Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/60621

by anderzole • 16 years ago

203 107 16 years ago

In classic Jon Stewart fashion, he reemed Apple...major points for "minority report" and telling them to knock down AT&T's door...that's what they SHOULD be doing!

RodgerTheGreat• 16 years ago

"Reamed"?

mtinkerhess• 16 years ago

Are you correcting the spelling or asking for a definition? Urban Dictionary has definitions for both spellings.

ahk2• 16 years ago

What a turnaround! Just a few days ago everyone was highly sympathetic towards Apple losing one of their most valued secrets (not really all that much though) and boycotting Gizmodo and everything. Now with even Jon Stewart mocking them, calling them Big Brother and asking them to look in the mirror, this has turned into a major PR disaster for Apple. IMO, if they don't respond quickly and positively, this could turn out to be the point where they start losing the coolness/"with it" factor.

sgman• 16 years ago

Judging from their past actions, I don't think they really care about the PR effect of this.

jkincaid• 16 years ago

I disagree. They don't care if a bunch of Apple fanboys or tech bloggers get upset about something, because the general public usually won't notice.

Daily Show gets watched by a more mainstream audience, and I suspect it's a demographic that plays a big part in making Apple's products popular.

ahk2• 16 years ago

Maybe so, but I think it's different this time.

Would you be able to walk into a Apple store again and buy something there knowing that this was a company that ordered the goons to break down the doors of some guy's house? Face all those cheery Apple employees and Geniuses and not silently think if they supported the actions of their company?

petercooper• 16 years ago

What a turnaround!

Apple is the "A-list celebrity" of the tech/gadget industry. People both mock celebrities for minor faux pas and openly weep for their bad fortune.. so it goes with Apple.

Scriptor• 16 years ago

> Just a few days ago everyone was highly sympathetic towards Apple

And just a few days before that everyone was angry about 3.3.1. :)

This video still seemed pretty benign. However, I wonder if this is that start of shift in how people view Apple. They've had other criticisms, for sure, but this is one of the first times they're publicly called out as being oppressive.

ryoshu• 16 years ago

Some of us (programmers) are still upset over 3.3.1. We don't have the platform that the Daily Show has, but Apple will never receive another dollar from me. My brand new Studio XPS 16 is wonderful (the 1080p RGB LED screen is slick) and I'm glad I bought it instead of a MacBook Pro. Apple is free to screw over developers, and developers are free to vote with our wallets.

natmaster• 16 years ago

The sheep flock with the herd.

@sheep: Please leave Hacker News.

vl• 16 years ago

>this has turned into a major PR disaster for Apple

I think it's a major PR victory for Apple. Jon Stewart just told everybody that he loves Apple products, likes new iPhone, wants one and that Apple broke some doors. Now everybody knows that they have to get new iPhone this summer. This controversy spiked public interest and this media coverage would not be achievable for them even if they pay godzillion dollars.

eavc3• 16 years ago

No, Jon Stewart just told everyone that Apple makes good gear but that they've become "the man."

That's a big deal considering the nature of Apple's customer base.

jimmyjim• 16 years ago

Video seems to have been removed. Here's at least one direct link: http://www.cultofmac.com/jon-stewart-rips-apple-for-iphonega...

noilly• 16 years ago

straight from horse's mouth

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-28-2010/appholes

starts in earnest around ~2:00; probably region locked

wtn3• 16 years ago

AT&T, Google, and Facebook know 100X more about me than Apple.

cookiecaper2• 16 years ago

How is this relevant to the video? He didn't claim that Apple had any personal information on its users.

It sounds like you're bringing up an unrelated point to deflect attention from Apple's actions. That is not appropriate!

mbreese2• 16 years ago

I think what they were trying to say is that Apple isn't necessarily acting like "big brother", and that there are other companies that are potentially more dangerous to you personally. Apple is acting more big brother-ish to their developers than their users...

That being said, I'm not sure that the police raiding Chen's home had anything to do with Apple... that's a big leap to make.

