Hopeless Geek

It’s not that I didn’t know this before about them; after all, the bunch of kids that fucked over CES last year and ruined the presentations of a lot of hard-working people. No, this just reinforces it.

In early December, Apple said they wouldn’t be presenting at MacWorld anymore and a lot of asses starting saying that the reason the whole company would miss out on the trade show was because SJ couldn’t do the keynote due to his health (which is a rather silly reason to pull a multi-million dollar company out of trade show) instead of the given reason of … it’s just not that important, anymore. Having been to one, I agree. It’s just not that important anymore. The internet has far surpassed it in terms of marketing value and showing up year-after-year is probably a big waste of time and money.

But, of course, people wanted to make it about his health.

Why? Well, Apple’s had a lot of investors worried about the health of Steve Jobs because he’s been getting thinner every time he appears publicly. They worry about how Apple will get on without him, etc. etc. The things that investors do. That’s one thing, but then they made buying decisions based on this. That’s a whole other thing. So SJ writes up a nice little piece explaining what’s wrong and that he’s trying to fix it (and, of course, effectively says that it’s no one else’s business, anyway, which is right). The board responds with a “we’ll let you know if it’s time to worry” statement. All’s well.

Kind of.

Then the bum streaks at Gizmodo throw up the headline that flies in the face of all the facts:

Answering recent coverage about his health, Steve Jobs has published this letter addressed to the Apple community. Looks like our source was partly right: Jobs’ precarious condition was the reason for his Macworld no-show.

I know that reading comprehension is something that’s being lost to the current generation of idiots flowing through public education, but even that is no excuse for getting it this wrong.

Where’s the evidence that it’s wrong? Right there in the original MW press release:

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

This is just the last show to pull from, so they did. They were likely building up to this one to see what kind of effect it would have on their various markets to pull out of the shows, saw there was no hit, and then pulled out of the big one. It’s rather simple and easily verified.

Which is why Jesus Diaz failed to get it right. It’s too easy and clear-cut, so it wouldn’t rake in the traffic. You have to spice it up a little, even if it’s factually incorrect. That, gentlemen, is the definition of a rag.