Briefly About the Show

Recently I wrote an article commenting on Mary Jo Foley's comparison of Leopard to Vista. I've seen a lot of the backlash from the blogging community in response to Foley's original article and some of it is disturbing. Then Long Zheng from iStartedSomething directed me to his recent post on the matter.

He makes some interesting points. Many of which I agree with. Long points out that people get way too emotional about this stuff. I agree. I'm always surprised by how angry people get when it comes to the OS wars. I still voice my opinion on the discussion but I try to do it with a sense of sarcastic play and refrain from childish slurs or just spewing anger.

I'm not sure if I was to be included in Long's comments about the ongoing war between OS camps, but regardless I'd like to say that the points I made about Mary Jo's post were not about which OS is better. I wanted to point out that her comparison of Leopard to Vista is silly. Why? Because Leopard is much closer to Tiger, which came way before Vista. Her blog compares Leopard directly to Vista and makes direct and indirect claims that Apple copied Microsoft. My issue is with her knowledge of the technology market that she's commenting on.

Does it matter who copied who? Not really. Instead what bothers me is that you have a tech blog writer spreading information that suggests Apple copied Microsoft, when if anything the opposite would be an easier case to make. So people come along, they read this stuff and they go on believing something that's not factually true. The other thing that bothers me is that Mary should be more tech aware as a writer for ZDNet. Some of the statements she makes prove that she may not be very technically proficient. I consider that a bad thing when you're writing a blog on a tech web site. But hey, that's just me.

To be very clear, I completely agree with Long's comments about how far people take these discussions. There's something about the internet that brings out the worst in people. Perhaps they don't think there are consequences. Perhaps they think the people they target in their vile rants don't have feelings. I can only rest easy in knowing that I have said nothing in these posts that I wouldn't actually say to Mary Jo if she had said these things to me in person.

So yes, let the discussions continue because they're worth having, but let's do it in a way that's at least respectful of those you're talking with. And in the spirit of this post, I went back and removed the word "absurdities" in the original post in favor of a word that won't be misconstrued. I wasn't angry in writing it, so I don't want to leave people with that impression.