Tech Goes Boom

My Kingdom for Dvoraks Head on a Pike

Recently John Dvorak took a shot across the bow of Podcasting in PC Magazine. There are a lot of things wrong in his article, and most people have responded to his complaints of lack of quality productions in Podcasting. While those responses have been legitimate, few have pointed out Dvorak's pronounced failure to understand the technology, its implementation or its implications.

You attach a simple audio stream to an RSS feed (typically from a blog) and distribute audio feeds as they are created. With the original concept, an audio feed is designed to be grabbed in such a way that it will queue itself in iPod audio format and download itself to the iPod so that you can listen to the feed when not gyrating to music.

Audio streaming is obviously a different thing from an MP3 waiting on a server to be downloaded by something like iPodder, and files downloaded are almost always .mp3 files, not "iPod audio format" by which I assume he means AAC. One could forgive these gaffes as editorial mistakes were it not for his fumbling later in the article on the IT Conversations website.

Then if you decide to listen to the discussion you are confronted with a few menu items at the top. These include Stream (Windows); Stream (MP3); to Downloads; Which format?; and Add to My Queue. Okay, what to do? Choices already. And the only choice that makes any sense to someone who uses Windows and wants to listen to the discussion is Stream (Windows). So you click on it and immediately get thrown to a screen that says "Optional Free Registration." Luckily it provides the option "Continue Without Registration." Okay, I'll click on that and thanks for wasting my time. Click.

While John mentioned RSS earlier in the article, apparently he doesn't understand how RSS plays into Podcasting, or for that matter what Podcasting is at all. It is completely lost on him that Podcasting is a distribution model. A distribution model with legitimate promise to change audio content delivery.

He spends a little time insulting the looks of the IT Conversations participants, saying they aren't the usual IT hacks. Excuse me? Have you seen Stallman? He dismisses them as High Times roundtable participants. Please excuse the fact that the combined IT and Radio expertise on that panel put to shame any equivalent journalistic qualifications that a hack like Dvorak might bring to the table.

Of course, he can't let an article go without getting in his Mac digs.

And while Macheads will huff and puff about Windows and how much better the Mac is, they are always wrong. The fact is Mac developers are Mac developers and they can seldom get things to work properly on a Windows machine. They don't want to put in the extra work.

Considering the amount of work he put into this article, I think he has little room to talk. That aside, had he visited the iPodder.org website, or the Yahoo development forums, he would have seen that there are both PC and Mac developers hard at work streamlining the experience, and making it more Dvorak proof. There are multiple versions of iPodder for multiple platforms, and it can hardly be said that Podcasting is a predominately Mac phenomenon.

He ends this little masterpiece with the admonition that for Podcasting to become mainstream it needs to be "wrested from the Macheads and the James Lipton wannabes and given to the Windows-Linux community". A perfect summation of Dvorak's childish shallow understanding. Bravo.

Not to be contented with Podcasting, Dvorak has penned a new article for CBS market watch talking about the U2 iPod and music bundling. While I won't argue his conclusion that older tracks should sell for less money (Who can argue against cheaper music), his lack of research never ceases to amaze me.

Sayeth the Monkey:

This magic act has appeared once again this week as Jobs, Silicon Valley's most creative promoter, unveiled a premium iPOD portable MP3 music player in glorious red and black which contains the complete collection of over 400 U2 songs including some never released material.

Thirteen-cents-a-track almost exactly accounts for the $50 premium on the U2 iPOD which sells for $349. The same iPOD without the music is $299 and quite profitable at that high price. Essentially Apple (AAPL: news, chart, profile) is giving the buyer the music at its cost to sell more iPODS.

For those who didn't catch this slippery fact, the U2 iPod DOES NOT come with "The Complete U2". What you get for your extra $50 is a black ipod, signed on the back with a U2 poster and a $50 gift certificate towards the purchase of "The Complete U2". I don't deny that most of the press on this has been a little misleading, but Apple's own page has the details. Apparently Dvorak couldn't be bothered.

And now an open letter to every publication that carries Dvorak:

Dear people,

Please hire me instead of John Dvorak for your sham tech industry journalism needs. I promise that I can meet or exceed John's high standards of apathetic sloth and sloppy half-researched ass-clownery. While it may be a challenge to weaken my understanding of technology to match his flaccid, tenuous grip on the industry, I will do my best with large amounts of alcohol and prescription pain killers. Thank you.