Maybe a more accurate headline would read "How (almost) the whole Apple community is screwed". On one hand, you have the people who believe this. On the other hand, you have the ones who do not. In the middle is those who don't care. We'll disregard them for this argument.
The people who believe the false rumor of a custom Apple screw are, at least to a large extent, the people who wouldn't put it past Apple. There's a point being made there; Apple has done a lot in their short history of mainstream popularity to lock users out of their hardware and software. A custom screw wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. With this argument, Apple has developed a notorious reputation and when people are believing this without questioning it, it means the Apple community (as opposed to just Apple users) is screwed.
The ones who would not believe it, I feel, are split into two camps. Ones who saw no evidence of this being true, and ones who could not reconcile it in their mind that Apple would be doing something like this. The ones who didn't believe it because of a lack of evidence is the community Apple (and every other company) needs on their side. The ones who didn't believe it because they didn't want to believe it do so out of a blind love for Apple, and denial that Apple could betray them. Even if this is a small number of people (you can't deny they exist, though), it's still evidence that the Apple community is screwed.
The first group is full of people who either hate Apple for similar-but-opposite reasons to the last group or people who are suspicious of Apple's history (especially after the newest Macbook Pro). There is merit in their mindset, and that's not good for the Apple community. The last group is full of done-no-wrong supporters, who will praise anything Apple creates for better or worse. The lack of critical thinking and constructive feedback and criticism is bad for the Apple community. Who knows if a review of a new product is 10/10 because it's a good product or because it's an Apple product?
This is just my analysis, and I am happy to discuss alternative viewpoints. For what it's worth, I'm not upset that these guys made a fake. It gives a great view into the mindset of Apple news publishings and reactions.
It's not Apple community. It's just people. The same rumor can be started about anything popular with the same success. We had chain letters about facebook charging for access and all kinds of other baloney long time ago. snopes.com has loads of it. There's always some percent of people with low critical thinking, and always some percent of irresponsible bloggers/press which think spreading the rumor is always more profitable than fact-checking it (and they are probably right - nobody ever got rich on ad dollars earned by not publishing something).
I understand that the Apple community is not unique in this regard (I once had a Blackberry Curve user threaten me with violence for insinuating that their phone wasn't a modern smartphone). The point of my argument was specifically that the reactions from this kind of news was bad for the Apple community merely because the Apple community is what the topic is about. I'm specifically calling out the Apple community separate from those who just use Apple products, as I define the Apple community to be the Apple enthusiasts and those who make their living in part or whole due specifically to Apple products (and wouldn't be able to or would be unwilling to do the same work on non-Apple devices). I even partially called out in my post that other companies could be affected by the same mindset.
The reason Apple is at hand in this argument is because Apple is high profile with a very divisive community of both supporters and detractors, and as such has the ability to capture the news on a broader level. It'd be hard to argue that the Hotmail community is negatively impacted by chain emails, for example. Though you are right, this mindset crosses the gap between all products and ways of life.
The flip side is, is it such a crime for blogs to publish these things that seem obviously fake? Even when they qualify it?
We're not talking the New York Times here. We're talking Apple-fan blogs.
If I forward you a link by email of something interesting but probably fake, do you get offended by me sending you something possibly fake? No, if you are interested in Apple stuff, then you probably find it interesting, even if fake.
Casual blogs are the equivalent of passing along interesting stuff found on the internet, fake or not.
sure, I guess I didn't bother qualify the post, because I wasn't lumping MacRumors in with the "casual Apple-fan blog" in my mind. That's perhaps why we didn't post it.
Their rumor was highly believable precisely because Apple has already done this. They use those stupid pentalobe screws all over the place now, for no reason other than to make it more difficult to open the stuff. It doesn't take any pessimism to think they might do it again.
It's a good lesson, though: even rumors which are totally characteristic of a company and which easily fit in with how they've acted the past still deserve critical thought.
this is true... Although the cult of mac article didn't help by saying the screw would lock you out forever.
Without giving it much thought, i assumed that an asymmetric screw implied that it could only be turned one way. Which would lead me to wonder how many other people were deceived by the title.
This really reminds me of the game Telephone. Someone whispers a message to the person on their right, who whispers it to the person their right until the circle is closed and the last person whispers the message back to the original sender. Usually, the returning message sounds very different than what the sender sent.
