An Awful Review of the ANN and the Kobo Touch

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

As more evidence of Pogue's fanboy-ism, I'd point to this article....

Y'know, I don't have any particular use or care for Pogue; I find him to be somewhat irritating and his reviews aren't usually relevant to my uses.

That said, the "Pogue is an Apple Fanboy" comments crack me up. When people accuse Pogue of bias, they end up displaying their own bias.

For example, in the FC Pro review, he spends the first 1/3 of the review saying that "yet again, Apple has eviscerated one of its apps," much as they did with iMovie in 2008. He says that pros will "grind their teeth" over the changes, and added a brief list of features that were pulled out. But Pogue is not writing a review for pros, nor should anyone expect that from him at this point; he's writing a review for Joe Average who wants to edit video of his family and post it on Youtube.

In contrast, the CNN article isn't a review, it's a report of objections by professionals to the changes. Nothing in one article refutes the other. They are written by, for and about different FCP user bases.

And of course, the article that kicked all this off is NOT pro-Apple, wildly anti-B&N or anti-Kobo. In fact it's rather complimentary to both.

So I'd have to guess that people are just reading the OP's excruciatingly selective quotes and ignoring the rest; and/or presume that Pogue "is always" pro-Apple, therefore they declare the article is anti-everything else... without actually reading it. **Nice.**

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

As more evidence of Pogue's fanboy-ism, I'd point to this article.

You probably only read the first part of the review. He also said:

Video editing screams out for horsepower. Final Cut is now a 64-bit program, meaning it can exploit Macs with more than 4 gigabytes of memory for even better speed. And you’ll need it; on even medium-powered Macs, scrolling and dragging operations can get laggy.

I also ran into a bunch of typical first-release bugs. Don’t entrust your next Cannes entry to this program until Apple produces the inevitable bug-fix patch.

The biggest disappointment is that Final Cut X can’t open old Final Cut projects. They’re now orphaned, stuck forever in the old program. Apple says the architecture of the new program is too different from the old one. Well, O.K., but what a drag to have to maintain your video projects in two separate collections: B.X. (before X) and A.X.

Of course, that’s the way Apple rolls. Here’s one more Apple-imposed migration to a new, very different platform.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

**Nice.**

Indeed.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Y'know, I don't have any particular use or care for Pogue; I find him to be somewhat irritating and his reviews aren't usually relevant to my uses.

That said, the "Pogue is an Apple Fanboy" comments crack me up. When people accuse Pogue of bias, they end up displaying their own bias.

For example, in the FC Pro review, he spends the first 1/3 of the review saying that "yet again, Apple has eviscerated one of its apps," much as they did with iMovie in 2008. He says that pros will "grind their teeth" over the changes, and added a brief list of features that were pulled out. But Pogue is not writing a review for pros, nor should anyone expect that from him at this point; he's writing a review for Joe Average who wants to edit video of his family and post it on Youtube.

You'd have an excellent point about Pogue writing the review from a Joe User point of view, if the primary market for FCP was Joe User. Unfortunately, it's not. They've got iMovie for that. Final Cut Pro is supposed to be a professional product. And professionals are not happy about it. There was such a furor over the column I linked to that Pogue felt obligated to post another column explaining things from Apple's point of view.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

In contrast, the CNN article isn't a review, it's a report of objections by professionals to the changes. Nothing in one article refutes the other. They are written by, for and about different FCP user bases.

Actually, the article on CNN was a summary of the irate user reviews, which were newsworthy particularly because they were so abysmal.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

And of course, the article that kicked all this off is NOT pro-Apple, wildly anti-B&N or anti-Kobo. In fact it's rather complimentary to both.

How is a review that compares an iPad to a device not even remotely in the same device class not pro-Apple?

[RockdaMan]

Lets just give it a break. It's OT anyway.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

Lets just give it a break. It's OT anyway.

I can give it a rest, but I don't see how it's OT. The OP was about a review written by Pogue. Isn't an analysis of Pogue's biases relevant to the veracity of the review?

[RockdaMan]

Look at that smoke ring. I can taste it right now!

[SensualPoet]

And in other news ... Kobo Touch has updated for firmware 1.9.5. All new buyers will get this version automatically when they do the initial device setup. The tweaks include faster response, improved wifi, seven font families installed, the ability to change line spacing, margins, font sizes in native kepubs and other formats such as epub, rtf, html ... and, apparently, there is more coming.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

You'd have an excellent point about Pogue writing the review from a Joe User point of view, if the primary market for FCP was Joe User.... There was such a furor over the column I linked to that Pogue felt obligated to post another column explaining things from Apple's point of view.

Uh, no.

