Apple PR has sprung into “damage control” mode after Tim Cook uncharacteristically fired verbal shots at Microsoft yesterday — reportedly telling a crowd in Ireland that Microsoft’s attempts to create “hybrid” laptops is, “deluded.”
What is being claimed is that Cook didn’t mean to say “deluded” at all, but instead “diluted” — which is still a diss, but without the insinuations that the good folks at Microsoft are a few sandwiches short of a picnic if they think the Surface will ever be a hit.
According to a report, Apple later “walked back the quote,” which, to my non-PR mind, sounds a whole lot like something you’d read in Nineteen Eighty-Four (you know, that book Apple once told us it would never be like.)
In all seriousness, it may have been a simple communication issue, but it’s still somewhat surprising that Cook would slam a rival company in the way that he did. Coming at the end of the sentence, “[The Surface Book is] a product that tries too hard to do too much. It’s trying to be a tablet and a notebook and it really succeeds at being neither. It’s sort of…,” it also makes a whole lot more sense if Cook meant to say “deluded” rather than “diluted.”
Apple and Microsoft have taken plenty of potshots at one another over the years, but ever since Apple became the planet-straddling giant it is today, it’s been a whole lot less likely to pass judgement on other people’s products — leaving that sort of thing to the likes of Samsung.
Maybe this is the start of a tougher-talking Tim “O.G.” Cook?
Source: Business Insider