BRadmin• 16 years ago

I don't believe he's giving an opinion about Apple's actions, rather the accuracy of calling them "Big Brother" in light of the fact that other companies maintain a lot more information about their users than Apple does.

andr2• 16 years ago

Apple knows as much about MobileMe users as Google knows about Gmail users.

thought_alarm• 16 years ago

Apple control the police? And the courts?

xenthral2• 16 years ago

control is such a nasty term. Steer, like a kindly ship captain.

snewe• 16 years ago

Direct link:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-28-2010/appholes

slantyyz• 16 years ago

For Canadians, that link won't work, but this one will: http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Displayblog.aspx?bpid=a346dad...

hailfawebbe• 16 years ago

Daily Show really dropped the ball on this one.

Got the facts all wrong and didn't even mention how sleazy Gizmodo was in this ordeal.

For shame.

http://bolcroatia.com/

gizmo• 16 years ago

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 when nobody answers and driving a truck through the front door at 60MPH, just because you can. Jon suggests the latter approach was taken.

2. He said that Apple claimed the prototype wasn't theirs, and that they didn't want it back. Comedy Central completely made this up! Apple definitely wanted the device back the moment it got lost.

3. Stop hammering on the "THEY BROKE THE DOOR!" bit. It's completely standard police practice, and it's not the Wrath Of Jobs.

That said, it goes without saying that Apple isn't the little guy anymore, and calling out Apple for its Big Brother tendencies is completely fair.

rayval• 16 years ago

The matter was not something that needed to be attended to at 9:45 pm on a Friday night. They could have done it during business hours. Actually, they did not even need to visit the premises. They could have used a subpoena.

Locke16892• 16 years ago

Take it up with the police, not Apple.

mbreese2• 16 years ago

They could have used a subpoena

If you're investigating a possible crime, you don't say "Hey, at your convenience could you get us your computers for us to look at?" You get a warrant and take the computers as soon as possible.

You can argue whether or not the warrant should have been issued, but once it was, the rest of the raid seemed pretty standard.

wtn3• 16 years ago

That's how you rack up overtime.

octover• 16 years ago

To not play fast and loose with the facts, the warrant was signed at 7pm and Jason Chen reported getting home around 9:45pm, but the search was well underway at that point.

dalore2• 16 years ago

Not could have, should have. He was a journalist which means he should have a subpoena.

dalore2• 16 years ago

Well he was a journalist which should have gave him rights against stuff like this (protect sources etc). They took ALL his computers, not just stuff related to the stolen iPhone, again breaking the law that is meant to protect sources.

And if I recall when the story first broke, Apple did not admit it was their prototype until the pictures and story came out.

FluidDjango• 16 years ago

> the law that is meant to protect sources

IANAL. Nor do I know all about journalists' rights v. police procedures, but I am puzzled at all the press and online discussion about "protecting sources":

Seems to me that journalists should be able to protect sources of * information * - which is different than protecting sources of * stolen property† *

___________________

†or "stolen-ish" - whatever Calif calls found property that is supposed to lead to legitimate attempts to return it to rightful owner.

ugh• 16 years ago

Jon Stewart does comedy, not news :)

mark_h• 16 years ago

While true, the lines do seem to blur a fair bit at times, court-jester style...

danieldon• 16 years ago

We still expect him to get his facts right. After all, we love the Stewart & Colbert for exposing the BS of others, not generating new BS themselves.

onoj2• 16 years ago

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.

KirinDave2• 16 years ago

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 around the edge of this story because at least a few of them understand that there could be some serious repercussions on how shield laws are interpreted in America.

It's a very complex issue that doesn't really lend itself well to a comedy treatment. You have a very shady scenario with an Apple engineer that Gizmodo claims must have “left the phone there” (but is that true? probably we'll never know). You have a shady scenario with the finder who somehow knew or was simply a shitty enough person not to return a lost phone to the bar (that's what I'd do, and what I hope any decent human would do). You've got the embarrassing situation of Denton's gleeful love of checkbook journalism. And now you've got potential criminal activity. It's a total shit show of Silicon Valley fail, no matter what angle you look at it from.

