[Prestidigitweeze]

Weekend obligations still linger, but I'm back to answer a few posts.

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Thank you for tossing back at me the exact point I was trying to make.

In fact it was you who "tossed back" the point I made in the first place:

Originally Posted by prestidigitweeze

[T]elling another user that "Audio support on an eReader is subjective" is unhelpful because you're implying that other kinds of support (i.e., features) are not subjective.

Next:

Originally Posted by ardeegee

That is indeed an objective fact-- what is a subjective opinion is that "aluminum is better than plastic", which would only be true if the only criterion for "better" is "durability."

In consumer parlance, the phrase better materials happens to mean more durable with regard to cases. The objectivity of durable is implied in the word if not one's preference: better specifically in the sense of better made, more lastingly constructed. Other materials might seem better to some consumers in the sense of more comfortable or easier to carry (especially in a portable device or case), but no one uses better-made as a synonym for that. More portable, lighter, easier to hold and/or carry -- those are the kinds of things we'd say about such a preference.

Yes, it is subjective to prefer metal to rubber. However, it is not subjective to say that metal is better for a casement in the sense of more durable when the inference of durability is implied by the context.

In your words, "thank you for tossing back at me the exact point I was trying to make."

And if durability is the only factor, then why are you willing to settle for this aluminum junk and not instead insist on a titanium shell?

So far as I know, no one makes a titanium eReader, which would make my insistence academic.

If a plastic case shields the screen and electronics of a reader by a reasonable amount from flexing and by a reasonable amount from impacts (given that no amount of shielding from any material can protect from all possible "injuries") then I see no reason to conciser plastic to be an inferior choice to aluminum.

Yet that choice on your part has nothing to do with the application of the phrase better made and everything to do with your decision that stronger protective materials are unnecessary because ultimate protection is impossible.

Ah, so you are going for pedantic nitpicking about language! You know very well that what he obviously meant was that the value of audio in a reader is subjective. You know very well that he didn't mean that whether or not audio existed on a given reader depended on your opinion on it.

. . . and here's where your own politeness comes into question.

Though I have apologized for any possible unintended impoliteness in two of my previous posts, even in those posts, I did not accuse Dreams or you, Phonetics, of dishonesty. Questioning someone's motives is different from presuming one's guess about them is correct.

Besides which, my "pedantic" point remains inviolate: subjective is not a synonym for lesser perceived value any more than objective is for consensus. You're still suggesting that poppaea's preference for audio in an eReader is somehow insufficiently normative -- that other features are somehow more "objective" because they have more "value" (to whom exactly?).

I would argue that no one who praises one reader over another should bother entering into the guessing game of what the normative consumer prefers. As I've said elsewhere, the idea of a normative person is inherently flawed and the past fifty years of anti-discrimination activism have largely been devoted to pointing this out: People are disincluded by the mistake of omission as often as the intention of malice.

What you and I both know that he meant was that the presence of audio on an ebook reader (along with what material the case is made from) is not going to be a factor in everyone's decisions on which ebook reader to buy . . .

There I agree with you.

and therefore makes no difference to them.

And there you've lost me. In one phrase, you've gone from correctly assessing that preferences are subjective to asserting that a given feature lacks value in general based on "not everyone's" preference.