The Baltimore Sun's David Zeiler has a piece about James Daley, a writer for The Independent newspaper of the U.K., who claims Apple is deliberately releasing bad software updates to iPod owners "with the intent of disabling them." The reason? So people buy more iPods, of course...

Daley's only sources backing up this ridiculous theory, to say the least, are his wife, friends and "Internet chat forums." Disappointed with Daley's piece, The Baltimore Sun's writer points out that "no facts, figures or studies," are presented "despite his claim of a 'growing body of evidence." Daley even mentions that "there's no solid evidence that Apple deliberately kills iPods through software updates" in the same article.

These days, anything negative in relation to Apple - that bold company that always does things differently - is bound to get everyone's attention. One reason is because the electronics giant has a lot of enemies, who think Mac users are spoiled brats, or snobs, and would take anything they can get their hands on and throw back at Apple.

Then, there are the fanatics, who, as soon as they see a negative headline containing the word "Apple" (even though it may not be written with a capital "a" and could very well be news in relation to the forbidden fruit), immediately click their way into the burning topic to be able to leave a pro-Apple comment ASAP, thus helping save their favorite company from failure.

All this being said, here's Baltimore Sun reader Elias' conclusion which, I have to admit, I couldn't have expressed better myself: "With a product that Apple has used to capture about 75-80% of the marketshare and through which the Apple iTunes Music Store has become the number one retailer of music in the United States, it's ridiculous to think that they could have achieved those accomplishments by sabotaging their products.... LOL..."

Now, what say you, dear reader?