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Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

networkworld.com

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Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#101

Post by Mazy »

gizmo wrote: post #17

Hmm, I think Jon took a few too many creative liberties here for the sake of entertainment. 1. According to Gizmodo the door was broken in because the journalist wasn't at home. He was having dinner in a restaurant, arrived later when the search was already in progress. The authorities acted respectfully with his belongings, etc. There is a huge difference between ringing the bell a few times and breaking the door wh…

on point 2, Gizmodo said that the person who found the phone attempted to contact Apple by calling their support and the response he got from them was basically they didn't know what he was talking about and it wasn't their phone.

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#102

Post by danudey »

Mazy wrote: post #101
gizmo wrote: post #17

Hmm, I think Jon took a few too many creative liberties here for the sake of entertainment. 1. According to Gizmodo the door was broken in because the journalist wasn't at home. He was having dinner in a restaurant, arrived later when the search was already in progress. The authorities acted respectfully with his belongings, etc. There is a huge difference between ringing the bell a few times and breaking the door wh…

on point 2, Gizmodo said that the person who found the phone attempted to contact Apple by calling their support and the response he got from them was basically they didn't know what he was talking about and it wasn't their phone.

That's because he called tech support, who had no idea what he was talking about and probably figured he was some retarded user. He didn't try calling anyone specifically via the corporate switchboard (like e.g. Grey Powell, the person who lost the phone, whose name and Facebook profile he got off the phone before it was wiped).

He didn't actually make an honest attempt, just a show of one.

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#103

Post by danudey »

_3ex7 wrote: post #98
wan23 wrote: post #94

Am I the only person who thought that whole sketch was an ad that Apple probably paid for? Stewart never said anything bad about the products, and in fact every 20 seconds said something about how awesome they were. Plus he had an iPad on screen for a good two minutes.

To my knowledge[1], Apple never pays for product placement. [1] read something online somewhere once.

That wouldn't surprise me to find out. I've seen a lot of shows that use Mac laptops (e.g. How I Met Your Mother), but the logo is always covered. I guess the laptops look nice, but they don't want to give free advertising to Apple.

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#104

Post by danudey »

wan23 wrote: post #94

Am I the only person who thought that whole sketch was an ad that Apple probably paid for? Stewart never said anything bad about the products, and in fact every 20 seconds said something about how awesome they were. Plus he had an iPad on screen for a good two minutes.

I can't understand why Apple would pay Jon Stewart to misrepresent the truth against their favour. He had an iPad on screen for a good two minutes, while insinuating to the audience that Apple's goons broke into Chen's house and stole their computers after Chen gave back a phone that they originally said wasn't theirs.

In reality, Apple asked the DA to investigate what they believed to be theft of property, in response to which the police executed a search warrant on Chen's computers.

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#105

Post by _3ex7 »

danudey wrote: post #103
_3ex7 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge[1], Apple never pays for product placement. [1] read something online somewhere once.

That wouldn't surprise me to find out. I've seen a lot of shows that use Mac laptops (e.g. How I Met Your Mother), but the logo is always covered. I guess the laptops look nice, but they don't want to give free advertising to Apple.

This is strictly my opinion speaking, but the Macbook looks like the "default" laptop. Much like how the "default" video game controller was the old school NES controller (but probably has since been replaced with the ps2/3 dualshock).

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#106

Post by jrockway »

JCThoughtscream wrote: post #39
jrockway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but he paid for a stolen phone!!! BURN HIM! HE TURNED ME INTO A NEWT!

And to play devil's advocate on /this/ side of the debate, paying for property of dubious ownership is considered a crime unto itself, and for pretty good reason. Journalists aren't so heavily protected by shield laws that they can break crimes willy-nilly in pursuit of a story. Or any regular old story. It's one thing to break open Watergate - it's another entirely to buy a phone from a guy that they know doesn't ha…

The movie scene I was referencing describes the situation exactly. Someone does something mildly bad and technically illegal, and a crowd forms that wants to kill for the sake of killing.

He gave back the phone. Give him a month probation or whatever, but don't take everything he owns.

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#107

Post by jshen »

eavc wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google is in a much more big brother relationship with it's users than Apple is. Apple restricts it's HW and what can run on it, but it does not keep track of it's Users. IMO, Apple is really much more Disneyland where everything is expensive, looks nice, and is under their control. Also working as a vendor at Disneyland really sucks and involves a lot of rules which can change at any time. But, Disneyland on…

But iAds changes this. Google only cares about your info to better target you. Now Apple has an ad platform and will want to do the same.

"Google only cares about your info to better target you"

so far

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#108

Post by jshen »

tptacek wrote: post #85
ThomPete wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googles business model requires openes I really don't think it's fair to compare the two. Apple sell products, google sell advertising. Apple is dependent only on their own ecosystem, google on the entire Internet. I would be much more worried about the data that google collects about you than apple. And let's not forget that google is not more open than you don't know exactly how their search algorithms work and hav…

You mean except for the part where Google can effectively de-list any business from the Internet (by evicting them from the Internet's primary navigation mechanism, and the only navigation tool most non-technical users know to use) on any pretext whatsoever?

This is very valid, and just as bad if not worse than the app store. I've been at a company where a large part of our revenue came from people finding our site (legit ecommerce) via google.

We got purged from the index twice without any warning or explanation. We petitioned and manage to get back in both times after a couple of weeks, but with no explanation of why we got banned.

We weren't doing any black-hat seo crap either. It was completely on the up and up.

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#109

Post by onoj »

KirinDave wrote: post #76
onoj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But guy had already returned the phone - so for what purpose was the search in any case - and why not just call him in - it's not like he posted his own face on his own blog or anything? Apple could be perceived as going too far to protect an average design here.

Well that's sort of the part that John (and many other journalists, comedic or not) glossed over: the whole theft of property thing. It's not about recovering the phone, because this isn't Apple's civil suit. This is a criminal investigation. And while Apple may have been instrumental to getting it started so promptly, it's really out of their hands at this point. I think that many journalists are sort of waltzing ar…

I am trying to figure out the criminal aspect of this as (to me) it makes no sense to search the guy who returned the product but it possibly could make sense to investigate the guy that "found" it. (In his story the phone was in a silicon case so you could not see the design). If I return someones' wallet the police don't bust down my door, so what (apart from the "Apple") is different here?

Re: Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

#110

Post by statictype »

arethuza wrote: post #65
statictype wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Apple doesn't charge you $80 to change your desktop background on a netbook On the other hand, they do charge you $99 an year for the privilege of putting code you wrote on a device you own.

What about an Xbox 360? According to this page it is $99 a year to be able to distribute Xbox Live Community games: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/XboxLIVECommunityGames

True. Moral of the story: Big Companies like to give the shaft to consumers.
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