David Pogue slams the Nook

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

chill. I think he was just bowing out of the Nook forum

I was.


I just posted it a day early. The media cycle is now complete, because the two bigshots we were waiting on have posted their reviews. I put a combo post of their reviews there (to go with all the other reviews we have posted there.)


Now I go into mostly lurker mode there and see what comes of the device. Like I said earlier, I've said positive and negative things about the little device. It's shaping up to be a Playstation/Xbox type fight. Who wins those?

The fans.

[Ocean]

You can comment on the nook review at the NYTimes.

Here are a couple:

This is by far the most prejudiced review written against a new product.
Instead of taking notice and appreciating the new features offered by the Nook, David Pogue slanders and humiliates this device. I believe a review should judge a device for its pros and cons, and give the user freedom to form his own opinion when he eventually decides to buy. Didn't expect this coming from, of all the people, David Pogue

I'm not saying the nook is perfect, and other than the fact that I ordered one I've got no skin in the game (not a b&n employee or anything), but I thought this review was incredibly unfair. And coming from a tech journalist that I usually enjoy and agree with, it actually upset me (probably more than it should).

Maybe BN was quick to the draw, but so is a two day long review. You couldn't give it a week?

[nikkie]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I am not a big Pogue fan, but he doesn't usually play favorites; I think he's just slamming B&N a little hard because he believes they rushed the nook to market. Interest has been high and B&N largely missed the holiday season anyway, so they probably would've been better off spending a few extra months to get it right than release a slow and buggy device.

What I got from the tone (and title!) of the article is that he's upset that a lot of people waste money over the holidays on crap they don't need - a very non-consumerist statement coming from a tech product reviewer.

I definitely feel his vitriol against the nook is a bit misdirected, but I can understand why he would warn people away from it for this holiday season. And he's right: a lot of the footnotes about the nook do direct hits to the schnazz and glitter of it's feature list. This is why the nook forumites on B&N's website revolted and quite a few of them wrote angry posts and canceled their pre-orders when the footnotes came out of the woodwork, and that was *before* the reviews said it was slow as mud.

I still think he was cruel not to mention that the Kindle had the same birthing problems - because his review is definitely going to hurt B&N's bottom line, and ability to put out a V2 nook.

[Seas]

Originally Posted by nikkie

I still think he was cruel not to mention that the Kindle had the same birthing problems

He can only deal with reality..and that Kindle is one or two years in the past.

Its the current Nook vs. the current Kindle. Thats the way the press works.

[nikkie]

Originally Posted by Seas

Its the current Nook vs. the current Kindle. Thats the way the press works.

Fair enough. It's not going to kill it in any case. If B&N does update the nook software quickly, and all the folks who own one show theirs off (as they will), the nook will do fine. If they don't fix it up, well...that's why I didn't pre-order. Hah.

[Seas]

Originally Posted by nikkie

If B&N does update the nook software quickly, and all the folks who own one show theirs off (as they will), the nook will do fine.

Theres only one week where you get to own the media cycle and dominate the reviews as the Nook has this week.

Its surprising, even if they missed the holidays, that they didn't aim to hit that out of the park during this cycle.

The media isn't going to re-review this en masse in February.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by nikkie

What I got from the tone (and title!) of the article is that he's upset that a lot of people waste money over the holidays on crap they don't need - a very non-consumerist statement coming from a tech product reviewer.

I disagree, but only because he's very explicit at the start of the review that he's taking B&N to task for (in his opinion) releasing the nook before it was ready.

Originally Posted by nikkie

I still think he was cruel not to mention that the Kindle had the same birthing problems - because his review is definitely going to hurt B&N's bottom line, and ability to put out a V2 nook.

FYI, here's his review of the first Kindle:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/te...h/22pogue.html

Standards were different then. But again, I suspect his main point is that if B&N had waited a few months instead of trying to release it on Nov 28th in an attempt to be available for the holiday season, they would've had a better product at launch.

I will say in B&N's defense that sales during the holiday season are critical. Unfortunately it also means that most of the reviews are going to be done with a slightly flawed product, so in the end the tactic will probably backfire on them.

(BTW I love the fact that at the time of the K1 review, Amazon had 90,000 ebooks and that was a competitive advantage. )

[nick101]

Originally Posted by scruffy

90% of the complaints he (and all of the other negative reviews I've read) ignore the simple fact: Nook 1.0 software has flaws, but they _will_ be fixed.

Not picking on this quote in particular, but just using it as an example:

[RANT]The damn thing should not be shipped with buggy software; I don't care that plenty of other people ship buggy, early versions to meet a deadline; I don't care that it'll be fixed tomorrow/the next day/someday/never; I don't care that some people are happy to live with the bugs for other benefits; and I don't care that B&N (presumably) felt that they had to ship before the holidays.

Pogue is right to write what he found, otherwise how will anyone know? I don't want a reviewer who keeps quiet about issues because he's confident they'll be fixed before I get to see them (or even worser, he decides that they shouldn't matter to me).

If you used the Nook (or whatever else) and it was fine, write your own review - don't tell me that he shouldn't have written his/that his doesn't matter/that his newspaper's politics are suspect and so his review is invalid[/RANT]

[jasonkchapman]

I'd trust his review more if he didn't have a financial interest in the Kindle's success over its competitors. 18 months ago, the man was insultingly anti-e-book. That was before O'reilly chose to distribute through Amazon's Kindle store.

[nick101]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

I'd trust his review more if he didn't have a financial interest in the Kindle's success over its competitors. 18 months ago, the man was insultingly anti-e-book. That was before O'reilly chose to distribute through Amazon's Kindle store.

1. 18 months ago the ebook market was even worse than it is now. I mean, yeah, you can buy readers for only the same price as a small netbook, and yeah, you can buy ebooks - but just look at all the issues with format, firmware, availability, pricing. Pogue wasn't the only one who slammed ebooks 18 months ago.

2. And, on your logic, any successful author will push Kindle 'cos Amazon's the 400lb gorilla in book sales (ebooks and treebooks).

B&N have done what electronics/software/computer companies have been doing to us for years: they've released a product before it was ready and left us to do the final testing for them.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by nick101

2. And, on your logic, any successful author will push Kindle 'cos Amazon's the 400lb gorilla in book sales (ebooks and treebooks).

Nope. If O'reilly distributed through the other stores, I wouldn't have said a word about it.

[fugazied]

Ouch! Some of his critiques seem spot on from what others have said bit damn he was brutal about it.

"That’s when electronics executives, blinded by dollar signs on their corneas, rush a product to market before it’s ready." Burnt.

It does seem like they rushed it to market for christmas sales, so the screen is "balky and nonresponsive" because they rushed it out the door. This makes me glad I always avoid version 1 releases of electronic gadgets.

Version 2 of the nook may be hot though, it has some great ideas in it.

[anurag]

Pogue just posted a video ridiculing the Nook further. The video is sort of funny.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/...20pogue&st=cse