I am working on a new ebook based on a personal, health crisis and will start taking preorders this week at Amazon: How I Beat Diabetes, qualifying repeatedly that Joe Wilcox is not a medical professional.
On July 13, 2013, my doctor called frantic about my glucose level. Day before, she drew blood for routine check on something else, and the lab ran the full panel. The number: 212 mg/dL Anything below 100 is safely normal.
As a personal exercise exploring the tone of my BetaNews stories about Apple, I reviewed all of them written over the past 10 months—just 26, which isn’t many. I did this because, despite the last two posts (here and here) about Apple apologists, reader response does matter. Some critics harp about balance, and I admit there’s no glowing love for the company expressed in most of my stories.
There shouldn’t be. What some people call negativity, I see as constructive criticism. Then there is straight news reporting, which needn’t praise or raze. I prepared the list for myself and post it here mostly for my reference. But it’s a good look at my most recent news stories and analyses about Apple.
I started writing about Apple in 1999, when reporting for CNET News.com, and quickly earned a reputation for being anti-Apple. As a Mac user, the accusation puzzled me, because I didn’t yet understand how zealots sought to undermine journalists who wrote anything less than positive about the company.
My reputation got so bad that I couldn’t even deliver welcome news. In a January 2001 scoop, two reliable sources confirmed that Apple would break the 500MHz gap with new Power Macs. One Mac enthusiast site—apologies, I can’t find the link—said the story only made sense if untrue, because my news pieces were negative. So I must have written to lift Mac users’ hopes so they would be crushed when then-CEO Steve Jobs didn’t announce a 733MHz Power Mac.
Three-and-a-half years ago, “I am not anti-Apple” posted to BetaNews. I reaffirm that position in the first of two posts looking at my experience dealing with Apple fanatics—the majority who appear to use tactics taught by Guy Kawasaki in the late-1990s when he was the company’s chief evangelist.
Any long-time journalist knows the drill. You write X story about Apple and the innuendo-carting cultists swarm in accusing you of Windows bias and shilling for Microsoft. Or in this decade, Google. The accusations whack the writer’s credibility often with no substance (e.g., facts) to support them. I credit (some would blame) Guy for the Mac cult attack squads that still clobber people writing presumed negative Apple stories today. Sure their numbers are diminished, but the ferocity of the few still bites.
Yesterday, I griped about how effectively Apple PR sets the Fourth and Fifth Estates speculating and rumormongering. What coincidence! Today, 9to5Mac published Mark Gurman’s gripping inside look into Apple’s PR strategy. The story, “Seeing Through the Illusion: Understanding Apple’s Mastery of the Media“, is fine example of the kind of news reporting too often missing on the web today. His multi-section report is well-organized, believably-sourced (even where anonymously), and accurate—to which I can attest based on my experience dealing with Apple as a journalist. He also validates many of my ongoing complaints about how bloggers and journalists report about the company.
I am thoroughly impressed by Matt’s report, not because I agree but know it to be true. I have interacted with all the principal PR people that he identifies. He writes about my experience, and that of other long-time tech journalists. More importantly, I like his tone, which even when recounting something many readers will take as negative about PR, is flat. His story is balanced, well-sourced, and believable.
The Apple media invites are out today, and I am disappointed to see how effectively the company manipulates the Fourth and Fifth Estates and how willing are they to be led. For the record, I got no invite, nor did I expect one.
To the Apple marketing team, I tip my hat in recognition for job well-done. Please enjoy a well-deserved laugh on me. You earned it. The venue choice already has some blogs and news sites a-going.
Some sincerely given advice/analysis: Apple should call the next handset iPhone Air. The name better fits product and marketing objectives for the two other Airs—iPad and MacBook—and communicates clearer connotations about benefits. Besides, getting away from numbering would make iPhone nomenclature more consistent with other Apple products and make way for getting off the obsessive upgrade treadmill.
For my summer “Microsoft All-In” experiment, which also meant for a time giving up Google, I moved my main email domain from Google Apps for Business to Office 365—the latter through my registrar rather than Microsoft directly. I had used the domain on Apps for five years.
The registrar did all the setup for MX records and such, and I expected to do it all for myself when switching back to Apps—that was my experience half-a-decade ago. My how things have changed. Setup was scarily easy—much, much more than expected.
Today, over at BetaNews, my colleague Mark Wilson asks:
“Twitter may be within its rights to block ISIS beheading content, but is it right?” The social service did more—suspending accounts for some users who shared the gruesome video depicting the slaughter of front-line journalist James Foley, who was held in captivity for about two years. Mark writes:
Twitter has a responsibility to allow events to unfold without intervention. The sheer number of people using the site means that it is possible to get a fairly balanced view of what is going on in the world—do a little research and you should be able to find supporters of every side of just about any story or argument. But for this to work, censorship just cannot happen.
I agree but see far darker implications with respect to news reporting.
The Atlantic offers an astute assessment of Richard Nixon’s media machine and how other presidents adopted or adapted the playbook. The story, one of many during the 40th anniversary year of resignation, is a must-read for journalists, particularly those covering politics.
I am a long-standing critic of the current administration’s aggressive, anti-media tactics. The Nixon and Obama White Houses share in common a general disregard for the Fourth Estate. Interference in the newsgathering process is commonplace and extends beyond the White House.
That’s the question on my mind since I started self-publishing ebooks about a year ago. Falling ebook prices and rising number of cheap reads—an increasing number of them serials built around single characters—offer readers bountiful choices. What’s good for consumers may not be best for producers, though. If 99 cents is the value of all books, who can make a living writing them? The answer to that question makes Amazon the savior of publishing or the great Satan destroying it.
I write about this today because overnight Amazon sent long email “Important Kindle request” announcing Readers United. But the letter didn’t come to me as a reader but as an author, from Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon and publisher Hachette are engaged in a dispute that, long-term, could affect future ebook pricing. Hachette Authors United seeks resolution from Amazon, which calls on readers—and writers—to respond in kind.
So you may know that I’m about half-way through a flailing crowd-funding campaign to raise seed money for my first fiction book. Here’s the campaign page But don’t go there. Go here instead. I started the campaign by offering a free, condensed preview of the book, My Blood. Read it. If you enjoy the 8,000-word teaser, and want to read the book, go to the campaign page and contribute. The more mullah I raise, the faster the book arrives.
If you don’t think much of the preview—or it’s just not your kind of story—contribute another way. Tell me what’s wrong or what you would rather read instead. I mean: that you would pay for.