Rogers, Apple... love you guys (sometimes), and I hate to try to tell you how to do your jobs. But in the future when you're making the most significant joint announcement in the recent history of your two companies, maybe, just maybe, you could try a non food-based delivery medium.

As per the second update in my post below, Rogers is indeed launching the 3G iPhone in Canada on July 11. I know this now, because I have the press release that Rogers and Apple sent over... in the form of a pie. Two pies, actually, one of which arrived around 5:30 p.m. yesterday, after our mailroom had closed for the day, and the other of which came this morning. Both had press releases attached confirming that the 3G iPhone unveiled by Steve Jobs at yesterday's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco will launch day and date with the U.S., on July 11.

This information would have been really, really helpful to have had yesterday afternoon when the announcement was made (though certainly part of the blame rests with me for not checking to see if Rogers' website had been updated.) You guys are technology companies, right? And you deal with communications services and such? Maybe next time you could send me an e-mail, or (gasp) pick up the phone and call. Seriously. WTF.

Cute little pie-related PR stunts may sound good on paper, but information in a timely fashion is far more valuable to journalists than fruity pastries. Meantime, anyone interested in some day-old pie?




UPDATE: My little pie rant caught the eye of Torontoist's Cate Simpson, who sez, "For the most part, writers are paid such a pitifully small amount that we'll take whatever freebies come our way. Free CD? Awesome! Free food? Hells yeah, we'll go to your restaurant [...] What kind of a person, we couldn't help but ask, gripes about free pie, even if it does come with a side of day-old press release?"

She's got a point, I guess, though the suggestion that journalists can be bought off with free CDs and food is a little disturbing. I'm sure Torontoist doesn't cover stories based on how much graft interested parties slide their way, right? Right? Right.

But a nice pie doesn't excuse the fact that the information I needed came to me six hours late (which then became a day late, as I didn't bother to pick up the mysterious "cake box" that security said had arrived just as I was leaving the office for the night.) If you had a home pregnancy test that took six hours to give you a result, but handed it to you tied up in a pretty ribbon with a bunch of "Whew, you're not knocked up!" balloons, would that be an acceptable trade-off?

Ah well. I did have some of the pie (it came from Toronto's legendary Dufflet Pastries, no less), and it was indeed delicious, although the joke going around the office was that Rogers would probably charge us 25 cents a minute just to look at it. Come to think of it, given Rogers' horrifically high mobile data rates, some sort of lame cost per "byte" joke would have been more apt.

I'm with Ms. Simpson on one thing though — next time, Rogers and Apple, forget the pie and just send the iPhone.