What we're really seeing is the distortion effect the further any statement gets from its source. Someone misunderstands a concept, doesn't understand an idiom used in the statement, or tries to interpret what is being said into their own lens. End result being the statement gets changed from the original. The further the statement goes the higher percentage chance of the telephone effect kicking in.
One could probably do a study, for instance, of game console releases and see the same effect taking place. The first level rumor might be "Look at this cool Xbox809090 faceplate from the factory in China!!" and the tertiary article published in a mainline news article might read "New XBOX Set to shoot lasers out of new faceplate!!!!".
tl;dr The further a message gets from the originator, the higher the chances of it being altered.
Your analysis is clever, subtle, and a load of bollocks.
First, who are the people who loathe Apple as a malevolent entity that's out to steal their constitutional right - and vital need - to overclock their devices' firmloader hyperkernels? Not "the Apple community" (a nebulous concept in itself), but the legions (well, maniples) of Samsung fandroids that love to tweet and blog and, huh, googleplusify about this kind of thing.
Therefore we could more easily argue that it is that community of Apple haters that is screwed, because of its disconnect from reality, and its inability to see what qualities are more important in a phone/computer/iSomething: these are, presumably, the same people who honestly believe that the iPhone only succeeded because of "marketing", and that it's more important for a laptop to have an easily replaceable display assembly than to weigh a kilogram less.
On the other hand, given that its opponents are reduced to grasping at renderings of imaginary straws, we might well say that the Apple community, far from being screwed, is in fact hot-glued to prosperity and success.
I won't, however, deny that there must be people who love Apple to an excess. I am content with pointing out that there is nothing at all, in this story, that provides the slightest reason to conclude that these people are more numerous than we would otherwise expect; if anything, it might be the opposite. The fact that you are employing an argument so irrelevant that it would be generous to call it a paralogism, then, is itself further proof of how the Linuxoid community is thoroughly screwed (though, to its credit, with standard Philips #0 screws).
That is not to say that I disagree with everything you wrote, of course. Like you, for instance, I am not upset about this fake; and how could I be, when this is the first time I heard of it? Still, if it didn't exactly achieve the widest reach, I agree that it provides some amusing insight into how the Internet tech media works; and so does the commentary. I'm just glad that they came clean with the prank before the release of a slightly-cheaper, slightly-uglier Korean version of the fabled asymmetric screw.
Note: the above is meant as satire and does not reflect the opinions of my employer.
Even with your disclaimer, I'm still having a hard time deciding if you are joking or not. Poe's law in action, from the point of view of the last part of the Apple community I mentioned.
If I may add on to your points, I think if this would've blown up out of proportion it wouldn't actually have helped even if Apple came and made an official statement saying that these rumours are false. Nobody believes Apple in such cases, not even the fans. On the contrary, people would be even more convinced that they are indeed making a new consumer lockout mechanism, and the forums would then be people taking sides, pro or anti-Apple.
"Nobody believes Apple", citation of 1) Apple deliberately lying, 2) everybody, "even the fans", knowing Apple is lying. Even for a fandroid this is cretinous.
The people who believe the false rumor of a custom Apple screw are, at least to a large extent, the people who wouldn't put it past Apple. There's a point being made there; Apple has done a lot in their short history of mainstream popularity to lock users out of their hardware and software. A custom screw wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. With this argument, Apple has developed a notorious reputation and when people are believing this without questioning it, it means the Apple community (as opposed to just Apple users) is screwed.
The ones who would not believe it, I feel, are split into two camps. Ones who saw no evidence of this being true, and ones who could not reconcile it in their mind that Apple would be doing something like this. The ones who didn't believe it because of a lack of evidence is the community Apple (and every other company) needs on their side. The ones who didn't believe it because they didn't want to believe it do so out of a blind love for Apple, and denial that Apple could betray them. Even if this is a small number of people (you can't deny they exist, though), it's still evidence that the Apple community is screwed.
The first group is full of people who either hate Apple for similar-but-opposite reasons to the last group or people who are suspicious of Apple's history (especially after the newest Macbook Pro). There is merit in their mindset, and that's not good for the Apple community. The last group is full of done-no-wrong supporters, who will praise anything Apple creates for better or worse. The lack of critical thinking and constructive feedback and criticism is bad for the Apple community. Who knows if a review of a new product is 10/10 because it's a good product or because it's an Apple product?
This is just my analysis, and I am happy to discuss alternative viewpoints. For what it's worth, I'm not upset that these guys made a fake. It gives a great view into the mindset of Apple news publishings and reactions.