Wayne Rash’s now much-quoted piece over at eWeek:

Why is it that I’m comparing the PlayBook against a Virginia ham? Well, why not? It makes at least as much sense as comparing the PlayBook against an iPad […]. But in fact the iPad was designed to be a lot like the iPod Touch, except with a screen sufficiently large that it has a lot more utility for visually oriented tasks.

As you may know by now, the PlayBook is getting a lot of negative press, due to a lack of native apps (about 3000 in total), no 3G, iffy Flash performance, and the glaring lack of built-in apps for email, calendars and contacts. And yet quite a few pundits, including Rash, are steadfastly defending RIM—and I utterly fail to see why.

Rash makes two arguments: people shouldn’t compare the PlayBook with the iPad, because they’re different devices, aimed at different audiences, and if you compare the iPad against any Apple device, it should be against the iPod touch.

On that second argument, the PlayBook still comes up short. It has a bigger screen, which in theory makes it superior for advanced applications, but the iPod still has the edge when it comes to productivity, due to the sheer number of decent apps available; more to the point, the iPod ships with native and usable email, calendar and contact applications.

On the first argument, though, why the hell shouldn’t everyone compare the PlayBook to the iPad? Haven’t RIM’s co-CEOs been bullishly doing so throughout the device’s creation? They’ve not at any point said: “Actually, we’re not aiming to compete with the iPad at all—we’re creating an add-on for anyone with a BlackBerry.” Although they’ve made arguments about the PlayBook’s supposed superiority in enterprise, they’ve regularly rattled on about how the device will blow the iPad out of the water for everyone—and it hasn’t.

There’s also weirdness happening in reviews giving RIM a break. It’s somehow become ‘unfair’ to compare the PlayBook against the iPad, or reviews judge RIM’s device on the basis of what it might become, rather than what it is. This is bullshit. If you release a half-finished product, too bad. And if a reviewer doesn’t review that half-finished product as it is today, they are not doing their job. You can only make direct comparisons with what exists today, not what might happen in the future.

Perhaps the PlayBook will become amazing in six months from now (although I doubt it), but RIM’s already changed its plans a bunch of times, and so reviewing a product on the basis of how it might hypothetically be towards the end of 2011, comparing it against how an iPad is now, is just stupid. Tech industry: stop doing it.

The tech world went mental last week when it turned out your iPhone is a digital stalker, recording your every move, and that the file that held the location database could be accessed by a third-party desktop application. People got terribly angry about the whole thing, tweeting about it (with geo-located tweets), while checking into Foursquare, and then additionally yelling about Apple on Facebook (next to the bit where they’d left their personal details online for everyone to see).

And, yes, I’m being flippant (again), and, yes, this iOS problem is clearly some kind of stupid bug where cache isn’t being flushed, and, yes, Apple should perhaps make the ability to turn off such data collecting more discoverable (tip: if you’re the kind of person to wear a tin-foil hat, turn off Location Services in the Settings app). But Marco Arment makes a few really good points about this Apple privacy snafu in his piece Privacy and incentives.

His main argument is that Apple largely doesn’t give a crap about your data, because it doesn’t make (much) money out of it, and that Apple’s always been good at protecting privacy. You might PFFT loudly at that, but bear in mind what’s happening in digital publishing on the iOS platform: publishers are mostly pissed off at Apple not providing access to user details, not the 30 per cent cut Apple takes.

Arment continues, arguing hugely popular websites are far worse than Apple when it comes to privacy. He cites Google and Facebook, but adds that many other web services

make money overwhelmingly from advertising. Advertising can be far more lucrative when it’s targeted well, so there’s a huge incentive for these services to collect as much data about you as possible, store it forever, and indirectly sell it to advertisers by selling targeted services and “eyeballs” to them.

People forget that the customers of Google and Facebook aren’t the users as much as the advertisers; but Apple’s customers are the people who buy the kit. Apple sees content providers as facilitators, adding value to the things Apple itself then sells to its customers. This is a big difference, and a big part of the reason why I don’t think Apple’s suddenly decided to become Big Brother; like Arment, I think the location database issue is a bug, and it’s one that will be squashed in an upcoming iOS release.

Curious Rat posts in response to Don Reisinger, who argues that with Jobs on medical leave, the iPhone could hurt Apple because “there’s no telling what might come out” of future development and no way of knowing how appealing those devices might be. Obviously, now Jobs isn’t at Apple day-to-day, Apple’s going to turn the iPhone into the iRetro and make it look more like the device Dom Joly used to use in Trigger-Happy TV.

But wait! Curious Rat throws a logic-shaped spanner into the bizarre-o-works:

Steve Jobs does not sit in a laboratory all day building things out of aluminum and glass.

But the tech press told us he was responsible for everything Apple has done since he become iCEO. HOW COULD THEY BE WRONG?

He does not cut metal, he is not Dr. Frankenstein and he certainly is not the only person at Apple creating beautiful things.

But that means Jony Ive isn’t just for show, to woo the ladies with his British accent and shaved head. THIS IS MAKING MY BRAIN HURT.

Steve Jobs probably has final say on what gets shipped, but he has a team of brilliant engineers and designers who have perfected their crafts over many years.

But that would mean Apple will be fine if Jobs steps down permanently, not least because Apple has effectively become Steve Jobs in company-sized form. STOP IT NOW, YOU’RE MAKING THE TECH PUNDITS CRY.

Nice quote from James Cameron on TMZ, referring to us managing to escape destruction by Skynet and machines then taking over:

With everybody going through their lives bent over their Blackberries all day long, you could even argue the machines have already won.

A wave of paranoia has been unleashed by discoveries that your iPhone is tracking your every move (Guardian), prompting some to assume Apple is sending the data to the mothership, in order to have you beaten to death if you don’t look at enough iAds every month. MAN, THOSE APPLE GUYS ARE EVIL.

But wait!

Alex Levinson reports some shocking discoveries:

• Apple is not collecting the data;
• The location data is used by software such as Maps and Camera, in order to operate;
• The hidden file is neither new nor secret (it’s just moved);
• The ‘discovery’ was in fact published in 2010.

But hang on… If this is all the case, then this is the media whipping up a bullshit frenzy about Apple, just because that’s more newsworthy than:

Location data still on Apple device, so location-oriented apps still work. Bloke writes app to pull data to desktop. World doesn’t explode. No-one really cares. Well, apart from editors who know they can fire up the link-bait machine. Oh, and people going ARGH, THEY KNOW WHERE I’VE BEEN while tweeting their geo-location data, checking into Foursquare and Gowalla and posting to Facebook that they’re “away from home, in a pub on the Thames, if you want to join me,” which of course has NO SECURITY IMPLICATIONS WHATSOEVER.

Oh.