Just noticed this post on the MacCentral forums.  Thought you might be as appalled as I was.  I am too peeved to reply at this time.

MacCentral thread to MDJ story

I’ll just say that there’s a reason I hang out here instead of at MacCentral.

I think whoever wrote that is the one out of line.  He is entitled to his opinion, but I agree with Bryan in the fact that charging $20 for a free upgrade is stupid.  Then it’s not a free upgrade, is it?

Plus, how does one EDITORIAL make all of The Mac Observer and all of its Mac OS X reports bad?  Just a question.

Brad

I think it’s a tad funny. MDJ certainly spends a lot of time hanging out at TMO considering we are a “second-tier” Mac site. 

Note that that long post came from the MDJ and was simply copy/pasted there by a MacCentral forum reader.

Matt Deatherage, the editor of MDJ, didn’t counter any of my arguments, but did manage to put thoughts/words in my mind/mouth. He also took some of the things I wrote out of context, but that’s just nit-picking. On the other hand, he did bust me for saying that no .1 or .6 update had been charged when 7.1 was indeed a commercially priced upgrade.

Thanks for thoughts, everyone.  To be honest, I am not worried about what Matt Deatherage has to say about me, my writing, or TMO.  My record stands on its own.

Whatever was posted at the above link, it’s not there now. I just get sql errors. Can anyone reprint what was posted there?
-Dan

It appears their boards are down.  I don’t have a copy of what was posted.

Brad

The MacCentral boards must be back up because I brought it up just now.

Yes, it’s back up and you can click the link to read the full post.  They were upgrading, it seems.

However for interest’s sake, here’s the concluding bit.

Instead of thinking of Mac OS X 10.1 as costing him US$20 dollars,
Chaffin should turn it around. If he purchased the OS after 10.1
is released, he’d pay US$129, just as he did in March. In essence,
as an early adopter, he got to use a pre-release version of 10.1
for US$20 and has already purchased his copy of 10.1, just having
paid the full fee in advance. It makes just as much sense as
complaining that an update be made available at no cost while
recognizing that, for many practical reasons, the update can’t be
made available at no cost. Chaffin writes, “Apple is all grown up
and can figure out a way to do this right.” It’s a same one can’t
say the same about the Mac Observer. Despite mentions in the
_New_York_Times_, it’s fanatic-inspired, uncritical thinking like
Chaffin’s editorial that keeps the Mac Observer in the second tier
of Macintosh news sites.

Wah, wah, wah.

_________________
Void where prohibited.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Raena on 2001-09-05 04:33 ]</font>

I hate to sound like I’m ripping on MacCentral but I don’t think higly of it.  I used to visit MacWEEK all the time but quickly stopped vising them (MacCentral) after the combination.  AFAIAC, a great site was destroyed in that combination.

I have asked Matt, or whomever wrote the piece for MDJ, to debate the Free US$20 Upgrade issue with me.  Hopefully he/she/they will accept.

On 2001-09-05 05:03, Bryan wrote:
I have asked Matt, or whomever wrote the piece for MDJ, to debate the Free US$20 Upgrade issue with me.  Hopefully he/she/they will accept.

That should be interesting.  I look forward to seeing what comes of it, assuming they accept.

Well lets see, the $20 covers the cost of the FREE upgrade to FedEx priority I got from Apple when I bought 10.0.

Funny how that was never mentioned.

Maybe if this site had worthwhile news I’d visit it.

The MDJ article is irrelevant for one simple reason.

We were told the update would be free.

We know software costs to produce. We know this is an important update. We know OS X has been an extended beta.

Doesn’t matter. We were told it would be free.

And as a CD burner-owning, Cable modem-user, I don’t give a fig about 61 hour download times at 28.8 (oh, boo hoo! Whatever will the 300 baud modems do?)

The line “it’s no surprise Chaffin wants the upgrade to be free so he doesn’t feel foolish having paid for an operating system that’s not as ready as he wanted to believe” is insane. You have to pay to get this newsletter where they invent other people’s opinions and motivations?

“It is Chaffin’s site that has relentlessly trumpeted Mac OS X 10.0 as the second coming, praising it in spite of shortcomings and encouraging everyone to upgrade.”

I’m still on 9.2—guess I missed those trumpets because I don’t recall getting that impression here!

On 2001-09-05 08:44, Anonymous wrote:
Well lets see, the $20 covers the cost of the FREE upgrade to FedEx priority I got from Apple when I bought 10.0.

Funny how that was never mentioned.

I bought OS X from a local store. By your logic, Apple owes me money.

Funny how shipping upgrades have nothing to do with this.

This posting was made without our knowledge or permission, but would
probably classify as “fair use” under copyright law (to debate the
contents) so we have no say over it.

I think MJD’s critique of my piece is as flawed as the author apparently thinks my writing is. My main points were ignored, and none of my points that were addressed were successfully countered. IMO, it was a very well written, but poorly argued rebuttal.

I am not writing to complain, however, as I love criticism and discussion. Instead I suggest we have an online debate on the issue. Specifically: we get a moderator and follow some debate format or another that works for both of us. I would suggest the format of Question, response, response, rebuttal, with the first response position alternating between us. That’s just a suggestion. We would each then be free to publish the debate.

We believe we have made our points clear both in MDJ 2001.09.04 and in earlier coverage of the $20 upgrade fee which was not reposted on MacCentral, nor do we wish to spend a significant portion of the week reiterating them to boost someone’s hit count and ad revenue while neglecting our own subscribers.

We stand by our analysis: when your site spends months arguing that Mac OS X 10.0 is worth the $129 fee, it’s inconsistent to come back and argue that upgrades should have absolutely no fees involved, no matter how impractical, because Mac OS X 10.0 was not perfect. You can’t have it both ways. 

By the way, it’s “MDJ”, not “MJD.”

Regards,

MDJ Staff
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
 

On 2001-09-05 11:26, “Apparently MDJ Staff” wrote:
We stand by our analysis: when your site spends months arguing that Mac OS X 10.0 is worth the $129 fee, it’s inconsistent to come back and argue that upgrades should have absolutely no fees involved, no matter how impractical, because Mac OS X 10.0 was not perfect. You can’t have it both ways. 

I would hope all of MDJ’s analyses don’t fall prey to this “slippery slope” level of fallacious reasoning. Just because someone wants to see the update Steve Jobs announced as being free actually be made available free, doesn’t meant they expect all future updates to be free.

If I can go down to the Minnesota Apple Store with a blank CD-R and burn myself a copy of 10.1 free of charge, I’ll be happy.

P.S. to Bryan: No controversial articles in the future. Heaven forbid that people would read them and hit counts would go up. Press releases only! Must drive readership down!!