DISQUS

Suing bloggers is just ridiculous. What is Apple going to start doing, suing people for speaking about their products in public too? That's essentially what a blog is. Not only is it a gross violation of 1st Amendment rights to sue bloggers, it also makes me think that they're covering something up. Why not let people talk about their products? If they're built well they'll stand up to commentary. Perhaps in a year when they've had widespread MacBook Seagate HDD issues, tried to sue bloggers, and released Leopard with many bugs before it was ready they fell it necessary to attack their customers. Still, in general, any publicity is good publicity. As one blogger said on another site "I still love Apple even when they're suing us," or something of that nature. As dumb as I think it is to protect a company that violates your 1st amendment rights, we have to remember that in the end Winston loved Big Brother. Anyway, when consumers talk about Apple products it is good for other consumer. Consumers should demand their rights to talk about companies that they buy products from so they can hold those companies accountable when they release crap and over charge for it. This should be a basic consumer right. It drives me nuts that 90% of people can just switch to Linux at this point anyway, but we continue to put up with Apple's iFascist tactics. Oh, I better say in my opinion in case they try to violate my rights. Anyway, if you're podcasting you should be able to say podcast. In general you should be able to say it in any way shape or form. If Apple has advertised it it is probably part of public culture anyway. How can you release terminology publicly and then sue for people doing free advertising for you, etc.
What a bunch of assholes.

Well I don't think it's a secret anymore that Apple had some serious issues with Seagate HDDs and Macbooks, but although Seagate is to blame, mostly, it's not like Apple users get a whole ton of control of what goes into their machines. In fact Apple is so nuts about their image that they censor employees private lives, as I explain in one of my blog post. The point I'm getting to here is that Fuck Apple is a totally legitimate response to the MacBook HDD situation. Especially because if you go to get your HDD fixed with Apple, whether it's their fault or not, they may or may not even have the part in stock. Say at a store, and you may wait many days to have a part replaced that is very simple to repair simply because Apple sometimes runs out of parts and repairing your machine, with or without new parts, is totally at their discretion. Read the fine print on the contract on this one. Plus Apple Care doesn't cover accidental damage, and offers no option to upgrade to a version that does. A Genius will probably say something along these lines if you spill something in the notebook, "Spilled something in the your MacBook, have Apple Care, oh well that's too bad but it's still about 3/4 the cost of a new computer to repair, and we have to send it out so you'll be without it for at least a week." Plus the Genii are so busy repairing phones now that who knows if they can get to your computer and if so how often they even get to work on them in general. Of course stories will differ on this point, whether competent management is at a store and allotting time for repairs to be performed, etc. but overall your broken machine may be a stain on their image so unless you're a Pro Care member, they often won't even let you retain the machine while they order a part for your machine. Often leaving you without your machine for days, even weeks in some cases. Pro Care is another additional approximately $100 service on top of anything else you bought. In general Apple is responsible partially for HDD issues lately because there have been so many. Seagate admitted to issues a few months ago. Still it's tough to believe that if Apple was really testing the machines to a higher level, you know the level that you're supposedly paying more for, they wouldn't have picked up on this issue. In general they're OS is nice, but their hardware is nothing to write home about, and you loose your control over being allowed to touch it, for the most part. Of course who wants complete hardware control, but a closed source OS, and viruses? The only logical way to look at this is that neither Apple or Windows based computers are good in the long run. They are a proprietary, temporary solution, to getting everyone into something Open Source so we can get past all of this crap once and for all and have total software and hardware control, but until we stop bending over for Apple and MS it's not going to happen.