Today I was watching a CNN video report on why today's PCs are so bogged down with trial software, demo software, and other useless freebies that benefit the manufacturer's bottom line but effectively slow down and cripple the PC.
It's a reasonable question. I got a Sony Vaio laptop in late 2005 where removing all the demos, free trials, and the pre-installed DRM required to use the Sony Music Store actually freed up over 100 megs of RAM. On a 512 meg laptop they were dedicating 128 megs to the video card via "shared" memory, leaving me with an effective 384 megs of operating RAM. Then all the extra stuff they put on to help them make money knocked my 512 meg system down to less than 274 megs of free RAM. The reason it ate up so much RAM was because it was automatically loaded when the system booted, meaning not only did I lose all that memory, but I had to wait through a sloooow boot-up while all that stuff was loaded. Gee, thanks Sony.
But in CNN's story, when they went to footage of a computer store while talking about how computer stores will charge you up to $130 to take all the crap off the machine they sold you, what major computer retailer did they show? They showed stock footage from within an Apple retail store.
Apple is neither a major offender in the trialware issue, nor does Apple engage in the "remove it for a fee" behavior they were talking about while the Apple store footage ran. So why did they besmirch Apple's reputation, showing footage from within one of their stores at one of the most negative points in the story?
If you were to take the producer to task, you'd probably get one of two answers...
- It was the only stock footage from inside a computer store we had.
- I didn't know it was an Apple store.
So, due to the segment producer's ignorance and lack of concern for accuracy, a fine company is smeared.
But this is not the only time I've run into producers who didn't understand what they were doing when using background music or footage.
A few months ago, while driving to work, there was a bumper on NPR for a program about poetry written by prisoners at Guantanamo. Now, given that many of these prisoners are fundamentalist Muslims who, even if not terrorists, support the destruction of Israel, what would you consider appropriate background music for the bumper? If you said the theme from "Schindler's List", you got it in one. Yes, to evoke sympathy for men who hate Jews, NPR used the theme from "Schindler's List". Now, the Jewish people don't own that particular piece of music, but I just found it incredibly insulting.
I complained to NPR, and what do you think the answer was? The producer didn't realize that the music was from "Schindler's List".
When you're in the media, "I didn't know" is not a valid excuse. Look it up. When you're putting something in front of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, accuracy is not a mere goal. It's a requirement. Before writing this post, I actually called an Apple Store and asked if they charge money to remove unwanted trial software from your computer. If some shmuck blogger from the burbs can check his facts, you'd think CNN and NPR could do the same.
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