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Setting the record straight on Apple

Marketplace Staff Oct 7, 2011
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Setting the record straight on Apple

Marketplace Staff Oct 7, 2011
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Kai Ryssdal: I’d be lying if I said I was eager to get to this next item, but I need to talk about our coverage of Steve Jobs yesterday. We didn’t do what we set out to do: add a little context and value to the big news story of the day. And in the process of not doing that, we simply got some things wrong.

So we got John Moe, the host of the Marketplace Tech Report, on the phone to help us fact-check ourselves. Hey John.

John Moe: Hey Kai.

Ryssdal: So, as painful as this is, John, we got some things wrong yesterday. We said, for starters: PC files aren’t going to open on a Mac.

Moe: Which is not true. They should open just fine. If you write something in Word in your PC but you don’t have Word on your Mac, the Mac will find some analogous program to open it with. Most of the time, your common business and personal applications generally have some corresponding program that will at least let you see it, at least let you open the document to take a look at it. Apple’s pretty good about that.

Ryssdal: What about that bit where we said old Macs don’t work with new iPods, and old iPods don’t necessarily work with new Macs?

Moe: Personal experiences may vary, maybe you’ve got a loose wire or some weird virus that could cause trouble. But in general, you should have a fairly easy time of it if you have a Mac made any time after about 2003, which will let you install the latest update of iTunes and then you should be good to go. Now the new update to Apple’s mobile operating system comes out on Wednesday. You’ll need to update that through the computer, but after that, you’ll get wireless syncing on your iPhone.

Ryssdal: All right, so this is actually the big one: We tried yesterday to be clever with a story that people really have strong feelings about.

Moe: It probably struck a nerve because what Apple fans like about the products is that they think that they’re easy to use, and that they last. And the Marketplace story said just the opposite, and I think made a lot of people upset.

Ryssdal: John Moe, the host of Marketplace Tech Report. John, thanks a lot.

Moe: Thanks Kai.

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