Is Apple’s modern attitude rubbing off on the BBC?
Strange times at the BBC where the online reporting team seem to have jettisoned the corporation’s traditionally stuffy image and finally embraced the vernacular. Or to put it another way – are getting down with the kids.
Just as plummy-voiced newsreaders of old have been ousted in favour of mellifluous Celts blessed with lilting brogues, so the tedious language of business is being swapped for the colloquialisms of "da street".
How else could anyone explain the BBC’s coverage of Apple chief Steve Job’s unveiling of his company’s new iPhone? According to its website: "Mr Jobs spent the first ten minutes bigging up the move to Intel chips."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the expression "bigging-up" had been removed from later versions of the story.
If he had any idea what the expression meant, or even what the internet was, Lord Reith would be turning in his grave.
• The Diary finds the idea of the iPhone a pretty strange one – a cynic could argue that it is simply a device which, when inevitably lost, will leave you stranded without a phone, your address book, your music collection and all your computer files.
However, the complexities of the phone itself are as nothing compared to the debate over its name and the trademarking thereof.
And the Diary is glued to the discussion between software company Cisco and Apple over whether a sticker reading iPhone attached to a box containing a cordless phone meets the requirements of the "declaration of use" filed by Cisco in May last year.
Fascinating!
