I just got slapped around by someone asking me to say something negative about Microsoft, since I was so keen on pointing out some hate and discontent going on with Apple users. Seems to happen a lot, anytime I bash Apple people seem to think I’m being to negative towards Apple, quite simply it’s not the case it’s just that Apple has been making some really stupid moves of late.
Full disclosure I have a Mac but at this point it does not get used very much as it does not support a lot of the tools I use.
So to keep this fair and balanced I will talk about Microsoft deciding that they do not like the word RSS, personally I prefer the term RSS but hey I’m a geek. Go ask the average Joe on the street what RSS is, and I bet you will get the deer in the headlights look. This was very evident this weekend when talking about podcasting at a local book signing id say 1 in a 100 knew what RSS was or had heard of it before.
The term RSS has been around for awhile, and I suppose if someone started calling RSS a “Web Feed” I would automatically know what they were talking about, or if someone just referred to an RSS feed as a “feed” I would probably laugh, and have to do some on the spot training.
I understand why Dave is mad, but the issue goes beyond Microsoft calling RSS Feeds, Web Feeds. That issue is people will still not have a clue as to what RSS is and how it has changed the way we get our information from the net.
Do I see the move by Microsoft as evil, that I really can’s say. I can guarantee though they spent some money on trying to figure out what they should call RSS so they can make money on it. They don’t care about geeks all they care about is the user experience and making money. Obviously Microsoft has announced that it is going to be supporting RSS in a big way shortly, it’s just to bad they did not use some of that bank roll to help evangelize RSS.
This is also in light of the big RSS buttons the longhorn team had on their shirts at Gnomedex. [Dave Winer][Steve Gillmor][Jim Moore]