Tough Week to Be a Fanboy

Things actually happened for once.

Get It Try It

It's been quite a week in computing. It's been quite a week in Apple Fanboy Land too.

Especially Apple media have been buzzing with the Charlie Miller interviews - the talk about how Apple just perhaps maybe might be recalcitrant in applying necessary patches to open source code, thus allowing black hats to penetrate the Rock Solid Foundation™.

That's not really news but the Apple fanboys think it is.

The other big news item is that Pamela Jones is eating chocolates. And this is actually really big news if you know the background and know who Pamela Jones is.

But most Apple fanboys don't.

Charlie Miller

Charlie Miller has now been interviewed extensively in the media about his iPhone exploit. As was made patently clear from his Black Hat presentation, hacking OS X is actually easier, not more difficult, than hacking Windows.

And this wasn't just an idle claim on Charlie's part: he showed - he proved - it to be true.

Small Balls of Pudding

MacSlash posted a story about Charlie Miller nearly four days ago. At time of writing it's garnered all of seven comments. Extreme fanboy sites like Daring [insert appropriate expletive] have studiously avoided the topic - in the latter case mostly because last time Daring [insert appropriate expletive] commented on matters of security he got his head bitten off. But also because 'when you're down you stay down and wait for the storm to pass'.

SCO v Novell

The other big news item was SCO v Novell. Judge Dale Kimball issued a 102 page ruling on the case's summary judgement motions, establishing once and for all the Microsoft sponsored SCO do not own the 'UNIX' and 'UnixWare' copyrights - Novell still do - and therefore have no legal foot to stand on in their orchestrated attack on IBM and open source.

Which you would think would make an impression on Apple fanboys as their system relies to a great extent on open source and the open source people are, after all, their brethren. But you'd think wrong. The Apple fanboys have no clue what's going on and never will.

All the while Pamela Jones who has fought this case for over five years - and been harassed by the fanboys' Fake Steve Jobs - can finally see victory within her grasp - and consequently celebrates with chocolates.

The Real News

No - the real news all week has been one Bob Keefe, a journalist currently working on an article series on Intel Corporation for Cox Washington.

As part of his story was the remunerative 'Intel Inside' programme he wanted an official statement from Intel and Apple why Intel didn't insist on those ugly stickers on Apple computers - and why Apple didn't want the extra perks with which they are associated. [Intel pay customers money to use them.] Being a MacBook user himself he knew full well already what the answer could only be but he needed it from the source.

Keefe approached both Apple and Intel and was in both cases told the same thing: attend the special event on 7 August.

The question was great, and Steve Jobs answered it with great aplomb - but the Apple fanboys went wild.

A sound bite of the event, hosted naturally by Macworld, tells it all.

'And They Call It the Cult of the Mac'

Bob Keefe didn't have many good things to say about these stupid people - and accredited journalists elsewhere didn't either. The Apple fanboys scrambled and discussed actually harassing Keefe in real life. 'Finding myself in the 'online dunk tank' as my editor puts it reminds me of just how thick the 'cult of Mac' can be', wrote Keefe on Friday.

As another 'real' journalist put it in the comments section which was otherwise overwhelmed by half educated Apple fanboys with severely limited typing skills: 'he needed to ask it because he is a professional journalist, not some wacko bloggist who couldn't hack it in a real newsroom and who thinks words beginning with 'f' and 'sh' are the pinnacle of expressive erudition'.

'You know, come to think of it, I want to be - a dentist!' the commenter went on. 'I'll read a book on dentistry, maybe a Wikipedia article or two, set up a website, and then hang out a sign and start pulling teeth. You can read about it on my blog.'

Fanboys, graybeards: as they're clearly in the minority today Apple would do well to jettison them and save the goodwill they can still salvage.