Ornae. Wasn't this supposed to be about furniture?

Another technology news article has surfaced at Forbes which turns out to be neither news nor technology. Brian Caulfield writes:

Deaf Leopard
…A true Apple fanatic will tell you that everything your Windows machine can do, Apple did first or does better. The worst part: The fanatic is often right….Microsoft is building speech recognition…Ford’s new Sync system, built with help from Microsoft, gives drivers the ability to control their electronics and even dictate text messages from the driver’s seat. It is part of an effort by Microsoft to extend its software far beyond the desktop…..So remember …[OS X]….looks great, and most reviewers are saying its home networking and backup capabilities are a step up from Vista. But have you driven a Mac, lately?

I recommend reading the whole piece over at Forbes, it’ll only take a few seconds…Back already? lotta news packed in that little story hmmm…

Time for a little deconstruction: The news in the story is that an american car builder is adding speech reco to some models.

The news that’s NOT in the story:

• It’s the american car builder whose sales are down about 25% over last year.
• The american car builder that was outsold by Toyota, Chevrolet, and Honda…in america.
• The american car builder with a well earned reputation for shoddy technology.

And who have these bright stars teamed up with?

• The software company whose every effort at embedded systems has fallen flat on it’s face.
• The software company that’s lost more than half a billion dollars to its efforts to deliver mobile and embedded windows devices.
• The software company famous for delivering busy and distracting user interfaces. Just what we want in an automobile.

So we’ve an article in Forbes that’s actually about a failing car builder trying to spruce up its image by buying embedded technology from a company with a long history of failure in the mobile and embedded marketplaces….

…Which somehow becomes, “Look, Apple is mostly better at everything, but Microsoft sold Ford this nice speech recognition that works”…kinda…”:http://mattishness.blogspot.com/2007/02/agile-development-through-speech.html

Where does this stuff come from? How does this pass for journalism? Can the Forbes readers, supposed captains of industry, be so dim that they miss the actual story while chuckling over the dig at Apple?