Perspective

Matt Alexander on the insistence on the part of some to try to tear down the iPhone 5.

Weve made a gross over-estimation of our entitlement in the world.

I — and I’m sure Matt feels the same way — don’t think any company or product is above criticism. And Apple, the biggest company ev-ah, can certainly handle the heat. But what a collection of crap we’ve been treated to in the last week.

In a rare instance, Apple shipped a kinda lousy product with the new Maps app. Maybe that’s what makes it newsworthy? For example, do you think “Scuffgate” or “Scratchgate” or whatever we ended up calling it would have ever in a million years have happened to Samsung? I mean, there is no conceivable way that Samsung is shipping 100 percent of its phones without blemishes and with build quality that is completely immune to scratches.

The perspective here is entirely skewed.

On the latest edition of The Talk Show, John Gruber says

I feel like every single one of these incidents — these “-gates” — is always about trade-offs. And the people wanting to blow it up refuse to acknowledge that it’s a tradeoff.

That’s galling. But the most galling thing is having the biggest collection of power tools this side of the Home Depot trying to lecture us on how “This would never have happened under Steve Jobs”. David Chartier points out what a load that is.

Michael Gartenberg, meanwhile, gets the meta point:

amazing how many people that never met Steve Jobs let alone counseled him know exactly what he would have done under every circumstance

Apple made a rare mistake and everyone lost their shit. We, as Apple fans, focus on how it’s rare and try to understand it. So many of these Apple critics, however, are just reveling in the mistake.