Geek Bravado

The blown hard arrogance of Parallax Abstraction.

Category Archives: Coverage

What’s the alternative to ad supported content?

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 23, 2013

I intended to have more posts this month and have a couple in the brain hopper but between working on my YouTube stuff, my day job and some crazy housing related stuff that may be coming our way soon, something had to give and it was unfortunately this. I hope to rectify that soon.

There’s been a lot of discussion among enthusiast sites (principally gaming related) of late on the subject of supporting them with advertising and how a large and increasing number of users are running ad blockers. These ensure they get the content without having to see the ads which allow that content to be offered for free. It’s been a subject of debate in the background for some time but it came to a head recently with a post on Destructoid in which their head guy lamented the situation in the politest way possible. A while after, Ben Kuchera from Penny Arcade Report chimed in with his version of the situation, in which he states that the types of click-baiting articles many of us hate are necessary because they drive the ad revenue that allows more meaningful (and sadly, niche) pieces to be authored. It’s an interesting perspective, though as usual, skewed by Kuchera’s ego which led him to speak as if he was representing the entire industry and not his own site, which is run under a unique arrangement to put it mildly. John Walker from Rock, Paper, Shotgun took him to task in a better way than I ever could so just go check his post if you want to know more.

Normally I would just observe this debate and little else but as someone who recently started producing video content which I do hope to eventually make a bit of money from with, you guessed it, advertising, I’ve been thinking about this a lot more. I haven’t used an ad blocker ever. I see banner ads of all shapes, sizes and levels of obnoxiousness every day. I consume hours of YouTube content every month and most of it has pre-roll ads, post-roll ads and sometimes, even ads in the middle. None of it bothers me. Sure, I don’t like having to wait 15-30 seconds for an ad to clear before my video starts or worse, waiting 10 seconds only to have to click the Skip Ad button to avoid a longer one but I tolerate it.

The reason for this is simple: I’m being given content for free and that content creator has to pay the bills somehow. Ad revenue is a pittance to begin with. When I looked at how big I’ll have to grow my YouTube audience just to make enough per month to pay for my Internet bill, I thought it was a typo. When I then thought about people using ad blockers and watching the content I worked hard on for literally nothing, my first reaction was one of anger. It takes time and money to produce this stuff. I’ve already put almost $500 into my YouTube channel and will probably put another $500 into it within the next couple of months. This is on top of the several hours a week of my very limited free time I put into recording and editing the videos. You aren’t being asked for anything but 15-30 seconds of your time to watch an ad before 20+ minutes of content. And that’s too much to ask? Seriously? It’s amazing to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making video content to get rich. I’m a realist, I know I’m not going to be the next TotalBiscuit and I’m not sure I want to be anyway. It’s a fun project first. I would like the videos to make enough money that it’s not costing me anything to produce them in the end but that’s my only real expectation. I get frustrated to think that some people are so short-sighted and entitled as to think that they can refuse to give the creators their pittance and still expect the content to come out, with the same level of quality, for free. This is the real world kids, it doesn’t work like that.

That said, I also know this is an issue that can’t be completely solved. People will always find a way to make ad blockers work and they will always find justifications for why they’re using them. They’ll say that ad networks sometimes deliver viruses (something that’s so rare now it’s basically a bullshit excuse), they’ll say they slow the browser down (you may want to consider using something faster than a Pentium II), they’ll say they’re distracting and make articles hard to read (I can do it and have major attention span issues, get over yourselves.) Whatever the reason, they’ll keep doing it and neither I nor anyone else can stop them. If you find a way to completely block out your content from those using ad blockers, guess what? That part of your audience will just go away and read/watch something else. You can either work within the constraints you have (however unfair they may be) or just get out of the game. It saddens me that many people are taking the second option. It also saddens me that the solution many are employing is sensational headlines and click-baiting stories, both of which are a plague in the tech and gaming press these days. Those types of articles aggravate me more than even the most obnoxious, auto-playing video ad.

While I do and will work the constraints of the audience, there is one thing many do that takes the entitlement to a whole new level and that I simply cannot abide. That is the people who go “You’re relying on an outdated business model and that’s not my problem!” Nothing drives me further up the wall than people who think themselves fit to tell someone else how they’re running their business wrong without offering a better solution. And worse yet, people who use that as a crutch to justify ripping a creator off. They did it with the music industry, they did it with movies, they did it with games and now they’re doing it with web and video content. They claim the “old ways” don’t work and need to evolve but they don’t step up when other evolutionary paths are offered. “I will pay you directly for this content, all you have to do is ask!” is an argument I see bandied about quite a bit. Has anyone ever thought that maybe no one’s doing that because those who tried it didn’t have their audiences step up? Don’t believe me?

Giant Bomb and the Whiskey Media family of sites tried this. They couldn’t pay the bills with advertising so they instituted premium memberships that removed the ads, got you access to exclusive content and a host of other benefits. Enough people (including myself) stepped up and paid for this to slow their cash bleed but it wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. Eventually, the company was split up and sold off. Jeff Gerstmann has since lamented in two of his Jar Time videos if they hadn’t sold, those sites likely wouldn’t be around today. The Escapist tried a similar approach with their site and was recently sold as well after a fairly well publicised period of financial hardship. In short: People love to say they’ll directly contribute to support content they love but in the end, most of them are all talk.

