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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

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Monday, June 24, 2002

18:51 - Now this is just sad.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,263566,00.asp

(top)

Dvorak is at it again.

Not content with his bizarre anti-Apple rant from a few days ago, or to let Andrew Orlowski's article in The Register take all the spotlight, John Dvorak has written a piece that staggers the mind with its petty crudeness of premise. He thinks Apple's new "Switch" ads are offensive as hell, and (like Orlowski) he ridicules each of the interviewed "Real People" in turn.

(I wonder whether the Real People knew that this was what they were in for? I suppose this is what Orlowski meant by the ad campaign being cruel and manipulative of Mac users.)

Says Dvorak:

Desperation. That's the word that comes to mind when I see the Apple "Switch" ad campaign, also referred to as the "Real People" campaign.

No, it's not desperation-- it's called confidence, you butt-nugget. Apple is turning a profit, their market share is growing, they've got a stable of best-of-breed software, a rock-solid and advanced OS, and computers that everybody's drooling over. Where the hell would desperation come from? This is Apple at the strongest they've been in years, and only now do they have the confidence it takes to run an ad campaign showing people telling real-life stories about their computing experiences and how buying a particular company's products has solved their problems. How the fuck is that offensive to anybody but a columnist who writes articles for that company's competition?

Read the forum discussions. At least the first twenty posts or so, before it devolves into the to-be-expected back-and-forth arguments between some PC guy who can't spell or comprehend what custom icons or drag-and-drop installations are about, and erudite Mac users defending Apple and trying without any success to beat certain basic concepts into this cement-skulled moron's brain.

Up to that point it's great:

Wow.� Criticizing the people on physical appearances and then saying that if these people are the future of Apple it's in trouble.

I thought Mac users were supposed to be the elitist ######.

And

Nasty smirk? You may want to take a quick gander at Mr. Dvorak's picture again...

And

Hey, John, I see you still haven't found your missing chromosome. Perhaps if you pulled your head out of your behind, you'd have a better chance of finding it. You sound scared, John. Scared that the rest of the world will find out the truth. Or do you just need to generate hits? It's about time Apple put it out there in plain sight. Macs are superior. XP is a cartoon created by a company with mediocre quality standards. Place a Mac OS X box next to a Win XP box, John, and even an idiot like you would be able to pick the superior Mac instantly. It is funny to see a fat old man criticizing others on their appearance, though. Keep up the bad work, John, you old fool. http://www.apple.com/switch/

The nice thing is that even the people in the forums who don't much like the ads seem well-disposed toward Apple. (Well, except for the odd person who outright rejects such antiquated concepts as "software innovation" as being a reason to endorse a company-- nahh, it's much more important to relegate that company to the dung-heap of history as long as you get to play fucking Neverwinter Nights.) But for the most part, Dvorak has no friends whatsoever in the forums anymore.

What a sorry, bitter, petty old crank.

UPDATE: Oh, now this is too cute for words. John responds in the forums:

I have no axe to grind and don't really care what machine people use. But I'm shocked by the support that the Mac gets on a column running in PC Mag. Of course this may be because the community is loading up on me with shills who will stop returning after the next column -- which I PROMISE -- will not be about the Mac or�Apple.�Sheesh.

Uh huh. In other words, "Gee-- I didn't think I'd get caught!"

This is the Web, you freakin' nimrod. You think you can post a piece of groundless, vitriolic anti-Apple slander on a website and be safe from Mac users finding out about it because they're not supposed to be reading a PC site? Don't tell me one of the premier technologists of our time is this old-media.

Really, this is pitiful. He read Orlowski's article, then decided that he could say wittier things about the funny-looking people in the ads than Orlowski did. So he wrote up what amounts to a parroting of the latter's piece, only less well-thought-out and less enjoyable even for the PC users in his audience, the majority of whom it turns out disagree with him.

And now he's whining because people have descended from the far corners of the Net to beat his sorry ass into the asphalt, when they weren't even supposed to see him. Jesus Christ.

How tragic to see a once-respected writer sink so very, very low.