Asshole

Written by

Who knew that someone could jump on the Apple bashing bandwagon faster than David Pogue. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. tried in his latest WSJ article.



  • http://twitter.com/kgbraund Kyle Braund

    yes….it seems it’s in his DNA

  • Mike

    The article wasn’t written by Pogue.

  • http://twitter.com/furosuto81 Aaron Frost

    The article you linked to is by Holman Jenkins. Am I missing something?

  • jt

    This wasn’t written by Pogue. Wrong link?

  • BMO

    Can’t really blame David Pogue for an article if he didn’t write it, can you?

  • http://twitter.com/forty2j Jim McPherson

    I think the point is that Jenkins got there faster than Pogue.

    Personally I’d like a more detailed rebuttal of the article. Calling him “asshole” isn’t getting anywhere.

  • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

    Guys, he wrote “someone… faster than David Pogue.” Kind of think he’s making a comparison here.

  • Whitesauce923

    Philip Elmer-DeWitt noted that, in 2010, Jenkins once wrote an article titled “The Microsofting of Apple?” in which he referred to the iPad as “junky” and criticized the company for not adopting Flash.

    Consider the source.

  • Michael Stanclift

    I spent the whole article thinking it was David Pouge, but then actually read the byline. Loop’s lead in is misleading for sure.

    1) I have had no more problem with Apple Maps than I ever did in the equivalent time with Google Maps. If anything they’re much faster and the turn by turn beats my Garmin hands down.

    2) Once Apple TV finally gets apps, most of this article will be irrelevant. When they added Hulu Plus a few months ago, it opened up a whole new world of use for me. We’re actually cutting out TV service off totally starting tomorrow (was with AT&T U-verse) and getting a fat pipe of Internet and doing that route only. Not even sure we’ll be doing the OTA antenna right now. I have two Apple TVs on each flat screen. I’m looking forward to it.

    • http://www.thediceguys.com Dean Lewis

      It’s great to cut the cord — well, mostly it’s cut. I cut cable TV two years ago when we got our Roku HD box. Cable gives the best internet speeds here, so I still pay them for that, but it is a constant amount per month ($50). It doesn’t go up and down at a whim like our cable TV bill did.

      The Roku began acting flaky a few weeks ago, so I just bought an AppleTV. I love it even more. The interface is so much better. It doesn’t have apps/channels to add yet, but all the ones I added to the Roku I never watched but once or twice. All the tech shows I watched are available as podcast subscriptions on AppleTV.

      This hobby from Apple is a great little box. :)

    • http://khurtwilliams.com/ Khürt L. Williams

      It was clear to me by reading the entire text of Jim’s post that the link was not to Pogue but to Jenkins.

  • http://twitter.com/kipb Kip Beatty

    Jim isn’t saying the article was written by David Pogue. Read the post again. He’s saying, quite clearly, that the author of the article, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., has jumped on the “Apple bashing bandwagon” nearly as quickly as David Pogue, something Jim didn’t think possible.

    • http://www.aichon.com Brad

      Hmm…I could’ve sworn that when I read Jim’s post this morning that the second sentence wasn’t there and that it said “as fast as” rather than “faster than” in the first sentence, hence why I agreed at the time with all of the confusion in the early comments. I can’t find any evidence for my memory, however, since my RSS reader and Google cache both have it as it is now.

      • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

        It did. He edited it.

  • Brian Akaka

    To everyone who was “misled” to thinking it was Pogue: Notice that he also mentions that the article is in the Wall Street Journal. Pogue is a writer for the NY Times. Big difference, they’re competitors. If you care enough about the writer being Pogue to indicate you’re familiar with his writing, you should have been clued in there.

    Don’t really understand the criticism of Pogue being an Apple-basher though. I think he’s not nearly as relevant as he used to be, and perhaps no longer gets first dibs on Apple products?

  • gjgustav

    What a stupid article. For one, AppleTV today is a hobby – for the reason that Apple doesn’t have deals with enough content providers to make it a “mainstream” product. i.e. reasons stated in the article. And for two, in what way will this be their undoing? Are they pouring all of their talent into AppleTV? Are they forgoing their current and future successful products for AppleTV?

    The author just doesn’t make any sense. All he says is Apple is having a tough time making TV into an Apple-like experience, and it may not be possible. But then he makes the leap of logic and determines it will be their undoing? That’s just ridiculous.

    • http://twitter.com/shycophante Shyco Phante

      I don’t think the article is stupid at all. He makes a lot of valid points about an industry Apple faces an uphill struggle to crack. It’s the headline that comes off a bit stupid. The author may have had no control over the headline used at all.

      I’m not really sure why Jim is calling this guy an asshole. This is hardly a prime example of opportunistic anti-Apple writing. I’m thinking maybe Jim got lost this morning using Apple maps and is now taking his frustration out on this poor guy?

      • gjgustav

        I don’t think what he says in the article is wrong, but as a reader, I couldn’t possibly care less if he has control over the headline or not. (Ironic since the article is about Apple not having control over the content.) That fact is, the headline is the conclusion, and what he talks about doesn’t lead to what the headline says.

        Yeah, maybe asshole is harsh. But the we have lots of people writing about Apple these days, and if he wants to build credibility, he needs to make logical conclusions from his reasoning.

  • ort888

    Calling someone an asshole because they have a different opinion about your favorite tech company is pretty lame.

    • gjgustav

      I don’t think that’s the reason. I think the conclusion he makes in the headline is the reason.

  • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

    I think he makes a pretty astute point: “In such a world, Apple will have to change too. To maintain its position, the company will have to focus more on giving its devices superb access to content it doesn’t control and hasn’t approved.”

    That’s very true. Apple cannot curate TV. It won’t fly.

    • AdamChew

      You mean Apple needs to curate TV otherwise it won’t fly.

      I believe it is the user experience they care about and nothing else.

      So which would you prefer a system which enable you to watch what you like at anytime and anywhere or a system which you have no choice but to watch whatsoever is out there?

      • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

        Uh, both. I want whatever content I want whenever I want on whatever device I want.

        Again…curated TV is not what we want. People want a great user experience around the content they desire to watch.

        Also consider the porn industry runs entertainment (vhs, dvd, Internet all pushed forward through porn; seriously, look it up). If Apple stays anti-porn, an Apple TV set may be marginalized.

  • barryotoole

    Sir, it should be assholes.