The tame Apple press, desperate to sell their souls to Steve Jobs again, gave shedloads of space to free advertising of the sale of an expensive boxed set of record on iTunes again.
After years of telling Steve Jobs to go forth and multiply, Sony, the record label for the popular beat combo the Beatles agreed to sell the band's back catalogue online.
Most of Apple's iTunes customers will not know who the Beatles were and if they did would probably think they were old has-beens who copied Noel Gallagher.
Yet for some reason Apple, and therefore its tame press, considered the inclusion of the Beatles in the iTunes collection really important.
To make sure the tame press started to get moist about it, Apple issued a press release ordering its tame hacks to a press conference.
Typically they did not say what it was about. Only that it was about iTunes and "Tomorrow is just another day. That you'll never forget."
The idea behind this was to gather all sorts of idle speculation. After all a day most people would never forget is something really important – marriages, births, deaths or in case of an Apple fanboy their first sex with a real girl.
Of course a reality check should have made the hacks suspicious. What could Apple, which is a hardware company, possibly do to create a day you would never forget?
Even if Steve Jobs sodomised a badger on stage, while declaring Apple fanboys were stupid and his products were toss, it is unlikely to remain in the minds of the average person for longer than a week.
It lead many to think that Jobs was actually going to do something interesting with iTunes – perhaps making it cloud based, or work, or something. Anything. No? I would have forgotten about it by the time I had tapped out the story. Hardly a day I would never forget.
So what was it that Jobs got everyone out of bed for? That's right - he got to flog the boxed set of the Beatles. And the US press gave him a standing ovation and printed details of it including the price.
In short some of the top newspapers and websites in the world gave Steve Jobs a free advert when they would have spat on any other online retailer doing the same thing.
Now the press is full of stories about how this is somehow a milestone for humanity. EMI CEO Roger Faxon is quoted as saying this is "a great milestone in the development of digital music." Not really. If it was based on a significant band giving the thumbs up to digital music that milestone was crossed years ago.
In fact the only reason that Jobs didn't get the Beatles earlier was because for a long time he was at odds with the band's record label. The Beatles' rivals, the Rolling Stones not only lasted a lot longer, but have also been flogged online for a while.
Anyway a record seller peddling a record of a popular beat combo is not something anyone is going to have to join the French Legion to forget, nor is it something that all the major news papers have to report.
Not only are media standards dropping down the loo when advertising appears on the front page, but also the standards of the world tip downwards.
With Jobs and his tame fanboys in such a position of power it is possible to see the rot of consumerism and where it ultimately leads. Apple has become what Big Brother was to television and the media is whoring it up in exactly the same way. It is time that someone blew a whistle on the whole thing and said "we are going to treat Apple just like we do every other company."
However, since your entire online presence is predicated on finding things about Apple to rib on, you are perhaps the journalist most dependent on the company and it's rabid followers.
Click-bait and hypocrisy combined in a pseudo-journalistic mashup designed only to generate advertising revenue.
I don't mind that you do it, but it's disingenuous for you to scold other flacks for making a living off of a popular company when you do the exact same thing.
The even funnier thing is that he assumes people would know Oasis, but not the Beatles. Oasis' relevance having passed 10+ years ago, the assumption is that your "average" iTunes user is 30+. Poll 10,000 people over the age of 30 and most will know, well, the Beatles. Some (a much smaller number) will be able to name an Oasis song. And given that American Idol devotes a night each season to the Beatles, there was a major motion picture a couple years back targeted to teens that used their music, as well as the fact that ALL of our parents raised on the Beatles - saying they are unknown to iTunes users, and therefor not a huge addition to the iStore, is too stupid a statement to comment on.
Oh wait. I just did. Slow afternoon for me, I guess.
Don't make me gag....
That being said, I thought the article was good. A day I will never forget? Hah!
The worst part is the fact that it costs far more to get them from iTunes that it does from Amazon. Remastered Sgt Pepper £10.99 lossy digital from iTunes, £7.99 lossless CD with resale value from Amazon
Apple's target market are people who are a lot younger than the Beatles. I make the point that some are so young that they might even think that the Beatle's/Gary Glitter clones Oasis were the same thing. Obviously they are not but the Beatles age group are not Apple's target market (although they might be Jobs') so making this "news" is unjustified.
The tame Apple press brings out the worst in me I am afraid. If you look this is mostly what this article is about.
A day to remember? Sheesh. And they printed it as news... double sheesh.
While Apple gets a free run with its press releases and advertising printed as news there has to be people like me pointing out that the Messiah has no clothes.
Meanwhile there will always be Apple fanboys policing the media to make sure that only positive Apple stories are published.
I'm not sure what "Steve Jobs sodomised a badger on stage" will do for an encore, which, is the bloody point, innit?
FANBOYS who believe: "That's concentrated evil. [and and] One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs." should bloody well "Stand by for Mind Control!" Yes? Bloody good for them, eh?
The rest of us got 19% cut in salary, backdated to the beginning of time.