Apple arrogance, Microsoft muddling, privacy problems — the rants rain down

It’s been a long time since I reached into the reader mailbag, and it’s pretty darned full. Here’s a sampling of what the residents of Cringeville had to say about topics like Apple, Steve Jobs, Windows 8 tablets, and data mining.

Let’s start with the most recent one first. Earlier this week I recounted how both the Obama and Romney campaigns are hoovering up all kinds of data about voters — including where they shop, what they buy, the kinds of beer they like to drink, and what they’re doing on Facebook — the better to harangue us with.

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Reader D. K. has a scheme for keeping credit reporting agencies from selling our information to anyone with a working bank account: Pay them to shut up.

For an additional annual fee [credit and debit card issuers] promise not to report your transactions to data aggregators, the fee being at least what they make in total from selling their data on one customer. Serendipitous synergy: this would also encourage holders of multiple credit cards (i.e. every adult in the country) to concentrate as many charges as they can onto one or two credit or debit cards for which the extra fee has been paid.

I dunno, that feels a little too much like extortion to me; then again, that’s probably just how the agencies like it. Really, it’s the opposite — reporting agencies should be paying us for the use of our data. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if “pay us to keep quiet” becomes the industry “solution” to the privacy problem.

I wrote two posts about Apple’s Mapocalypse, which still makes me chuckle. (The government minister in Ireland whose garden estate was mislabeled by Apple Maps as an airport? Probably not as amused.) In response, regular correspondent C. S. replied thusly in an alarmingly large teal-colored font, which unfortunately I cannot produce here:

You must sell your Apple stock!! The iPhone 5 will write doom for the whole Apple corporation. The fan boys have already purchased 2 million of the i5. As they use the new mapping app, following where Apple leadeth, they will drive into walls, highball into barriers, fall into rivers, sink into swamps, launch into landmarks, creep into creeks and Ford into fjords. The law suits brought by the families (fan boys must have them) will finish off Apple. Act now, you have been warned.

Hey, at least he didn’t write it in ALL CAPS. Then I would have been really worried.

On a similar note, a while back I wrote about Apple suing yet another company for using a logo that looked vaguely like the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden and even more vaguely like the iconic Apple logo, if you squinted. Reader E. W. was reminded of another company that used to be synonymous with that kind of arrogance:

IBM still had innovations even when their sales began to shrink, but the decline into corporate laziness had long since become entrenched into their psyche and was never corrected…. In some respects, Apple is playing the same game these days, albeit along the lines of suing everyone using anything remotely resembling an apple in a logo. Will they sue apple growers nationwide because they’re foolish enough to grow fruit as they’ve done for hundreds of years? Apple’s hubris is simply amazing, far more so than their products are. Each product is more an evolution than a revolution, which is what one would expect as a product line matures. Oh, the new iPhone is finally here? Yawn, must have missed it.

Still, says longtime reader B. B., Apple’s arrogance is no match for Microsoft’s incompetence — as evidenced most recently by its plan to save the Windows franchise via the new Surface tablets.

Even the loathsome, monopolistic Apple Corporation still seems to understand the difference between touch tablets and computers. …Microsoft’s attempt to unify these interfaces plus that of a phone is a blunder beyond imagination. …The idea people at Microsoft must be at or near the top of the corporate ladder. Otherwise, common sense would suggest that they’d have been replaced several years ago.

With Apple, Microsoft and Google clawing at each other’s necks, Who’s to like? I like Samsung.

Gee, B., tell us how you really feel.

Finally, I recently asked, as many have, who if anyone will be the next Steve Jobs. Reader R. C. had a suggestion that was missing from the usual suspects but was pretty good, I think:

You may want to check into Jeff Hawkins. He may be building the real model of intelligence based on the human brain. Work like a human brain at computer speed.

And if they could build one that can crank out snarky 700-word blog posts three times a week I might buy it and retire.

What do you wish somebody would invent, and what would you be willing to pay for it? Post your cockamamie brilliant ideas below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Apple arrogance, Microsoft muddling, privacy problems — the rants rain down,” 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, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.