Welcome to the world of Internet tech coverage. The big, stupid, stinky onion that is the world of Internet tech coverage.
The outside layer of this onion is benign. In this case, it’s an interview by the Telegraph with former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, who conducted Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of the company. [Correction: an earlier version of this story called Woodside the “architect” but that is not correct. Andy Rubin seems to have arranged the deal from Google’s side while Woodside carried it out for the company.] This is the plain brown wrapper in which we will find the eye-watering mess that is the heart of Internet tech coverage.
This piece was picked up by Engadget, which extracts this from the interview:
”The Nexus 6 nearly had a fingerprint sensor in its dimple”
Motorola’s Nexus 6 almost had a fingerprint sensor, but Apple spoiled the idea.
Ah! Apple in the lede. Now we’re getting somewhere. We’re into the white part of the onion, but it hasn’t really started to smell yet. Let’s see who can really stink this up. Oh, it’s Gizmodo, which read Engadget’s piece about the Telegraph piece and came up with this:
“Your Nexus 6’s Lack of Fingerprint Sensor Is Apple’s Fault” (tip o’ the antlers to @mylestaylor)
Now we’re cooking with gas. Stupid, stinky gas. Well, of course it’s Apple’s fault. Do you even have to ask? Heck, the reason daddy drinks so much is Apple’s fault, too. So’s the reason mommy left and Christmas never came again and, well, why bad things happen to good people, basically.
The Nexus 6 is incredibly large and also amazingly good.
It even comes with an easy-to-remove back for your convenience!
But as your fingers slide around that monstrous screen, there’s one thing that’s missing…
An identifiable sense of style?
…finger print recognition.
Oh. Well, let’s just say two things.
And that, apparently, is Apple’s fault.
From zero to dumb in 3.0 sentences.
In an interview with The Telegraph, former Motorola CEO and current Dropbox leader Dennis Woodside explains that the fingerprint technology that Motorola had been leaning on was robbed away from it by Apple.
“Robbed.” Not Woodside’s words, of course, and with good reason.
In 2011, he says, Moto was pioneering fingerprint recognition by working with a company called Authentec. But then in 2012, it was bought by Apple to fuel Touch ID for a cool $356 million.
You know, the kind of robbery where you pay $356 million for something. That kind of robbery.
It was almost certainly the right idea to leave out crappy finger print recognition—which can be maddening in use—but it’s a shame for Google and Moto that it got the carpet tugged from under it by Cook & Co..
So inconsiderate! Apple, of course, is roundly chastised for not making the big deals like Woodside did in bringing about Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Now it has to suffer the barbs of Gizmodo, laced with weapons-grade dumb, for making a smart acquisition that enhanced its products and crippled those of its competitors.
Here’s a thought: Maybe if guys like Woodside did their jobs better and orchestrated deals that improved the company’s value instead of ones that act as vanity splashes for themselves to get plush CEO gigs, there’d be less room to blame Apple. Maybe that’s the story.
Haha. Just kidding.