iPhone on the Lam
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Mac Media
I have never been a fan of Gizmodo, or anything that Gawker publishes, because I enjoy Engadget (and it’s sister TUAW and I am familiar with their writers. This past week, I was able to add yet another reason why Gizmodo doesn’t happen to be my own cup of tea when they heralded their acquisition of “found” hardware in the form of a fourth generation iPhone.
They proceeded to dance around how exactly they acquired this iPhone until finally admitting that they bought it from some shady character for $5,000. Then, Apple asked for Gizmodo to respectfully return the hardware, no take down notices and no threats of lawsuits. Well, Brian Lam decided that he hadn’t had enought fun and wrote back to Apple telling them that “it was burning a hole in our pockets.”
I have to say it. Brian Lam works for a company that back in 2006, claimed that they had the first ever iPhone and it turned out to be that Linksys VoIP thing that I don’t even think exists anymore. They are now continually obsessed with Apple and trying to bait Mac fanboys to get into flame wars in their comments such as this recent post calling Apple “backwards” over claiming that HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript are open platforms while Adobe Flash is not. Completely ignoring the fact that the statement is completely accurate and relevant to the issues between Apple and Adobe and development platforms on the iPhone and iPad, or, as John Gruber said, “spot on.”
Also, don’t forget that one of their sister sites is obsessed with a pop star with a whacky sense of dress about whether or not she has the correct set of reproductive organs. Because if we could only get a clear answer from her, then and only then will we find Osama Bin Laden and there will be peace and Democratic elections in the Middle East.
My point is that these Gawker clowns are more interested in controversy and page views than they are in actually being the journalists that they claim to be. Engadget on the other hand has never resorted to cheap tricks and I thoroughly doubt they would be doing underhanded deals such as buying questionably acquired hardware in a back alley. Because of stunts like this, bloggers and news websites are never going to be taken seriously and they will now probably have more difficulty acquiring review units of hardware and software for the bigger companies.
This last month, millions of people read the reviews of the iPad written by David Pogue of the New York Times and Walt “Goatee” Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. My local paper, the Salt Lake Tribune carried the review from Edward Baig, the tech journalist from USA Today. Where as, only a couple hundred thousand read the reviews on Engadget and Gizmodo. If Gizmodo pulls cheap tricks like this, how likely is it that Apple will be willing to give them advanced peaks at new products or invite them to the next Steve Jobs keynote? I’m willing to bet that Brian Lam and Jason Chem are on a hit list now.
Above all, is Gizmodo’s cheap tricks going to hurt other bloggers in the highly competitive tech blog sector? Sometimes, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch (no pun intended, I think).
One Response to “iPhone on the Lam”
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Murphy Mac Says:
April 26th, 2010 at 19:43I’m no Lam fan either. The site strikes me as devoutly juvenile and I can honestly say I’ve read less than 5 posts there.
I lost all interest in them when they pulled their stunt at CES and couldn’t see their error – even in hindsight.