Paul Thurrott:

There are some parallels to draw between […] Cook’s taking over day-to-day operations at Apple […] and Steve Ballmer’s ascension at Microsoft. And not to ruin the surprise, but this may be bad news for Apple. The simplest way to explain this is to simply provide the closing quote in the [NY Times] article: “He will not be the visionary, but that’s O.K. because there are other talented people around him.” Sure. That’s what they said about Ballmer too. Just a thought.

John Gruber:

There are some parallels: an operations executive succeeding a visionary product-oriented founder. But, I’d say Cook-as-Ballmer is pretty much the worst case scenario for Apple.

The warnings signs with Ballmer have been there for years. He’s been out of touch for a long time. Remember when he laughed at the iPhone? Said it had “no chance”? Let’s not worry about Tim Cook until he starts saying dumb things.

In addition to that, I’m pretty sure Tim Cook’s never leapt about the stage like a mental person. He also led Apple through the previous period where Jobs was away from the action, and hasn’t put a foot wrong when he’s been under the spotlight at Apple events or on earnings calls.

Even in the most recent earnings call, Cook differentiated himself from Ballmer in dismissing the opposition. Ballmer got caught by claiming Apple’s product had no chance, yet it went on to be a massive success. Cook’s dismissal of Android tablets is based on facts rather than guesswork. On Honeycomb tablets (i.e. the first Android tablets with an OS actually designed for tablets rather than smartphones), he states:

There’s nothing shipping yet, so I don’t know. They lack performance specs, they lack prices, they lack timing. Today, they’re vapour. We’ll assess them as they come out. However, we’re not sitting still…

There’s a big difference there from “no chance”.

BBC News reported yesterday that Facebook had banned Kate Middleton, for being a fake princess-to-be, rather than, say, realising that soon-to-be-royal Kate Middleton isn’t the only person with that name. (The story was also covered in The Sun, which, naturally, started off with the most important fact to its readers—that banned Middleton is blonde.)

After the super soaraway paper got involved, Facebook apparently relented, but Facebook’s quote on ITProPortal.com is interesting:

We review thousands of pieces of content every day and takes action to ensure Facebook remains a safe and trusted environment for everyone. Of course, we make an occasional mistake.

Two questions here leap to mind. First, did Facebook ban on a hair-trigger (as suggested by the original articles) rather than doing some actual research? (In other words, how much research is done before action is taken?) If so, that’s poor form for a site that’s pretty essential to millions of people. Secondly, did ‘imposter’ Middleton do a great deal to fix this or just run straight to the press for her 15 seconds of fame?

Trying to annoy the music industry for the billionth time, The Pirate Bay says its next major launch will be fear.themusicbay.org, according to TechRadar. An unnamed insider is quoted as follows:

The music industry can’t even imagine what we’re planning to roll out in the coming months.

For years they’ve complained bitterly about piracy, but if they ever had a reason to be scared it is now.

Roughly translated: LOOK AT THE SIZE OF OUR HUGE PENIS!

Yeah, well done, The Pirate Bay. You celebrate ‘sticking it to the man’, including the artists (who clearly don’t deserve anything for their work) and those evil indie labels (who burn millions per second with their unicorn-powered cocaine factories).

The majors need a slap, certainly, but the battle’s largely been won in music: DRM-free track-by-track sales across many sites, direct-selling from indies, and the likes of Spotify for on-demand access to as much music as you can consume. I’m not sure how the Pirate Bay’s antics will improve things; instead, they’re more likely to enforce to many the feeling that they should, for some reason, be entitled to free music and that everyone they rip off somehow had it coming.

UPDATE: Confusion online about this aspect of the iPlayer rebrand. Some sources now claiming iPlayer will include “selected” archived radio/music content. More when the picture becomes clearer, so to speak.