Daily Show just chose the funniest angle to view it from, but definitely not the most accurate or comprehensive. That's fine; outside of political satire they really don't have any assumed duty or responsibility to their viewership.

oconnor0• 16 years ago

Maybe the point of asking "THEY BROKE THE DOOR!" is to raise the question: why is anyone breaking doors for a phone?

Mazy• 16 years ago

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.

danudey3• 16 years ago

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.

ronaldj• 16 years ago

This is great. Apple isn't the company I fell in love with. Can anyone say that this still represents the Apple we know today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USn5t5nQWU8

andreyf• 16 years ago

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Sounds like the Apple I know and love allright :)

nir• 16 years ago

Yeah, also fits Wal Mart, Microsoft, McDonalds, Goldman Sachs...

jrockway4• 16 years ago

Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one. But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the fuck is going on?! It's all mixed up!

At least Apple doesn't charge you $80 to change your desktop background on a netbook. But otherwise, I agree.

Apple is hurting the field -- locking down hardware, mandating woefully outdated legacy programming languages, and specifically crippling their hardware and software. Microsoft, on the other hand, is not nearly so bad. At least they are trying to push F# on the world, which I see as a good thing.

omaranto• 16 years ago

What do you mean by the $80 to change the background bit? (I'm not disagreeing, I genuinely don't know what you're referring to.)

jrockway4• 16 years ago

Windows 7 Starter does not have the ability to change the desktop background. You have to upgrade to "Windows 7 Home Super Awesome OMG" or whatever to get that.

rythie• 16 years ago

1. Apple doesn't make a netbook

2. The cheapest Laptop Apple sells costs $999. The iPad costs $499. Where as the most popular netbook on amazon.com costs $362 (Asus EeePC 1005PE). This is certainly more than the $80 difference Microsoft charge.

statictype2• 16 years ago

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.

arethuza• 16 years ago

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

GHFigs3• 16 years ago

Why do so many people seem to fixate on the door?

JCThoughtscream2• 16 years ago

Doors and locks are deeply ingrained symbols of privacy and access. The police busting down his door is, as Stewart notes, behavior we expect for /meth labs/, not bloggers.

jrockway4• 16 years ago

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

siculars• 16 years ago

I'm really with Stewart on this one. Both in that I love Apple products and that I think Apple is becoming "The Man" they used to rail against. Can you be a dominant player and not be "The Man"? Well, I think Google is making a good go of it.

For what it's worth I'm going to Google I/O this year and not WWDC. Market be damned, my philosophy compels me to seek out open. And nowadays Google is out-opening Apple.

ThomPete• 16 years ago

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 have no saying on the premises used to rank you.

Retric• 16 years ago

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 only has the power to kick you out not hand out details of your private life.

PS: I used to develop for Mac OS 8 and while it sucked for a completely different set of reasons it still sucked. I don't think Apple really understands how important developers are because they tend be the first mover and don't have to work to get them.

tptacek• 16 years ago

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?

fnid2• 16 years ago

Google is much more "Big Brother" then Apple. WHY?

Because if you don't use Apple products, Apple doesn't care. They don't track you and they don't store your information.

Google however is a different case. Even if I don't intend to use Google's products, I don't search from their site, and I am not a customer of any of their products, they STILL track me through javascript files linked to or embedded by other websites I do visit.

I can choose not to be tracked by Apple, but unless I take extreme measures, like blocking google domains in my HOSTS file, which I do, I can still be tracked by them -- against my explicit consent, which is exactly what Big Brother did.

akshaybhat2• 16 years ago

javascript cdn tracks you huh? Are you on LSD or something. what is next google seceret agreement with firefox to track ssl certificate usage?? ppl like you arent worth to be on this forum.

fr0man• 16 years ago

I'm trying to figure out when Apple wasn't "The Man". Even when they were slugging it out with M$ and IBM in the 80s, they weren't small potatoes. And frequently engaged in scorched earth business practices.

pkaler• 16 years ago

There are a couple errors in Jon Stewart's reporting. We don't know if the phone was lost or stolen.

