The Backlash Blog Entry

Important Lesson Learned Today:

The Interweb is an open forum. Respect what you say about others.

I received a response from David Pogue, which, I must say, is polite at the least. To be perfectly frank, I’m very impressed with Mr Pogue. I should not be so impressed, however. What I had failed to realize is that, unlike a rank amateur like me, Mr Pogue reviews products for a living. Emphasis on the last three words -

for a living

I do this as a hobby. A time-killer. I have no deadlines. I am accountable to no one. Mr Pogue does not have this luxury. I really must remember that in the future.

I had, in addition to posting the digg story (from SF Weekly) about DriveSavers, had lobbed a complaint against Mr Pogue that was, perhaps, unjustified. I had called him “iPogue” and claimed that he never met an Apple product he didn’t like.  I put a “more” link here to cut down on the front page length
I admit, I’m not a fan of his somewhat clownish delivery (my opinion). I find it grating. Additionally, the plethora of iReviews is not entirely his fault. Apple comes out with products fairly often and to quite a bit of fanfare. Additionally, as an iPod and Zen user, I have to say – my Zen collects dust.

I am not the best reader. Mr Pogue writes entire articles which, when I read at work, I tend to skim.

I am a human and as a human, my perception is shaded by emotion. One of my emotions is strong dislike for MacHeads – iDiots in my opinion. Apple fanboys.

Here, for your edification, is Mr Pogue’s amazingly prompt and comprehensive retort:

Couple corrections here… first, I definitely did disclose the arrangement in the Times column. Here it is: “Had I been a paying customer and not a reviewer, I would have been charged about $2,000.”Second, it wasn’t a “glowing review.” It said this: “Despite two trips to the clean room and the rebuild of my hard drive from identical spare parts, DriveSavers batted only .500. They resurrected my voice files, complete and whole, but couldn’t find my e-mail stash.”Finally, here are some of the flaws in Apple products that I “can’t seem to cite:”

iPod Nano: ” THE Mini, for example, was available in four metallic colors; the Nano comes only in shiny black or white. Both have the traditional fingerprint-prone chrome back panel… The Mini held much more music, too; $200 for four gigabytes of storage instead of two, for example. The Nano’s battery doesn’t last as long, either: 14 hours instead of the Mini’s 18, and rival flash players’ batteries run much longer still. And the Nano can’t connect to your Mac or PC with a FireWire cable, as all previous iPods could (except the Shuffle). Instead, the Nano comes with a snow-white U.S.B. cable… if your computer has only a regular U.S.B. 1.1 connector (and this includes Macs that are only two years old), you could practically sing your songs in the time it takes to transfer them to the Nano… It also lacks some familiar features. It can display photos on its postage-stamp screen, but can’t connect to a TV for showing off to the masses, as the big iPods can. None of the current iPod microphones, remote controls or digital camera photo-transfer adapters work on the Nano, which lacks the necessary jacks.”

iTunes Podcast software: “EVER since Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997 after a 12-year absence, his company has thrived by executing the same essential formula over and over: Find an exciting new technology whose complexity and cost keep it out of the average person’s life. Streamline it, mainstream it, strip away the geeky options. Take the credit.”

Mac OS X Tiger: ” Unfortunately, Spotlight can’t “see inside” many programs other than Apple’s. For example, Spotlight can search the contents of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, but doesn’t yet see the messages in Microsoft’s Entourage e-mail program…. The second most heavily hyped Tiger feature is called Dashboard. But Dashboard isn’t a Tiger exclusive; the shareware program Konfabulator, available for Windows and older Mac OS versions, does pretty much the same thing…. Messages alert you – a little annoyingly, actually – every time you download a file that could theoretically contain a virus (because it contains a runnable program, even if it’s compressed).”

iPhoto: ” iPhoto 5 can accommodate about 20,000 photos per library before it starts bogging down – for the true digicam fanatic, that’s about one afternoon’s shooting at Disney World. Picasa handily juggles 250,000 photos without breaking a sweat.”

iTunes: ” iTunes doesn’t speed up downloads using high-tech tricks with names like ETags, compression and “last modified” headers.”