UPDATE 2: James Cridland explains that the BBC plans involve making radio content more ‘interactive’ (whatever that means), along with moving radio content from iPlayer to a “new stand-alone product”. So it’s not the death of online radio, merely the fragmentation of the BBC’s online archival offering, which during a period of consolidation still doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

New Media Age reports that the BBC’s iPlayer is to lose radio content. The article adds:

It will, however, continue to work with third parties to integrate further social functions into the iPlayer.

So you’ll be able to tweet some bollocks about whatever crap you’re watching on BBC3, but won’t be able to access any of the BBC’s radio and digital radio output on iPlayer. THAT MAKES SENSE.

Gosh, Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron and co. must be lathering themselves into a frenzy almost 24/7 on this news.

This is the first time there has been a single, unified strategy across the entire BBC Online proposition

said Erik Huggers, outgoing director of Future Media & Technology.

Just as well, given that the arseholes in government last time and this time have a single, unified strategy to fuck the BBC repeatedly up the arse, while Rupert Murdoch cheers from the sidelines and Middle England erupts into a party at the increasing likelihood within a decade of no longer having to pay £12 per month for the BBC, despite firing tons more than that at Sky for a few decent shows but an awful lot of utter shit

he didn’t go on to say.

(This story has been updated.)

The BBC’s transformation into a shell, driven utterly by Murdoch-loving government and opposition alike continues unabated with the news that it is to close about 200 websites. In order to make cost-cutting savings of 20% as demanded by a Licence Fee settlement that shores up Middle England’s view that £145.50 per year for the Beeb is SHOCKING AND EVIL (© Daily Telegraph Mail Express), most of the community sites, including 606 and h2g2 are being axed.

It’s a huge pity that a corporation such as the BBC, which aims to create community programming and related services—and that is the only major broadcaster in the UK to bother creating a great deal of British-made output—has essentially been bullied into dumping the majority of its community websites. The argument against the BBC’s output is typical:

The changes are intended to make the BBC website more distinctive and reduce competition with commercial websites.

I’m sure that will come as great consolation to the myriad people cast adrift from the various online communities as the axe falls.

For me, h2g2’s upcoming closure is a particularly sad event. It was the first online community I truly engaged with, becoming one of the original set of editors when then-big-cheese Mark Moxon decided he needed some help. I always felt the direction of the site was wrong (in creating distinct edited articles and hard-linking, rather than following a pattern along the lines of what became Wikipedia), but then the edited guide almost became incidental anyway.

This is because h2g2 became all about community. It’s a massive, important support network for many thousands of people, who depend on it to get through the day. The anti-BBC crowd will yell: “So what? There are millions of forums online—just join some of those!” But that misses the point. As sure as communities in the real world are irreparably torn apart when a local community centre is demolished to make way for something that actually ‘makes money’, so too are online communities wrecked forever by the kind of short-termism lauded by the government, opposition and Middle England, who care only about whether something makes a profit, and not about whether it’s important to people other than themselves.

Update: Nick Reynolds, BBC Online’s social media executive, says in the comments:

Just to correct something here. H2G2 is not actually closing (as has been misreported in some places). We are trying to find a future for the site outside the BBC.

Success here, of course, is not guaranteed. It took the BBC to ‘save’ h2g2 when DNA The Digital Village went belly-up, and people now have an expectation of ‘free’ (both regarding general online social media services and with h2g2 itself); additionally, Wikipedia and Facebook’s rise during that time perhaps makes h2g2 a tougher sell. Still, I very much hope the BBC does manage to find someone to take the site on.

My larger point stands, though, in that demolishing such popular community sites is a poor idea. There’s definitely fat at BBC Online that could be trimmed, but 606 and h2g2 seem more like slicing into the good stuff and chucking it in the bin.

Update 2: Perhaps pre-empting the BBC’s attempts to ‘dispose’ of h2g2, the community has created an area on the site to discuss a potential takeover.

Update 3: Regarding the ‘belly-up’ statement, that refers to h2g2’s original owner, which I mistakenly wrote as ‘DNA’ rather than ‘TDV’. A correction has now been made.