[ADDENDUM: A commenter rightly questions the use of the word “Nazi” in this post (the title is a riff on a gag from the Simpsons). The Macalope uses the word deliberately as a response to Ou’s comparison of Apple to Joseph Goebbels.
Ou’s comparison is absurd, insulting and trivializes what the Nazis did.
The Macalope thought about the implications of using the Nazi comparison throughout, but wanted to drive home the point. He hopes you understand.]
Following up on his successes yesterday, George Ou keys what should be called “Artie MacStrawman in Nuremberg” and will probably cause Macalope readers to hemorrhage out their eyeballs because, yes, we’re still talking about the wireless controversy!
The Macalope is terribly, terribly sorry. But, in for a penny…
Last summer when I wrote “Vicious orchestrated assault on MacBook wireless researchers”, it set off a long chain of heated debated [sic] and blogs. I had hoped to release the information on who orchestrated the vicious assault, but threats of lawsuits and a spineless company that refused to defend itself meant I couldn’t disclose the details.
Ah, we’re already off to a good start.
The problem with Ou’s entire premise — that Lynn Fox is a Nazi propagandist and has been whispering nothing but sweet, sweet lies into Mac users’ ears — is that he thinks Mac users can’t read.
Everyone simply assumed Maynor and Ellch were frauds because they supposedly “admitted it.”
No, George, “everyone” did not assume that. “Many” may have assumed that or “some” may have assumed that, but most simply thought that they might be frauds because they kept changing their story.
Ou has a particular beef with two pieces — one by Jim Dalrymple at Macworld and one by David Chartier at The Unofficial Apple Weblog — which he thinks were “hit pieces” all but commissioned by Lynn Fox and part of Steve “Call me Adolf!” Jobs’ master plan to take over the Internets by blitzkrieg.
The Macalope doesn’t recall reading Dalrymple’s piece at the time, but he did read Chartier’s piece and he knew it was wrong when he read it — Secureworks was not admitting anything — because he read the disclaimer on their web site. Chartier is a good blogger and the Macalope thoroughly enjoys TUAW, but that particular post assumed too much.
Ou wonders:
But did Chartier really just happen to come across the evidence?
Ou is clearly skeptical that Chartier would be able to type “www.secureworks.com” into his browser. The Macalope is not going to contest this particular point, but he will note that if you read the post Chartier ends with a thank-you to “NotVeryPC”. Why, maybe that’s Lynn Fox’s secret code name! Personally, the Macalope would have thought it would be something like “AppleFoxy” or “CleverLikeAFox”, but that’s exactly what she wants you to think!
Ou believes Chartier was fed erroneous and/or misleading information from Fox which he then — being the good German Artie MacStrawman blogger that he must be to keep Ou’s fantasy view of the Mac web whole — mindlessly regurgitated to please his Cupertino masters.
When I called David Maynor to get to the bottom of this, it turned out that Apple PR director Lynn Fox (who was also cited by Jim Dalyrimple [sic] as proof that the researchers “misrepresented” the research) was the puppetmaster from start to finish.
So, you called David Maynor and he said Fox was unleashing her Mac blogger Luftwaffe. Gotcha. No, no! That’s good enough for the Macalope!
And, dude, you did not just write “puppetmaster”, did you?! That is awesome.
She not only contacted sympathetic bloggers like Chartier and “journalists” like Jim Dalrymple, she was actually the one that got SecureWorks to publish the “clarification” in the first place.
Wow. George seems pretty sure of himself.
But the Macalope decided to check. He asked Chartier if he’d ever been contacted by Lynn Fox about this and here’s what he said via email:
What a riot: no, I have never been contacted by Fox or anyone else from Apple regarding any of this stuff. In fact, I’m not even receiving those post-support call surveys or notices that my Mac warranties are about to expire and that AppleCare is an affordable way to stay within Apple’s graces.
Huh. Well, how about that?
Ou also pointed his tin-foil hat in the Macalope’s direction in those halcyon days of late summer but, for the record, the Macalope has never been contacted by Apple PR, Lynn Fox, Steve Jobs, Joseph Gerbils [sic] or anyone qualified to speak in any official capacity about Apple.
Ou appears to be hinting — as only Ou can appear to hint — that Fox confirmed that she contacted both Dalrymple and Chartier with the express purpose of goin’ all Leni Riefenstahl on their asses.
When I finally got Fox back on the phone, I asked her some questions about how MacWorld [sic] and the unofficial Apple blog [sic] got the information on the so-called confession. I got all my questions answered, but I can’t disclose what she said since Fox refused to speak on the record. But the bottom line is that Lynn Fox played Jim Dalrymple, David Chartier, and the rest of the Mac press/blogosphere like a violin, though it was clear they were all willing participants.
Ou says “yes”. Chartier says “no”.
You can guess who the Macalope believes.
But why would Chartier think all on his lonesome that Secureworks was admitting to have falsified the presentation if Frauline Fox wasn’t pulling the strings?
Well, maybe it has something to do with Brian Krebs (tip o’ the antlers to Brian Krebs Watch).
Indeed, as I reported earlier, in his hotel room on the eve of that presentation, Maynor showed me a live demo of him exploiting the built-in Macbook drivers to break into the machine from another laptop — without a third party card plugged in.
Ou doesn’t mention it, but it had already been reported that Maynor and Ellch had hacked native Airport drivers. Secureworks didn’t want to talk about the free lap dance they gave Krebs in the hotel room because they botched their delivery. They only wanted to talk about the formal Black Hat presentation. Now how could those silly Mac users get so confused when it was all so clear?!
But, shhh. George is on a roll.
Once she got SecureWorks to publish the clarification that merely reiterated the fact that third party hardware was used in the original video (which was clearly disclosed in the first 20 seconds of the video that it was third party hardware), she used that as “incriminating” evidence that the researchers admitted to falsifying the video and shared her “findings” with Apple friendly press.
Well, George, Chartier says he wasn’t contacted by Fox. And it’s at tad (read: extremely) absurd to ascribe some conspiracy theory to the fact that Dalrymple — a journalist (despite Ou’s quotes) for Macworld magazine — was in contact with Apple PR on the most significant story of last August and September.
When I pointed out the flaws in their stories, Chartier and Dalrymple simply ignored me and stuck to their guns.
This is false. Yes, Chartier’s piece is still in its original form, but you can read through Dalrymple’s piece and see if you see the word “misrepresent” (the word Ou complains about) anywhere in there. It’s not, because the piece has been corrected, which is what journalists do. But here it is six months later and Ou is still bitching about it.
The Macalope knows a lot of readers wish he’d just stop covering Ou. Isn’t the real question why ZDNet continues to let his cartoonish rantings go on?
UPDATE: David Chartier posts some thoughts and amends his original post.
Fans of the Simpsons may recognize the title of this post.
