Is Microsoft Beating Apple At Its Own Game?

It doesn’t take much to become a technology journalist these days. Seriously. What’s required?

Grab a domain name, throw up a site, write silly articles, collect hits and advertising money. That’s easier than a diploma mill.

That’s a simplistic view of the process, though in some cases not far from what actually happens.

This weekend I came across two web sites of interest. One, OS Weekly, claims Microsoft is beating Apple at its own game.

The other is even more entertaining and beats up on the so-called journalists of traditional online media. Either way, it’s great sport.

First, OS Weekly’s Brandon Watts. He managed to take a non-article, give it an attractive headline, and stretch it into three pages of worthless viewpoint.

How about this? “OS X has been temporarily pushed to the side right now because I’ve heard more discussion about Windows running on Macs then even (sic) before.”

Huh? Confused? Me, too. From what I can gather, this is a poorly contrived way to say, “Uh, Boot Camp is causing people to think about Windows, not Mac OS X.”

There’s an attempt, I think, to stir up a little controversy over Apple’s decision to provide Boot Camp so Mac users can run Windows on new Intel-based Macs.

You know. It goes something like this? “Puhleeze, Apple. All these years you bash Microsoft and Windows and now you’re selling new Macs and one of the features is the ability to run Windows. What gives?”

Despite the articles three pages of weakly worded verbiage, the whole ridiculous headline is a premise that does not an argument make.

Page 2 says pretty much that with this: “Windows is the clear winner in terms of market share, and Apple knows that those who are envious of the Mac hardware will be more inclined to purchase it if they can run Windows.”

Well, duh. This is news how?

It gets funnier, though, as Watts procedes to say, “The suits at Apple...” That cracked me up. Supposedly the “suits” are executives from Apple Computer of Cupertino, CA.

You know Apple, right? The folks who make the Macs and iPods. But suits?

Steve Jobs? Phil Schiller? Tim Cook? Anyone of the thousands of marketing folks and engineers. Anybody? Is there anyone wearing a suit at Apple?

After digging deeply through three pages, I came up with this: Microsoft somehow is getting more publicity for not doing anything because Apple is promoting Boot Camp for Intel Macs. That’s it, right?

The author says so by writing, “I’ve enjoyed watching Microsoft’s response to all of this, because there really hasn’t been much of one. They have enough to worry about with Vista...”

You think? Summarily then, it’s the best press Microsoft has received for a long time and it didn’t cost them a thing.

That’s Apple’s game and Microsoft’s beating Apple at it.

Somehow I managed to squeeze that whole argument down to a paragraph’s worth of lines. That means there wasn’t much of an argument (premise) to begin with.

Or facts. Or perspective. Or context. Or coherence.

I’m not convinced that Microsoft is beating Apple at anything other than market share, ill gotten gains, and more customers who hate their products.

To be fair, Brandon Watts comes across as a Mac user with something to say, though not said efficiently or effectively in this case.

Maybe he’s spending too much time looking at other operating systems. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

The other site I mentioned is The Macalope. Shades of Mac the Knife, Andy Ihnatko, and the Divine Missy T. There’s someone else out there who’s calling them like they is.

Macalope exposes tech mag hacks and their silly arguments designed purely to get web site hits to show their editors how popular they are.

Try this one: ZDnet’s “George Ou’s Greatest Apple Hits!” This is Mac investigative journalism that we’ve come to know and love.

See? So, answer me this—who’s getting the attention these days? Half-baked, over-hyped, pimple-faced journalists, or those who write with reasonable passion, obvious fairness, and a comand of facts (not to mention coherent thoughts)?