Today’s special: Apoplectic over Apple, lax at LinkedIn, bearish on Ballmer

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a dip into the reader mailbag. There’s certainly been a ton of things to talk about — from the future of Apple and Steve Ballmer’s impending retirement to LinkedIn’s turn toward spam and our nation’s turn toward Big Brother. Let’s dive in, shall we?

In “Stick a fork in Apple, it’s done,” I took a few roundhouse swipes at the Kings of Cupertino, arguing that Samsung has emerged as the technology thought leader now that the Steve Jobs reality distortion field has been powered down. As you can imagine, that didn’t sit well with some readers. More than 90 comments later, people are still ticked off about it. Some of them found their way to my inbox.

[ For a humorous take on the tech industry’s shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter and follow Cringely on Twitter. | Check out InfoWorld TechBrief, your source for quick, smart views on the news you’ll be talking about — subscribe today. ]

M. C. tells me he’s glad I’m “a hater”:

Apple is not Betamax. And with the cash hoard they have, they can acquire what they need to stay in their wheelhouse. What Earth-shattering product has Samsung brought out that changed the way we live, like iTunes did for changing the way music is distributed and listened to?

Cat got your tongue????

Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight unless everyone is out of bullets!

How would you feel if I brought a cat to a tongue fight? Tweaking Apple fanboys is so much fun I don’t know why I don’t do it more often. (Look for more of that next week as the next Apple not-so-special event arrives.)

Endorse this!

I got a lot of feedback on my story about LinkedIn (“LinkedIn lawsuit exposes amateur moves of ‘professional’ network“), nearly all of it in agreement with my scathing assessment of the business network’s aggressive tactics. For example, L. D. writes:

I find that the initial goal of this organization has been completely lost, and the acts they perform to increase registrations of new members harkens back to a time when magazine publishers would give away millions of unread magazines so they could tout their inflated readership numbers and raise the prices of their advertising space.

I see or at least surmise that LinkedIn is up to the same trick. There is no intention to verify skills and create an actual “professional” network, but merely to [go] after advertising revenue, with little or no concern about their members’ privacy.

Then there was Cringester M. M., who received LinkedIn emails from a relative who happened to be a mortician and ended up accidentally spamming his entire address book.

I wrote him back (since he’s my husband’s cousin) and ribbed him without mercy for trying to drum up “business” among friends and family.

But not everyone thinks LinkedIn is ethically dubious. E. R. says I went too far:

While your recent post made some good points, I think it was overkill. Consider your comments about the new endorsement feature. I only endorse people for things I know they are good at–I pass by many more than I actually endorse. I’ve also found that the endorsements I receive are for what I consider my strengths as well. While it’s possible to endorse people for anything under the sun, my experience has been that this doesn’t happen.

Proving that people can’t get enough of the soon-to-be-ex CEO of Microsoft, even if they hate him, reader E. M. wrote this in response to my post “The Steve Ballmer farewell tour is officially under way“:

The direction Ballmer took the company WAS different in some respects, chiefly by being even more shameless about squeezing every last possible dollar from the Microsoft user base. The progression of operating systems, which deliberately tries to obsolesce the best operating system Microsoft ever built (namely XP Pro), found dozens of ways to force users to buy more software units than they wanted to.

Ah Steve, we’ll miss ya. Who will be left to kick around when you’re gone?

What the world needs now

In “Meet Lavabit’s founder: An American hero hiding in plain sight,” I lamented that the world did not have more people like Ladar Levison, who chose to shut down his encrypted email business rather than comply with the overreaching demands of Our Uncle. On that one, agreement was pretty much unanimous. J. L. S. S. writes:

Hope that Time names him the Man of the Year. A true American hero. Others could claim the same for Snowden. We must make a stand against the unscrupulous and anti-American thugs of the NSA.

Yes, we must. And if any NSA officials are reading this (or snooping on my inbox), nothing personal — I know you’re trying to watch our backs; I’d just feel better if somebody was watching yours.

What’s on your mind these days? Tell us (and the NSA) below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Today’s special: Apoplectic over Apple, lax at LinkedIn, bearish on Ballmer,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, follow Cringely on Twitter, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.