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Anti-Mac Journalism

Richard Forno has done a good job of extolling the virtues of security in Mac OS X. This comes after PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff reported a vulnerability in Mac OS X and went on to write a long and inflammatory tirade about how Mac OS X is no more secure than the Windows OS, and anyone who disagreed was a Mac zealot -

Ultimately, those on the Mac fringe have to face facts: Panther and Jaguar were not better at outrunning vulnerabilities than Windows. I expect other gaps will emerge, and while the Mac OS may still draw far fewer attacks, this discovery might suck a little wind (or is it Windows?) out of Mac radicals' sails. They can scarcely claim this was a minor hole. OS root access is serious stuff. How cocky are you feeling now, Mac elite? Hmm. Suddenly it’s gotten pretty quiet around here.

Printing stuff like this is guaranteed to cause a stir in the Mac community, and as sure as eggs are eggs, the Slashdot crowd responded in true acerbic fashion. What really bugs me is the lazy journalists who print this stuff.

Every now and again you get a 'technology' journalist who finds material a bit thin on the ground (or are too lazy to write anything newsworthy) and have a go at Apple and/or the Apple community by writing an overly aggressive or inflammatory article. Why? The primary concern, I guess, being to draw in huge traffic from the offended Apple community websites and somehow earn respect of the Windows crowd by bashing one of their rivals.

Jack Schofield from Guardian Online is a prime example. I’ve no doubt he’s a respected 'technology' journalist for a number of years, but his anti-Apple posts on onlineblog (a weblog run by the Guardian Online team) only serve to expose his laziness and spoil an otherwise good read.

Don’t even get me started on John Dvorak ;-)

Posted 4 years, 9 months ago on 17th December 2003.

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