If it was stolen then Gizmodo has broken the law.

If the phone was lost and Gizmodo did not attempt to return the phone then Gizmodo has broken the law.

It appears that Apple reported the lost/stolen phone to the DA. We don't know when. It may have been before or after the story broke.

Frankly, this whole story is overblown. It should strictly be a legal matter but it has turned into a TMZ/Valleywag story.

cookiecaper2• 16 years ago

Are there laws against attempting to return the lost after you've taken photographs of it? They did return it, they just took some pictures first.

Locke16892• 16 years ago

There are laws against knowingly buying stolen property or property known to belong to someone else.

monkeygrinder2• 16 years ago

Shame, I can't see this video from UK. 'Not available in your country'. Still don't understand the reasoning behind regional limits on online video - esp as it airs on TV.

cmang2• 16 years ago

I think it may have to do with advertising targeting different regions. If they're advertising something you can't buy in your country, then what is the advertiser paying for?

monkeygrinder2• 16 years ago

Still, they can change the ad - based on your IP address. No, it's up to the content owners. Luckily i've found a workaround: http://www.labnol.org/internet/video/youtube-blocked-video-n...

c3o• 16 years ago

That's because they have a contract with Channel4 to stream it in the UK: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-daily-show-with-jon-s... Not sure if the episode mentioned is already on there, since I in turn can't view the videos there...

xenthral2• 16 years ago

Awesome, they recorded the gizmodo website shot (2:17) with firefox :)

schmidp• 16 years ago

While the facts don't work out, am I the only one who enjoyed the clip?

I think it's hilarious and I he pretty much gets the fear/thoughts of many Apple fans/developers/users.

hkuo2• 16 years ago

This actually saddens me on Jon Stewart's part. I'm a huge fan of his with his ability to report the more truthful side of politics. This lessens his credibility to me since his facts are misrepresented or missing. He completely ignores the "finder's" role in this and his not-so-secret desire to make money on his discovery, and fails to address the moral obligation on Jason Chen's part as a professional journalist, all for the purposes of making Apple look like the only bad guy here. Ergo, all for the purposes of making a "funnier" bit for the purposes of entertainment.

Additionally, his jab at Gray Powell joking that he was using the iphone to pick up chicks takes the cake. Completely false and misleading! I think Jon Stewart needs to take a look in the mirror on this one.

eavc3• 16 years ago

In the interest of humor, some details drop out and some are glossed over.

This story resonates because of all the other ways Apple now resembles what they used to rebel against. The stormtroopers thing is just a very visual metaphor.

sophacles2• 16 years ago

You are aware that Jon Stewart is a comedian, with a comedy show on a channel devoted to comedy right? The only place the news and facts come in is when they are the basis for a joke.

rosshudgens• 16 years ago

This is the problem with Jon Stewart's platform. People take it too seriously. Stewart has explicitly said that taking him seriously is a misstep - don't. He is going to say some poignant, legit stuff, but if you take it as a comprehensive take on the news, you're doing him a disservice.

hkuo2• 16 years ago

True. Good point. I suppose my main disappointment is in the fact that he has generally had a good track record of distilling complicated things down to common sense "no-duhs". But he's failed at this in this case, to me at least.

paulgb• 16 years ago

Canada link to video: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-ste...

adolph• 16 years ago

The word according to Jon: it can't be a criminal act if you blog about it afterward.

wan23• 16 years ago

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.

_3ex72• 16 years ago

To my knowledge[1], Apple never pays for product placement.

[1] read something online somewhere once.

danudey3• 16 years ago

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.

danudey3• 16 years ago

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.

Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"

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