"I wrote my review from the perspective of an advanced amateur; I’m not a professional editor.... I found FCP X infinitely more powerful than iMovie, yet infinitely less intimidating than the old Final Cut."

He writes reviews for amateurs, not professionals. When you blast him for having a different perspective than the pros, ultimately you're failing to recognize that he's just doing his job. It's like slagging Jon Stewart for being glib and snarky when he reads the news; it's not because he's a bad news anchor, it's because he is a comedian who is lampooning the news.

Originally Posted by bhartman

How is a review that compares an iPad to a device not even remotely in the same device class not pro-Apple?

There was one, count it one, specific comparison to the iPad in his review -- basically to point out that the new Nook doesn't scroll and doesn't have multitouch. That's it. It's hardly a crime to point out that the Nook won't scroll like almost every other computer device we're accustomed to, including on (like it or not) one of the leading options for reading ebooks.

The rest of the review offers a positive opinion of the Nook and Kobo, and is loaded with compliments.

The very fact that you're taking umbrage at what amounts to the most trivial mention of an Apple product in the review, and treating a positive review of the Nook & Kobo as proof positive of Pogue's bias, merely deepens the display of your own bias.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

There was one, count it one, specific comparison to the iPad in his review -- basically to point out that the new Nook doesn't scroll and doesn't have multitouch. That's it. It's hardly a crime to point out that the Nook won't scroll like almost every other computer device we're accustomed to, including on (like it or not) one of the leading options for reading ebooks.

On which eink-device can you actually scroll the page or use multitouch?

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Uh, no.

"I wrote my review from the perspective of an advanced amateur; I’m not a professional editor.... I found FCP X infinitely more powerful than iMovie, yet infinitely less intimidating than the old Final Cut."

He writes reviews for amateurs, not professionals. When you blast him for having a different perspective than the pros, ultimately you're failing to recognize that he's just doing his job. It's like slagging Jon Stewart for being glib and snarky when he reads the news; it's not because he's a bad news anchor, it's because he is a comedian who is lampooning the news.

My point was that Pogue's review (and perspective) was completely wrong for that software. FCP (as the "Pro" moniker would indicate) was (note the tense) a professional product. Pogue wrote a puff piece about it, and got called on it by the users who do use the software.

In other words, writing a review from the perspective of Apple's hoped-for audience, rather than the audience that actually uses FCP, was a huge error in judgement. And going back to Apple's PR department to help them do damage control w/ a follow-up article only made things worse for Pogue's credibility. Many of the commenters on the follow-up piece recognized this move for what it was.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

There was one, count it one, specific comparison to the iPad in his review -- basically to point out that the new Nook doesn't scroll and doesn't have multitouch. That's it. It's hardly a crime to point out that the Nook won't scroll like almost every other computer device we're accustomed to, including on (like it or not) one of the leading options for reading ebooks.

Any mention of the iPad in comparison to a specific e-book reader (whether it's the Nook, Kindle, Sony Reader, or anything else) is out of place. It's like comparing a pickup truck to a sports car. If people were looking for a sports car and could afford one, they'd buy one. He was needlessly plugging an Apple gadget. Plain and simple. It would be like doing a review of a notebook computer and mentioning all the features you're not getting because you're not choosing a desktop. He does it because he likes plugging iProducts, the same way he does for every other conceivable product that might have a product that Apple sells. I'm not sure he's even capable of doing a review without mentioning an Apple product.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The rest of the review offers a positive opinion of the Nook and Kobo, and is loaded with compliments.

Yeah? And? He still makes comparisons to devices not in the same device class, and this is how he concludes the article:

All of this is clear evidence that the clunky primitiveness of the Paleozoic e-book era is finally drawing to a close. At this rate, before you know it, e-book readers will arrive solidly in the Jurassic period.

Backhanded compliment, anyone?

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The very fact that you're taking umbrage at what amounts to the most trivial mention of an Apple product in the review, and treating a positive review of the Nook & Kobo as proof positive of Pogue's bias, merely deepens the display of your own bias.

It's not a trivial mention, when it's designed to detract from the product you're reviewing. The whole tone of the review was meant to imply that e-readers represent some prehistoric technology ("prehistoric" in the sense that the technology isn't as advanced as the iPad).

At least when Pogue compares other tablets to the iPad, it's an apples to apples comparison.

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by ST-One

On which eink-device can you actually scroll the page or use multitouch?

Actually, Kobo Touch can scroll page in pdf, as well as as any web page in the experimental browser.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

Actually, Kobo Touch can scroll page in pdf, as well as as any web page in the experimental browser.

Well, if you have to use PDFs

But I'm sure it will still fall short of the iPad's capabilities...

[RockdaMan]

[boswd]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

I do believe that is a KingFisher beer I see in the background. India's #1 selling beer.