Who's on a String?

Apple's unique corporate mindset and public relations technologies.

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George Ou today revealed previously confidential - and highly incriminating - correspondence between researcher David Maynor and Apple spin doctor Lynn Fox showing how the latter orchestrated the attack on the former and his partner Jon Ellch. Not many pundits are surprised but their thinking Fox is behind it all is a total miss.

No one but no one can do anything at Apple without the express approval of The One. Today Apple claim to no longer censor their forums and yet entire threads still disappear all the time. Today a good fifteen months after the introduction of Apple's incredibly wobbly Intel laptops defects are still abounding with no end in sight.

Simultaneously Dan Tynan published his 10 Worst PCs of All Time and put Apple - and Steve Jobs - firmly in the #3 slot.

'Many iPod fans probably aren't old enough to remember a time when Steve Jobs did not walk on water', writes Tynan, 'but the Apple III was a fiasco, thanks largely to Jobs' design demands.'

'According to most accounts, Jobs insisted that the machine be built without a cooling fan; instead, the system's aluminium case served as a heat sink. (A mistake Apple repeated with the G4 Cube in 2000.) Worse, the Apple III crammed too many components into too small a case.'

'As the system overheated circuit boards warped and chips popped out of their sockets; users were supposed to pick up the machine and drop it to re-seat the chips. List prices between $4300 and $7400, depending on configuration, only added to the misery.'

Sounds that are reminiscent of the iPod battery scandal, the current Apple laptop scandal - and about every other scandal the supposed BMW of personal computers get involved in.

No one can do anything at Apple without express approval of The One. Not even Lynn Fox. Odds are if you find a picture of her you'll see someone with a buzz cut, a two day beard, a black polo, jeans, and sneakers.