Is the media biased towards Apple or is Dvorak off his meds again?
I'm long overdue for a good old fashioned rant, so the pointer to this article couldn't have come through my inbox at a better time.
Answer me this... what the hell is wrong with John C. Dvorak?
In a recent column, Dvorak asserts that the mainstream press plays favorites with all things Apple and that Microsoft gets treated unfairly as a result. According to him, a whopping 90% of the mainstream press uses a Mac, which makes them unable to cover Apple or Microsoft without bias. I am not sure where he pulled that number from, but I hope it was painful. Dvorak has uncovered a huge conspiracy that goes beyond the writers themselves. It extends to newsroom editors, who, according to him, are also all Mac users, which makes them unqualified and "out of touch" with what their writers should really be writing about. The irony is that this column appears on the Fox News website. And we all know how "fair and balanced" Fox is. But I digress... [more after the jump]
"Microsoft can roll out a dozen cool products, and the media goes ga-ga over the video iPod — a rather late-to-market Apple product. They all swoon over the prospect of paying $2 to download an otherwise free TV show so they can have the privilege of watching it on a 2-inch screen."
When was the last time Microsoft rolled out a dozen cool products, anyway? Let's see... There's the Xbox 360, which I seem to recall a few people mentioning. And Windows Vista, which has been hyped plenty - despite the fact that it still isn't shipping and there's nothing terribly innovative about it that Apple (those bastards) hasn't already done. What was that about late-to-market? And we're supposed to believe that "the reason for this is that today's newspaper and magazine tech writers know little about computers..." Hey Walter - Dvorak just called you stupid. Are you going to stand for that?
You know what, though? Maybe John is right. Maybe the press needs to spend more time writing about Microsoft. I'd like to see more coverage about viruses and spyware and gaping security holes. The more exposure that stuff gets, the more people will be inclined to switch to a Mac and the press couldn't just ignore that so they'd have to start writing about the Mac again. It's a vicious circle, indeed.
Microsoft is no underdog and I'm not going to feel sorry for a company that has the bulk of the world's marketshare. If Gates & Co. wanted to dominate the media, I'm sure they'd find a way to do it, just like they dominated the PC market. They could start by innovating as rapidly as Apple has been instead of duplicating what Apple has already done. Which, interestingly, is what Dvorak encourages them to continue doing! ["Probably the smartest thing Microsoft could ever have done was copy as much of the Mac OS as it could"]
While it may be true that Apple has been getting a ton of press coverage in recent times, I don't really see where it's been at the expense of Microsoft. Then again, what the hell do I know. I'm just an ignorant tech writer who doesn't know anything about computers and I use a Mac.
[Thanks, Jeff K!]
