Scripting News: Taking care of business

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Taking care of business

Apple is a big successful company with lots of customers and lots of employees. Microsoft is also a big successful company with lots of employees.

The iPod is a publicly released product. Vista was in public beta for many months.

Yet, Apple is warning iPod users to not install Vista, which shipped last week, until they get a chance to adapt their software so that it doesn't destroy the user's music and podcasts.

From outward appearances it seems someone isn't taking care of business, and it seems that's Apple, since you didn't need a special agreement with Microsoft to test software with Vista. Apple can hardly plead poverty, they make enormous amounts of profit from Windows iPod users. Further, it's so typical of Apple to ding users of Windows, to use them as pawns in their psychic battle with Microsoft, which serves no one, except perhaps them. Putting the users in the middle is bad business.

Now, it could be that a bug surfaced in the final shipping version of Vista, one that wasn't in earlier test versions, in which case it's just a bug, and no one is to blame. If not, it seems someone screwed up. Lots of people, actualy.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:29 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jan Mar