Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Bad Apple
Apple makes Fortune's list of bonehead moves (twice), still a best place to work
With the end of the year comes the cavalcade of best and worst lists, just in case you didn't know what was best and what was worst over the course of the year.
Apple made glassdoor.com's list of "50 Best Places to Work," placing 19th. It scored a 3.8 out of five, and 90 percent of employees approved of the job that CEO Steve Jobs was doing. 303 employees completed reviews at the site, contributing to its score. (The reviews themselves are interesting to read, incidentally, if you have a few minutes to kill.)
On the other hand, Apple made Fortune magazine's list of 21 Dumbest Moments in Business for the year, twice -- but the second time really wasn't its fault.
The first head-smacker, at number six, was for the approval (and subsequent removal) of the "I Am Rich" iPhone application. "The real losers?" Fortune asks: "The eight suckers who bought it."
The second blooper, number 19, actually goes to CNN and Bloomberg for two false stories about Steve Jobs' health. Bloomberg accidentally released an obituary on August 28, and retracted it the same day. In a similar gaffe, a post on CNN's iReport site falsely claimed that Jobs had suffered a heart attack. CNN took down the post -- but not after Apple's stock dipped 10 percent in 10 minutes. Ouch.
[Via Macsimum News and MacNN.]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Fred said 1:08PM on 12-30-2008
Your title is misleading. I'm really close to removing you from my favorites. Engadget posts more timely and accurate Mac news and it's not even their primary focus. Get it together.
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oakie said 1:21PM on 12-30-2008
add giz to that last list with their latest antics about Jobs' health crisis based on a rumor that caused AAPL's stock to tank almost 4 points just now.
and your new popup ad for AT&T cant be closed when using Firefox 3 for Mac. nice going. after that BS, i too am about to take your off of my list of worthwhile sites.
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ack154 said 1:33PM on 12-30-2008
What is this "ad" thing you're talking about?
Adblock FTW.
Back on topic... the title is a bit misleading. These aren't things that are Apple's fault. Just Apple related.
Ryan said 1:39PM on 12-30-2008
I, who still has a sense of humor, enjoy TUAW. I also enjoy Engadget. Both sites offer legitimate news, some bits worthy of posting, some are not. The nets of Inter are big enough to view both websites....
So what difference does it make announcing the departure of your viewing?
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Fred said 1:44PM on 12-30-2008
If a Mac Weblog falls in the woods and there's nobody around to hear it does it make a noise?
The point is that the title of the story makes it look like Apple did two things that were considered dumb by Fortune when in reality they maybe did one, and even the one is VERY questionable since they didn't write the app and they did the right thing by pulling it. It has nothing to do with "sense of humor" unless you think that a failure of journalistic integrity in order to drive hits to a site is funny.
Ryan said 2:20PM on 12-30-2008
"It has nothing to do with "sense of humor" unless you think that a failure of journalistic integrity in order to drive hits to a site is funny."
I definitely see where the title can be misleading. But to say that a misleading headline is going to cause a reader to announce the departure of his/her viewing, I just don't see the point. Just stop reading.
Plus, it's unfathomable to dispute the hilarity of that picture. That totally makes up for the headline!
Fred said 3:02PM on 12-30-2008
Yeah, but it's not just a one time thing. The overall quality has been slipping. Big time. And I would think they'd want feedback, I'm not calling them out of their names and I'm not talking about their loved ones. I'm just saying that a site that lives and dies by it's readership shouldn't be tricking people to drive traffic. Make something compelling that people want to read. If Mac news is a little thin right now I understand, but then maybe you should rethink the premise and branch out?
Vince said 5:01PM on 12-30-2008
When I am reading headlines on my RSS reader I don't want to read misleading headlines. I would not have clicked on this headline had it actually reflected the lack of a story contained within the post. When misleading headlines attract me to click on a RSS link, I'll just stop visiting the website that is misleading me.
Oliver said 2:15PM on 12-30-2008
yeah, seriously, tuaw sucks... i'm only keepin' it because i hope it gets better
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Frankfurter said 2:24PM on 12-30-2008
Sheesh, what do you guys want. They finally got rid of Erica, isn't that enough?
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Wheels said 3:52PM on 12-30-2008
But the "Erika Disease" has spread like nuclear fallout. TUAW is the new Chernobyl.
Actually, it maybe the "David Chartier Disease," since he was the first blogger on here that had no conceptual clue about reality, or how to analyze things, and really didn't GAF about it. It's with him that TUAW started circling the drain IMO.
Rylin said 4:12PM on 12-30-2008
On the other hand, Erica was awesome?
Frankfurter said 4:17PM on 12-30-2008
@Rylin - no.
Wait - if you love reading post after post after post after post after post after post after post about hacking the iPhone and jailbreaking then yes, she was the tops!
But no.
Rylin said 7:02PM on 12-30-2008
@Frankfurter: the thing is, some of the topics were genuinely interesting from my point of view.
That's not to say that I'd want to read 50 iPhone topics in a row, but I do have the choice of not reading them, just like I have the choice of not reading every topic that shows up on TUAW.
Sadly, the loss of an interesting writer and these cheap attention grabs means the signal/noise ratio is lowered, making a trip to the site less compelling, and so in the end it is a good thing to have niche writers passionate about what they cover.
I mean, how on earth is rehashing and summarizing the MSM "thinking differently"?
Frankfurter said 10:43PM on 12-30-2008
Maybe I've had too many Blue Moon's tonight, but I'm afraid I don't know what the "MSM" is....(?)
I do know, call it a "cheap attention grab" if you wish, but headline spin aside, they were reporting legitimate news, and I'll take that a dozen times over one more Erica article about some crap iPhone app she wrote, or how the almighty dev team cracked this or that...
Listen, I understand there's an audience for that crap, but personally, I didn't think it fit on this blog. Call me old fashion, but I miss the "all hail the almighty Apple" days. I don't like to consider myself a an Apple "fanboy", but I love their products, how they run, what they offer, blah blah blah. I'm an IT system analyst by day, but at night, I like to hear about the wonderful world of Apple, not how to "STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!" or "I PAID FOR THE PHONE, I CAN DO WHAT I WANT WITH IT!!!!!".
But again, probably just the Blue Moon's talkin....
Ray Michael said 4:50PM on 12-31-2008
"But the 'Erika Disease' has spread like nuclear fallout. TUAW is the new Chernobyl."
And the best comment of 2008 comes in with 2 days remaining.
Nicely done sir!
sujovian said 2:29PM on 12-30-2008
argh. I've been suckered. From the title, I thought this article would talk about the bonehead mistakes in deployment of Mobile Me and the bonehead move of removing Firewire from the new Macbooks. Instead, I get this crap.
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designr said 3:15PM on 12-30-2008
OMFG! That picture epitomizes non-Mac people in so many ways...
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JiN said 3:21PM on 12-30-2008
sujovian out does TUAW and Fortune in one sentence! FTW!!!
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Gary said 6:05PM on 12-30-2008
The I am Rich app approval was the sixth dumbest business moment of 2008? Yeah, I'm sure Wall Street lost a lot of sleep over that one this year.
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