An Awful Review of the ANN and the Kobo Touch

[boswd]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

I know this is tough for you hear, but remember Rock summer's can get very hot in Chicago so it'll be hard to put away your black turtleneck and your jeans

[RockdaMan]

........

The Droid is just incredibly fast, so it’s a delight to use. Audio quality is superb, both on phone calls and music.

The gorgeous screen is slightly bigger than the iPhone’s; on close examination, its higher resolution (854 x 480 pixels) make text look sharper and curves smoother...Motorola’s new team faced a spectacularly difficult task and did a spectacularly great job. Since Verizon seems to want a Droid-iPhone faceoff, here it is: the Droid wins on phone network, customizability, GPS navigation, speaker, physical keyboard, removable battery and openness (free operating system, mostly uncensored app store).

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by boswd

summer's can get very hot in Chicago so it'll be hard to put away your black turtleneck and your jeans

[boswd]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

........

and where's the rest of it? snipping bits and pieces

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

Ahh. Found it. He speaks:

Interesting, but it hardly makes his point for him. Part of why I see him as a hopeless fanboy is his inability to compare almost any hardware to an Apple product fairly. Countless MP3 players, tablets, and now e-readers have had the same fate in his hands. Yes, he can take a few sentences from reviews here and there where he took Apple to task over the years, but that's not the same thing as being objective about Apple products. He routinely (e.g., with the Xoom) takes products with superior specs and compares them unfavorably to Apple products. He glosses over any features that make the competitors' products more attractive (as seen in both videos I linked to).

I'm sure Mr. Pogue is a nice man and loves his family very much. I just wouldn't trust him to review any product where Apple had a competing product.

[RockdaMan]

Back to e-ink.

Pogue wrote this:

“Oh, man, remember those Cro-Magnon e-book readers?” we’ll say. “They used E Ink screens — black text on gray. No color. No touch screens. And every time you turned a page, you got this weird black-white-black flash. Can you believe anyone bought those?”

Well, it’s time for some progress.

The bedtime routine of many a Kindle owner — wedging a flashlight behind one ear — is a thing of the past.

As we unwrap our all-color, all-touch screen e-book readers under the 2015 tree, we’ll remember this machine as the one that showed the way.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

He routinely (e.g., with the Xoom) takes products with superior specs and compares them unfavorably to Apple products.

If it were all about specs, we wouldn't need reviewers.

Just calculators.

He glosses over any features that make the competitors' products more attractive

Attractive is subjective.

If a phone has flash and the iWhatever doesn't, is it automatically a positive? If in your opinion it is, you don't need a reviewer. Just a spec sheet.

It's like soup. Two chefs make minestrone...one uses 13 ingredients and the other 11...which is better? It's going to the end result, when it all comes together, that determines that. At least for me it is ... variety makes the world go around.

[boswd]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Interesting, but it hardly makes his point for him. Part of why I see him as a hopeless fanboy is his inability to compare almost any hardware to an Apple product fairly. Countless MP3 players, tablets, and now e-readers have had the same fate in his hands. Yes, he can take a few sentences from reviews here and there where he took Apple to task over the years, but that's not the same thing as being objective about Apple products. He routinely (e.g., with the Xoom) takes products with superior specs and compares them unfavorably to Apple products. He glosses over any features that make the competitors' products more attractive (as seen in both videos I linked to).

I'm sure Mr. Pogue is a nice man and loves his family very much. I just wouldn't trust him to review any product where Apple had a competing product.

BINGO!!!!!

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

If it were all about specs, we wouldn't need reviewers.

Just calculators.

Obviously, it's not all about specs, but look at the reviews I posted. He doesn't go into specs at all. If he did, he'd have to admit that the iPad was lacking in comparison to the Xoom. And he blatantly misrepresented the cost of the Xoom, without mentioning that the price he quoted was for an unlocked, 32MB Xoom.

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

Attractive is subjective.

Certainly.

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

If a phone has flash and the iWhatever doesn't, is it automatically a positive? If in your opinion it is, you don't need a reviewer. Just a spec sheet.

I think you're a little confused as to what a reviewer does. A reviewer reviews a device, telling you all about it. The reviewer saying, "Well, I don't care about specs. If you do, go get a spec sheet." is not acceptable when you're writing a review, because without specs, you're not telling the whole story of a device, to allow people to make informed decisions.

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

It's like soup. Two chefs make minestrone...one uses 13 ingredients and the other 11...which is better? It's going to the end result, when it all comes together, that determines that. At least for me it is ... variety makes the world go around.

That's the point. Readers/viewers can't make informed decisions if they don't get the whole story about a device's pluses and minuses, and when you spend half the review saying that one device is exactly like another device (which, by implication, you consider clearly superior), and then gloss over any differences (that might tend to make the device you're looking at more acceptable than your favorite device), that's not a fair review.

