TMFBent (99.85)

Jeff Matthews might not be making this up, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about.

January 24, 2007 – Comments (1)

I love a lot of what Matthews writes.

But he's nuts, insane, loony-to-the-point-of-unreadable when it comes to Apple.

For example:

http://jeffm...tml#comments

The post is another in his long line of "hotmail lost a message therefore Microsoft is a doomed company" kind of posts, in which he advocates people switch to Macs based on the wisdom of "guru" Walt Mossberg.

Ha.

Mossberg himself is so completely blinded by his Mac-lovin' bias that he's incapable of admitting that the "innovations" he loves so much in Mac's OS (desktop search, etc.) were in fact invented by others, in some cases Microsoft. All Jobs did was get them to market (sometimes first, sometimes not) and hype the heck out of them. The iPod cribbed from plenty of other pre-existing devices, yet Jobs and Co. continually get credit for it, along with the music store, and now, the phone.

Don't get me wrong, I don't love Microsoft. (I own shares from the low $20s, because of the valuation.) I've blasted the Zune. My experience with busted office software after a trial of Office 2007 makes me want to stroll into the Redmond home offices with a flamethrower, but so does working with Macs in a do-or-die environment, as I've done many times.

Macs at work have been, for me, much worse than off-the-shelf-at-Sam's-Club windows laptops. They're great toys, but some of us have real tasks to accomplish. And because Steve won't play nice, and because Steve routinely throws old software users to the hounds whenever he decides his OS needs to look prettier, most of us with stick with Microsoft despite the cries of fanboys like Matthews and Mossberg that we just don't get it.

We get it fine. We're willing to put up with a few headaches, and we just think there's more to life than pretending to be as cool as the kids out there by adopting the gadget they use.

To finish up: Matthews is funny. He doesn't believe the Wall Street BS out there, and he's got a palpable sense of right and wrong. Sometimes. But he's got a major blindspot for Apple and Saint Steve.

Ask him about his iPod. Just don't ask him about Apple's habit of backdating options, and then whitewashing the affair. No room for moral outrage when it comes to flagrant accounting shenanigans at Mr. Matthew's favorite toymaker, I guess.