and a troll. I used to "not" think that, but you only have to look an ANY of the MR forums these days and start to wonder what has changed. Guerrilla marketing efforts (and that is putting it kindly) is big business these days, and are used for (and against) companies that are a lot larger than Apple. Apple is at the top of the heap in quite a few niches, and Apple has always engendered a lot of animosity from the "pc" folks. I experienced it directly for years from my previous employers IT department, they were hostile, non-supportive, and simply wanted one thing... to replace our computers with pc's instead of Macs (and we were a publishing operation, and at that time macs were THE only real choice in our business).
The old motto of "don't feed the troll" doesn't seem to work here any more. There are either a lot more of them, or they have a lot more aliases. I wish we had some sort of crowd control (meaning troll control, lol) here, like quite a few other sites. Even the way more Apple-unfriendly sites have them. While I am sensitive towards differences of opinion, and having an open discussion with varying viewpoints, many of these malcontents have no interest in adding to the discussion, they want to hijack it, or end it altogether... or they want to shape public opinion among the forum readers. And that is exactly what they are doing... read among the threads for the voices of the confused, who are needlessly worried over non-existent defects and are afraid to go ahead with their purchases.
Fortunately, these folks are usually not subtle, and are easily spotted by their non-existent posting history... or worse their posting history where each post has the same angle, and the same message. Apple sucks, they cheat you, they make crap... etc. etc.
Folks come here, or used to, to share their experiences, and to resolve legitimate problems, or to help those who have problems (which exist with every product, no matter who manufactures it).
Perhaps I have become overly cynical, but yes... I really think that. I also am a bit saddened by the state of the online community here. This used to be more of a safe haven, away from the trolls. I can get that at Ars, Gizmodo, Engadget, etc...
cheers,
michael
