The Crucible: A Sobering Look At Apple
Editor’s Note, 7/15/2011
The opinion column that follows doesn’t live up to the proud tradition and our best intentions for BYTE. It not only lacks the deep and authoritative technical content that we want BYTE to be known for, but it also doesn’t reflect the community’s views on Apple. Although there are plenty of people who don’t like Apple products, and some who have had bad experiences with Apple, those are the exception, not the rule.
As you see from our heavy coverage of Apple – in particular our aggressive coverage of OS X Lion — we consider Apple and its products to be important topics for news, reviews, how tos, tips, and debate. BYTE strives for authority above all, in keeping with the highest journalistic standards. That standard was not met here.
Because the Internet has a lasting memory, and in the spirit of transparency, we’ve decided to keep this column up, strike through its content (as seen below), and issue this mea culpa. We want to own up to our mistake, but not try to cover our tracks.
By doing so, we are acknowledging the feedback from the community (see the comments at the end of the post). We agree with the community that publishing this story was an error in judgment, exacerbated by the fact that it appeared during the first day of BYTE’s re-launch.
Even in our “beta” mode, we will redouble our efforts to employ even tighter controls in our editing content before it gets published. We hope you find the rest of our content up to the standards you expect from BYTE, and that you will continue to provide us with feedback. We’re listening.
It’s not often that you see something like this happen when an Apple-hater writes an inflammatory article full of lies, bile and link-bait. Thumbs up to BYTE for recognizing and recanting this piece of tripe.