Next Apple gift to the Chilean miners should be...

Excuse me, but this is newsworthy. We're not the only Apple website to carry the story.

Agreed, that last paragraph might as well have been gibberish, because there was absolutely nothing useful, insightful, or even entertaining about it.

In response to Doc Rock, this (the Apple iPod gifts) isn't about charity - it's about publicity. An anonymous gift of iPods to the miners would have been charity - going "Hey, look how cool we are, giving away these iPods - doesn't it just make you want to rush out and buy your own iPod too?" is just getting your brand in front of millions of TV viewers worldwide. Much like Oakley - note how they made sure to supply models where the logos are very visible (on some Oakleys the logos wouldn't have shown up so well on TV).

Anyway, no-one is actually objecting to Apple doing a run-of-the-mill PR stunt like this; what we're objecting to is the simply awful blog post begging for comments. A slightly more constructive post could have been "Do you think this was a good PR move by Apple?" or "What other news stories do you think Apple could have jumped on to get their brand out there?" or even "Do you know any other cases of Apple giving away free kit?".

But "What else could Apple have given these miners?" - please, what sort of response are TUAW expecting? They only sell a finite amount of stuff - it's not an imaginitive question, it can't really stir up debate (except about how awful the blog post is) and just smacks of lazy writing.

A free download of dig dug.

I call Poe's Law on this.

Hello gang,

Major Overreaction, This is an Apple Weblog right? So if Apple does something on a global scale it is most certainly newsworthy. Mike was responding to a piece of news that Apple seeded with it's actions of charity. Truth is the Number 2 company in USa could have done better by the miners than a iPod. But that's a different story.

It is actually a viable question as long as you understand the action of charity and or human interest rather than your own personal interest of I need every story to be about me and the crap I want. That's selfish.

It is a lofty expectation to expect every story here to fondle your heart strings or heartless strings for that matter. Take the stuff you like comment add to the conversation and move on.

Don't flame the stuff you don't like, that doesn't mean all comments should be positive, but just being mean is useless and very Gizmodo Troll like.

I love TUAW read it daily and skip over the stuff I don't like. Be a good citizen.