Apple CEO Steve Jobs quoted it in his speeches. But Mossberg says that his mailbox told a different story. Several Apple fans felt slighted. What did he have against Apple? they wanted to know.

“It’s funny — even if I write a generally positive piece about Apple, I still get more complaints from Apple partisans” than from opponents, Mossberg says. He has even coined a term for the effect. “I call it the Doctrine of Insufficient Adulation.”

If you’re non-partisan, this is all you could want from a tech reviewer, and Mossberg and Pogue’s style likely accounts for their enormous popularity. But many fans of Apple often seem to want more. They care little for honest opinion. They want to pick up the paper and see in it a reflection of their own nearly religious zeal for the thing they love. They don’t want a review. They want a hagiography.

I’ve suffered this first hand. Whenever I think about purchasing an Apple product and attempt to discuss the pros and cons with an Apple-fan, I’m always attacked. Even the suggestion that there might be a con is seen as an act of war from me. Reminding them that I might want to buy does not calm them down in the least. “Might” just isn’t good enough for them. You’re either 100% behind them or you are an enemy. I think I’ll stick with reason and logic versus blind-faith when purchasing tech, if the fanatics don’t mind.




  1. pjakobs says:

    #35, sb:

    actually, I’ve achieved about the same by switching to Linux. And the funny thing is: you completely forget about all those quirky ways that Windows forces you to remember.

    I can today, honestly, say that I have no idea about how to do things in Windows….

    pj

  2. Jamie says:

    Mac fanatics? Religion fanatics? That’s nothing.

    Post something even remotely negative about CATS on a blog or forum, then you’ll see who’s drinking the Kool Aid.

  3. livvidd says:

    The worst thing about Apple are the Apple groupies. P.S. I’ll never forget the mooing! lol.

  4. becagle says:

    Thanks #39 Pedro,

    Now I can’t gat that damn song out of my head…

  5. HillWIlliam says:

    Vista=crapware

  6. pjakobs says:

    haha Pedro, great one!

    pj

  7. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #39 – Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance was catchy, but I think all serious students of early to mid-80s Canadian New Wave bands will agree that it wasn’t until Pop Goes The World, their third album, that the band really came into their own artistically.

  8. NappyHeadedHo says:

    Can’t we get back to making fun of religion?

  9. floyd says:

    #44: Mac _is_ a religion. Believe what the Steve tells you, and don’t examine it too closely or you might lose your faith.

    Disclaimer: I do have an iPod, but all the songs (except for one freebie from iTunes) were loaded from my CDs. I mostly use the iPod at work to drown out talk from other cubicles, and sometimes for music on roadtrips. I like the durability of the iPod, but it’s a tool, not an object of worship/faith.

  10. The Man says:

    Pedro you really need to get outside more, this hate you have for a computer and all people that use it is not good.

    Next thing you’ll be writing songs about it…

    And BTW I like Vista, so far best OS Microsoft has built.

  11. Mister Feline Feces says:

    #47 – Being a Mac user I have no idea what SP1 means. I can only assume SP means “shit pile” when it comes to Microsoft.

  12. bilgo bad says:

    ” Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.”
    The rest of us working folks on the planet who want to get work done use win PCs.

  13. TatooYou says:

    #47
    “good luck installing SP1”

    Smooth as silk about 1.5 hours last week on my Toshiba. If your having problems it’s because of some crap-ware Sony installed on your laptop. Toshiba pre-installs plenty of crap-ware too, but I disabled as much as I could when I first got the machine…

  14. J says:

    # 47 pedro

    “#46 good luck installing SP1. My 3 week old vaio already struck out last night trying to install it.”

    Well there you have it. Pedro has proved my theory. People that have problems with Vista are either retarded or own crap hardware. Pedro has proved both of those to be correct.

    BTW SP1 installed just fine for me and my associates. It took about 5 min and then another 5 min when It went to reboot. When it came up it worked great.

    # 51 pedro

    “#47 guess the U of PA wasn’t as lucky as me and were able to install the pack, to their misfortune.”

    There you go with your crazy ideas again. The U of PA is aware that there are lots of asshat students that can’t tie their shoes much less install an operating system. With the wide spread rumor mill that Vista doesn’t work they probably think it is in their best interest to avoid it until it has been tested thoroughly. In addition most college students, like you, don’t have very good choices in hardware and shouldn’t use Vista because they don’t have the equipment to run it.

  15. becagle says:

    U of PA not updateing to SP1 is not that big of a deal. It’s quite common for large institutions not to upgrade to the latest OS or install major service releases.

    I work for a large public school district here in California, we do the same thing. We hold off and also recommend to our staff to hold off on these major changes until our IT division has tested them. Simply to avoid problems.

  16. natefrog says:

    #48:

    Mac has the same things, except they call them OS 10.x.x releases.

    …And they charge you $100 for ’em. …And they also tend to make many things break.

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