Forgive me if I’ve missed it, but nowhere in this post did you mention that Violet in her most recent post, did do the legwork to find out that the woman in question was Zsfia Rutkai, not Piroska Szurmai-Palotai as stated in the original comment on her original blog, which in turn was picked up on by Shawn King and then in turn linked to by John Gruber. While her finding that out now doesn’t excuse her original lack of research, it does show that everyone can and has made the same fundamental mistakes, and calling each other out for these on your own blogs (rather than just emailing each other as Violet Blue suggested Shawn King should have done) just adds fuel to the fire. Once it was public, it could only remain public.

Violet ONLY did that because she had no choice. In fact, had we "just left her alone" like so many think, her *complete* mischaracterization of the woman as a "booth babe" would have been left as is, uncorrected.

Note, that to date Violet *still* has not admitted error, nor apologized for that mischaracterization. What she's doing now is an amazingly poor job of CYA. So spare me the "she finally did the right thing" line. No, she really hasn't.

As far as the need for doing that research in the first place, I sincerely doubt Violet Blue would have held back if she really thought it was important. I assume from the framing of the photo that she wasn’t originally going to say anything about Zsfia. The photo was part of a gallery of 26 photos, and the “saddest booth babe” comment (while flippant), was almost certainly included after the fact at the time of posting. Her deciding to make it a starting paragraph to her “Island of Misfit toys” piece was likely done in retrospect too.

Based on what? How is it that you know, or even reasonably assume these things. in the *original* article, that picture was pretty much front and center, and that comment was pretty high up in the article. Your assertion that it was some kind of afterthought has no basis in reality or even logic.

While Violet has dismissed out of hand the idea that her “booth babe” comment could be misogynist, you all have dismissed the idea of a core group of Apple loving enthusiasts who get incredibly and unreasonably defensive about Apple products. I don’t believe any of you bloggers fall into this category of “fanboy” because of your collective experience, but I do think it’s a legitimate term for commenters found in various forums. For the record, while I love Apple products for a number of reasons, there are some people for whom I would never recommend them (people who want to take stuff apart and customise it), and I think anyone who recommends apple products for anyone *no matter what* can legitimately be called an Apple fanboy because it describes their lack of reasoning.

Strawman, strawman, dear lord, such a burning-man level strawman. No one gives a rat's patoot about what Violet thinks about Apple. Everything she writes is about herself anyway, and this article was no different. "I'm cool, and if you were at the show and not at the parties *I* was at, you're not cool, like me: Violet Blue". The only reason this turned into anything beyond yet another craptacular VB egobatory post was because of her over the top hypocrisy and sexism. Remember, (I know this is a hard concept, keeping track of what happened before, but it's important), Violet lost her friggin' mind when someone at a party during the WWDC did the *exact* same thing she did here. Oh, how she railed at the inequity and injustice in the "Males Only" Mac community.

Less than a year later, she does the same goddamned thing, and doesn't even have the spine to admit she did it. No, she backpedals behind insulting attempts to redefine "Booth Babe" and when that fails, her entire argument is now "SEXISMFANBOY".

This is not about defending Apple, Apple needs no defense, not from her. This is about her being the same thing she railed against, and not having the self-awareness to admit that she made a mistake and apologize for it. Your attempt to dismiss everyone disagreeing with her as a fanboy is equally as reprehensible.