“Big blogger” gets upset that Apple is all talk, and no social interaction.

I think the bigger issue is that quality control is beginning to suffer. I never thought I would have a problem with an Apple laptop, but I’ve had plenty since the last upgrade (including two repair calls and finally a complete replacement). After owning four separate issue-free Dells over as many years (happily upgrading to the latest and greatest each time) prior to making the OS X switch, one finally came that was DOA. Dell began its slide soon thereafter.

Pete Cashmore says it’s all hot air:

This sounds a lot like talk and no action to me. Do 99% of those users on social networks care about this stuff anyway? And what difference does it make if anyone agrees to this - it seems like the return of that familiar form of verbal vaporware, pioneered a few years back by the “Attention Trust“, which asked website owners to be respectful of the “attention” of their users. Or perhaps the Blogger’s Code of Conduct proposed earlier this year is closer to the mark: that too fell by the wayside when it emerged that no one really cared about a unified code of ethics for bloggers. I guess you can call it vaporthinking.

I concur. And market forces will ensure social networking participants don’t care either.

UPDATE: A somewhat alternative viewpoint on this from Josh Catone. Good argument.

Whether he actually sees that spam is beyond me. What’s good for the goose is not necessary good for the goslings, which is why I suggest everyone NOT follow Robert Scoble’s lead and post all their personal information on their blogs, like he did today.

Most people don’t have the luxury of hiding behind Microsoft’s myriad of firewalls, filters, and whatever else they employ that makes them so confident about security. Nor do they have a multi-billion dollar company to back them should a little internet dilly-dallying turn south on them.

The rest of the world is getting hammered, maybe because their address isn’t 1 Microsoft Way.

As a side note, I think the whole maneuver is a bit arrogant, and enormously irresponsible.

***UPDATE***

And now he is leaving Microsoft. I wonder whether the move is because he got tired of the spam, or spinning stories for the Redmond giant (?).