I can sum it up this way: Pogue spends a great deal of effort saying why Device X isn't as good as an iDevice, without really delving into the competing device sufficiently.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Obviously, it's not all about specs, but look at the reviews I posted. He doesn't go into specs at all. If he did, he'd have to admit that the iPad was lacking in comparison to the Xoom. And he blatantly misrepresented the cost of the Xoom, without mentioning that the price he quoted was for an unlocked, 32MB Xoom.




Certainly.



I think you're a little confused as to what a reviewer does. A reviewer reviews a device, telling you all about it. The reviewer saying, "Well, I don't care about specs. If you do, go get a spec sheet." is not acceptable when you're writing a review, because without specs, you're not telling the whole story of a device, to allow people to make informed decisions.



That's the point. Readers/viewers can't make informed decisions if they don't get the whole story about a device's pluses and minuses, and when you spend half the review saying that one device is exactly like another device (which, by implication, you consider clearly superior), and then gloss over any differences (that might tend to make the device you're looking at more acceptable than your favorite device), that's not a fair review.

I can sum it up this way: Pogue spends a great deal of effort saying why Device X isn't as good as an iDevice, without really delving into the competing device sufficiently.

Restaurant reviewers don't go into the kitchen and tell you what ingredients are in use and the cooking techniques in use.

They focus overarchingly on the final product.

Ditto with a reviewer. If a device is notably better because of some unique spec, they mention it. But if it's there and there is no difference in the outcome they might not. The Xoom was not measurably better because the spec sheet.

It had a SD slot too. mentionable?

[boswd]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

Restaurant reviewers don't go into the kitchen and tell you what ingredients are in use and the cooking techniques in use.

They focus overarchingly on the final product.

Ditto with a reviewer. If a device is notably better because of some unique spec, they mention it. But if it's there and there is no difference in the outcome they might not. The Xoom was not measurably better because the spec sheet.

It had a SD slot too. mentionable?

and SD slot mentinable? In a multimedia device it should be absolutley. to be able to not only expand your memory, which is key in these types of devices but to also be able to have it read your cards that contain photo's, video's and books etc.

but these are the types of ommissions that may get a mention for it's lack of it but never a strike against the iPad for not having it. And on a device where you are constantly filling it up with music, photo, video's, books, movies etc to have to go through a whole work around, buying dongles etc, it a major strike.

but it seems nothing else matters as long as it's thin.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by boswd

but it seems nothing else matters as long as it's thin.

My point was that Xooms SD card, when the battery of reviews came out, did not function properly. Should it have been mentioned? Held against the device?

And Anandtech, a fave of yours, said the following:

While I wouldn't consider porting the original iPad around due to its limited usefulness in my workflow, the iPad 2 is thin and light enough where I'm less bothered by it. Ultimately I feel like tablets (iPad or not) have to be even thinner and even more ergonomic to really come into their own.

Yes, thinness matters. So does silicon:

Apple's commitment to increasing performance deserves serious recognition. Whether or not you like the company, Apple outfitted the iPad 2 with a pair of ARM Cortex A9s and a GPU significantly faster than anything else on the market. Look around and you won't see many apps that can really stress the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 that Apple put in the A5. Make no mistake, this is about building a big install base of high performance mobile devices.

[boswd]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

My point was that Xooms SD card, when the battery of reviews came out, did not function properly. Should it have been mentioned? Held against the device?

And Anandtech, a fave of yours, said the following:



Yes, thinness matters. So does silicon:

yeah I do like that guy but if thinness is coming at the expense of connectivity then IMHO it's not worth it. I mean is the difference between the iPad 2 and the Asus really that much? In real life usage? And really that much more demanding on you? I mean it's about an 1/8 of an inch? And what do you get in return, an SDcard slot, and HDMI Port, well worth the slight difference. And even though I've been waiting for the Samsung, they took a page out of the Apple model and 86'd some great selling points and REAL consumer advantages over the iPad 2 for what? to be a sliver thinner?
Crazy IMO. So it' will be the Asus for me.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by boswd

And what do you get in return, an SDcard slot, and HDMI Port, well worth the slight difference. And even though I've been waiting the Samsung, they took a page out of the Apple model and 86'd some great selling points and REAL consumer advantages over the iPad 2 for what? to be a sliver thinner?
Crazy IMO. So it' will be the Asus for me.

I think Apple (and Samsung) have a grip on what's important to most, and your needs lie outside of the mainstream.

I think you are a Mac guy in a Windows world, in a figurative sense.

Anyway, should we go to PM's for this?

[SCION]

Originally Posted by boswd

I know this is tough for you hear, but remember Rock summer's can get very hot in Chicago so it'll be hard to put away your black turtleneck and your jeans

That's a sexy ensemble. Just need a tweed jacket when going out to dinner.