Columns

There's a great clip from Channel 4 News on You Tube (youtube.com/watch?v=44w-RYurbN4) It shows a Channel 4 News reporter interviewing Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, following the launch of the iPhone at Apple's retail store in London's Regent Street. The reporter, having asked various questions about the iPhone and built a rapport with Schiller, then asks a slightly trickier question.

He asks: 'Are you using iTunes in a monopoly way... you really have to use iTunes to get the best out of the iPod.' The second part of that question, is, of course, absolutely true. You have to use iTunes to get the best out of an iPod. In fact, you have to use iTunes to get anything out of an iPod at all. And the first part of the question should have been easy for someone of Schiller's experience to either answer or sidestep gracefully.

As you'll know if you've seen the clip, he did neither. Instead he looked around helplessly, almost mouthing the letters H-E-L-P. Cue Alan Hely, Apple's European Corporate Communications Director, resplendent in a lime green jersey, who stepped in front of the camera, presumably in the expectation that it would be switched off, and explained that the reporter was 'following a different agenda' to the one which Apple would like him to follow.

Hely, who, rather bizarrely, can be seen only from the tip of his nose to somewhere around the middle of his torso, then proceeded to patronise the reporter with the kind of stock public relations phrases

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that make most of us want to scream and throw something hard and sharp at the screen. He is then, thankfully for my new LCD monitor, bailed out by Schiller's US minder who, much more elegantly, tells the reporter that Apple is really excited about the launch of the iPhone and would like very much to focus on that for today.

The incident serves as a thumbnail sketch of everything that is good and bad about Apple and the way it is reported. The fact that Channel 4 kept the cameras rolling and then broadcast the incident suggests it knows this very well.

In the credit column is the fact that Apple can now command the attention of every major news outlet in every country in which it has a presence. The iPhone launch was covered in excruciating detail in every newspaper, news website, and broadcast news outlet. The Guardian ran its iPhone review over several days in the run-up to launch and then blogged and reported the launch itself to the point where even the most ardent Apple follower must have become bored reading it. The BBC, too, devoted large swathes of pixels and airtime to the launch. A quick scan of the BBC's technology news section reveals stories on Mac OS X viruses, iPhone unlocking, and a review of the iPhone. That kind of coverage is incredible for a company whose very future was in doubt a decade ago.

On top of that, it has one of the most recognisable and popular brands in the world, is hugely profitable, and its CEO, Steve Jobs, was recently named as the most powerful man in business by Fortune magazine.

In the debit column is that fact that a company which manages, most of the time, to present itself as the kind of slick, PR-driven, well-oiled machine that would have Alistair Campbell purring with delight, still manages to make ridiculous cock-ups. In front of a TV camera. Whether it's a Newsnight camera crew almost being thrown out of the iTunes European Store launch for trying to ask Jobs a real question, or Jobs himself practically throwing a digital camera at an Apple employee during a keynote briefing, because it didn't behave itself when he connected it to a Mac, it highlights the Apple that the company would rather keep hidden.