Itunes Music Store: ” Apple’s system can be slow with a dial-up modem, and it’s annoying that no search by artist name produces more than 100 results (a tactic to prevent sluggishness, Apple says; if you want that 101st Carly Simon song, you have to search for it by name)…. even Mr. Jobs’s high-gear charisma hasn’t swayed all agents and bands to permit their music to be sold online. That’s why the Beatles, Britney Spears, Metallica, Madonna, the Backstreet Boys, the Rolling Stones and other top-tier names are absent so far from all commercial download services, including Apple’s. Apple lists hundreds of other bands but sometimes offers only older albums or selected tracks. ”

Ipod: ” But if you want to buy pop music legally online, you must use Apple’s iTunes Music Store… iPods can’t play songs bought from other online music stores… Rival players hold more music than the Mini (about 250 songs more). Each contains a five-gigabyte hard drive instead of a four-gigabyte one. And each rival either costs less or offers more features.”

Ipod Photo: ” Unfortunately, all that processing adds a considerable amount of time to the synching process. On Windows, synching is measured in minutes, not seconds. For best results, keep a stack of Popular Photography magazines next to your iPod cradle… Why can’t you download your pictures onto this thing straight from a digital camera? Why do you have to use iTunes, a music program, to manage the photo loading? And, inevitably: Why can’t it play video? After all, for the same $500, you can buy a Windows Mobile Portable Media Center that plays not only music and photos, but videos too.”

Flat iMac: ” even the top-of-the-line model comes with only 256 megabytes of memory. That’s typical for consumer computers these days, but on a creative powerhouse like the Macintosh, it’s not enough. Programs like Apple’s creative suite (iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand and so on, all included) and Adobe Photoshop can run in 256 megs, but only barely; programs like Microsoft’s new Virtual PC 7, which lets most Windows programs run on the Mac, don’t open at all.”

AirPort Express: ” First, you can only send the music to one set of speakers at a time. Second, note that the connection between the AirPort Express and the stereo is not wireless. You have to supply your own cable to connect them. .. Finally, if you’re downstairs with the stereo, you can’t pause playback when the phone rings, see the name of the current song, or skip a truly awful song, without having to run upstairs to the computer… you could buy each of the Express’s features for less money.”

Mac OS X Panther: “Panther ‘’breaks’’ certain add-on utility programs (QuicKeys, for example), which will require minor compatibility updates. …Now the big one: Apple wants $130 for Panther. That’s a fine how-de-do for everyone who dutifully paid $130 last year for version 10.2 and $130 a year before that for version 10.1. Microsoft, at least, has the decency to wait a few years between upgrades.”

17-inch PowerBook: “The new PowerBook’s most glamorous feature is its hidden light sensor. When it detects that you are working in, say, a darkened movie theater, the screen automatically dims slightly to save power. Then, amazingly, a fiber-optic light glows beneath the keyboard. The light spills out around the keys and, in fact, through the transparent letters on the keys themselves. Frankly, the whole thing is a little silly; finding your way around the keyboard just isn’t much of an issue when a 17-inch floodlight is towering above you.”

Flat-panel iMac: “Apple may have gone too far with some of its sacrifices on the altar of beauty. Putting the power button on the back of the base, for example, leaves the front of the dome pure and unbroken except for the CD tray’s trap door. But the power button would have been more convenient on the front, or on the iMac’s clear-and-white keyboard… Others find the base, small as it is, unsettlingly massive and white, like a guy in shorts with his foot in a cast.”

Original iPod: ” As sometimes happens in products built at the altar of coolness, function occasionally suffers. For example, there is no belt clip, which could be an issue for joggers whose sweat pants lack pockets. The chromelike finish looks glamorous and, as a handy bonus, offers one of the world’s few socially acceptable ways for men to carry a mirror. Unfortunately, fingerprints and streaks dull its shine faster than you can say, ‘’Honey, where do we keep the Windex?’’”

MacBook Pro: “Apple hath taken away quite a few PowerBook features. The S-video connector, for high-quality TV playback of movies, is gone — a weird omission, considering the multimedia emphasis implied by the new remote control. (You can restore the S-video jack with a $20 accessory cable.) The FireWire 800 connector, for high-speed hard drives, is also missing. The DVD burner is only half as fast as the previous model (4X instead of 8X) and can no longer burn dual-layer DVD discs. Current PC expansion cards (including high-speed cellular Internet cards) don’t work or fit in the new narrow-format ExpressCard slot.

“Most mystifying of all, Apple has removed the laptop’s dial-up modem, so you can no longer send or receive faxes. You can’t go online in hotels that don’t offer high-speed connections (or that charge way too much for them), either. Apple points out that you can buy its tiny external modem for $50, but that’s another piece to pack, track and lose.”

–David Pogue