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I'm not sure that I've correctly understood what you mean by '"mother ship" interaction'. If you're talking about ease of purchase and download of books, and synchronisation between device and server, then yes, I agree that that ought to be covered.
Metadata is a bit of a niche interest, and arguably irrelevant to the average user. Few end users even know of its existence. If I mentioned it to my sisters, I'm sure that I'd just get blank looks. It'd need to be explained in a fair bit of detail before any comments about it could be made. I think that that's an excusable omission.
Public domain stuff is also an excusable omission. My gut feeling is that the target audience generally only cares about buying, downloading and reading the latest bestsellers. Project Gutenberg and the like deserve more coverage than they get, but I don't think that an article comparing hardware is the place for it.
The need for sideloading should certainly get mentioned if downloading from sellers' servers by Wi-Fi isn't available. But as an option for the few who prefer it as standard? No, I'd excuse that, too. (The users of this forum are, I believe, not representative of users generally.)
But the UI is fundamental: it affects the experience of all users.
With regard to technology columns generally, I don't think that the Guardian is unique in treating them as advertorials. A long time ago - getting on for 40 years, I think - I read a piece in the Sunday Times about some then-new consumer electronic technology. It interested me, and raised questions in my mind. I wrote to the journalist. He actually replied to me, but the reply was uninspiring. The gist of it was "Don't ask me, guv. I know nothing. I just regurgitated the puff that the makers gave me". Well, that certainly explained the omission of any mention of the possible negative points that had occurred to me.
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