
Toads of Apple fans miss the dangers of iPhone tracking file - apress
http://theorangeview.net/2011/04/toads-of-apple-fans-miss-the-dangers-of-iphone-tracking-file/
======
edw
This is a link-baiting article from a link-baiting site, submitted by the
karma-baiting author. And like the author of the recent article on why OS X
sucks for development, he fails to appreciate that users of Apple's products
may have different priorities and a different worldview than he does.

He's leaving on the table what seems like an obvious explanation for a lot of
Apple users' relative apathy about this: They don't see it as a big deal and
just don't care. It doesn't mean they're "toads," willing stooges of Steve
Jobs, taking cues from him with respect to whether we've been forever at war
with Eurasia or East Asia today.

Some people are probably still upset that Google "reads your mail" when it
picks ads to show in Gmail. I can see the theoretical danger, but I Just.
Don't. Care. And I think that apathy is not unreasonable.

There's a big difference between agreeing with a policy and believing that the
policy isn't worth getting terribly upset over. (Please refrain of trying to
push me down the slippery slope. Quoting Pastor Martin Niemöller's "First They
Came" is not a substitute for argument.)

Sites like The Orange View are parasitic: they create nothing of value but
instead lob rotting fruit at the obviously-imperfect people who get their
hands dirty actually doing things. Every person or company that manages to
actually accomplish something (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Gwyneth
Paltrow, who/what-ever) attracts people trying trying to profit from the
resentment that that success breeds.

Does Apple have dirty hands? Yes. So does everyone that does more than sit
around and nitpick.

~~~
sorbus
> This is a link-baiting article from a link-baiting site, submitted by the
> karma-baiting author.

Check the guidelines again: "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument
instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2,
not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""

~~~
edw
You're falling prey to the Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy:

<http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html>

That this is a link-baiting article is not part of my argument. It's a simple
observation. The very title of his article is an insult to Apple users.

Did you read past the first sentence of my comment, to—oh, let me see—the
_second_ sentence of my comment, where I explain what my problem with his
"argument"—i.e. series of insults—is?

~~~
sorbus
Yes, I did read your entire comment. I'm not disagreeing with your points, or
trying to dismiss them, I'm saying that the way you lead into them detracts
from them, and is uncivil.

~~~
edw
So why didn't you take issue with the submitter of this story, who is its
author, for submitting content that is itself uncivil? Have you read this
guy's piece on the "iPad 2 _Dumb_ Cover"? He is a one-man troll army.

~~~
sorbus
Because there's nothing in the guidelines about the civility of submissions,
and I'm more concerned with improving the quality of comments than in reducing
the number of articles which sink without a trace.

(This is, incidentally, my last response in this thread. I'm not interested in
being dragged into a long argument that is increasingly tangential from the
original issue.)

~~~
edw
Worrying about the letter of the guidelines misses a more important issue: if
a user submits something, they're vouching for its quality. Submitting dreck
represents a disservice to the community.

