The first time I heard of ”player hater” was about four years ago when Sean showed me the Star Wars Gangsta Rap viral video. If you somehow missed that, you need to watch it. If you’ve already seen it 100 times, one more won’t hurt. 
Gizmodo reports the hate for a different sort of player, the iPod and iTunes Music Store. This hate appears in the form of the never-ending Apple v. Apple lawsuit.
Everything old is, well, old again
The strange thing not mentioned in this article or the linked article or even the linked linked article is that the only thing new here is the trial date.
By this I mean, that actually, Apple Corp has sued Apple Computer over this very thing about the time iTunes Music Store went to the PC almost three years ago. In response to this, Apple lawyers combed over all things that might infringe and changed a tab on Apple’s website from “Music” to “iTunes” and finally “iPod + iTunes:”
But we are poor students of history.
Pot, Kettle, and Blackness
Truly the most amusing thing about this is the Inquirer article linked. It refers to Steven P Jobs as “L. Ron Jobs” and glosses over the details of their legal battles in a way that shows this person is clearly a Beatle-lover and Apple-hater.
The fact of the matter is that the London Times article is more reasonable. Apple never technically “lost” a lawsuit to Apple Records—they would have but both times previously they were settled out of court. While we do not know what the details are of the settlements, the last settlement cost Apple $26.5 million and probably puts Apple Computer in the catbird seat. According to BusinessWeek:
“Although that pact remains private, key portions of it are cited in public court papers. And one of those passages in the court document strongly implies that Apple Corps agreed to allow Apple to pursue digital music initiatives, but not package, sell, or distribute any physical music materials such as CDs.”
But please, Andrew Thomas of the Inquirer, don’t let the things like a modest amount of websearching stop you from showing off your religious zeal by ridiculing the supposed religious zeal in others.1
Back to that player hater thing…
According to the Urban Dictionary, a Player Hater is:
someone who dislikes or resents or disapproves of a player (the term is used to criticize people who are jealous or who don’t respect successful people).
Looks like some people are hating “L. Ron Job”, him being a “player”, him having created two music players, and the fact that those are themselves “player.”
Now that is some truly awesome player hating!