If you are one of those people who say that the enthusiast press (or any other industry for that matter) is failing because they are clinging to an outdated business model and you think you can do it better, I suggest–nay implore–you to start up a consulting firm because if your method works, you will make more money than you will know how to spend. The brightest minds in this industry can’t figure out another way to do it. If you’ve got one, you’re missing out on an opportunity to write your golden ticket. If you don’t have a better means, then just shut up because you don’t know jack shit and are just trying to rationalise not supporting something you’re getting for free just because you can. Ripping people off is one thing and that’s bad enough but chastising how they do business while sitting on your high horse with no better answers is way worse. I make content and if you want to block my ads, I can’t stop you, I accept that. But don’t tell me how I’m doing it wrong if you don’t have a better option.

As a creator who likes to think his content is worth the price of admission, all I can ask of you is that you whitelist my site and my videos on YouTube. Better yet, set your ad blocker to whitelist by default and only block the sites that have ads you disagree with. Give them a chance to demonstrate that they can’t do it tastefully before you pass judgement on them. The ads pay the bills (or at least some of them) and if people keep blocking them, something will have to give and in some cases, that’s already happening. Stuff costs money and if people can’t at least make that back, they won’t keep making the stuff. If you’re like me and you’re sick of seeing enthusiast journalism go down the toilet in favour of top 10 lists and click baiting, then step up and do your part. It’s really not a lot to ask and helps more than you may realise. At the very least though, if you do feel justified in blocking the ads, at least keep your opinions of how we monetise our work to yourself. If you have a better idea, we’ll listen but if not, we could do without your salt in our wounds.

Coverage, Coverage, News, Personal, Technology, Video Games , , ,

Revisiting My Bold Predictions for 2012

1 Comment Posted by on December 31, 2012

The end of 2012 is upon us. Personally, it’s been a Hell of a year, not just in the industries I observe with interest but for me in general. My girlfriend passed the UFE and will be a Chartered Accountant in a few months, we moved from our small apartment into a house (still renting though), we got a puppy and my company reverse merged with another company, went public as a result and changed it’s 30+ year name in the process. And that’s just a bit of it. It was very good overall though and I think 2013′s going to be even better! Before I make my bold predictions for the new year, I must of course revisit those I made for the year that’s just ending. Go here to find them as I will only mention their titles here and more in-depth explanations are included in the original post. I’m going to ape a neat system the crew at Gamers With Jobs came up with and rate how accurate I was in terms of a score. I made 30 predictions (29 “real” ones and 1 joke) so that’s the total the score can be. If I was mostly or totally right on a prediction, I get 1 point. If I was half-right or had some critical information wrong but the gist was accurate, I get half a point. And finally, if I was dead wrong, I get zilch. I’m also only scoring the bolded parts which are the actual predictions, not the additional details which are just general thoughts. This is scored by me of course but hey, this ain’t scientific or nothin’. I will try to judge myself honestly. :)

Off we go!

Gaming

  • THQ will manage to secure additional investment or credit but this will be their last gasp at survival before they run out of cash (half point.) As far as I know, they didn’t get additional money, they were just able to tap a line of credit they hadn’t used. They still ran out of cash and declared bankruptcy just recently, being swept up by a private equity firm. Danny Bilson left but Brian Farrell’s still around and his long-term future there is still unknown.
  • GSC Game World’s upcoming news will be that the company is indeed dead (1 point.) The company still exists but has no staff so it’s basically dead. A new studio did in fact start up with the old staff but they’re making a free-to-play online game in a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-like universe but not with the actual IP which they couldn’t secure. A bit of a battle has started up between the remnants of GSC and bitComposer Games over the IP.
  • The 3DS will continue to sell well at the current price point and the Vita will not do the numbers Sony wants but will do enough to keep the platform afloat (1 point.) I was right on about the 3DS and not fully on the Vita but I’m calling it a win because while it did underperform, Sony keeps saying they’re backing it going forward and there are games coming, though not many. I so hope the Vita can find it’s footing.
  • The successor to the Xbox 360 will be announced at E3 and the PS4 will be teased only (0 points.) No other way to say it, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the year both will be announced but I won’t make a prediction on that specifically because it’s too obvious.
  • The WiiU will get a price and a ship date in the holiday quarter (1 point.) Bang on, though this wasn’t exactly a stretch. They also did solve the problem of multiple tablets but in a half-assed way that’s not close to ready yet. I think the launch lineup was OK and it’s been selling out but talk has been soft so it’s too early to tell how it’s doing.
  • The wonderful trend of analysts either talking less or the gaming press finally realising they’re not worth listening to will continue (0 points.) Why oh why couldn’t I have been right about this? It seemed like the enthusiast press was finally over leeching clicks off these hacks but they’re doing it as much as ever with even more analysts (and even purposefully obscure hacks like Dent and industry failures like Broussard) beaking off in the press all the time. This is a scourge that needs to stop.
  • This is the year where the realities of mobile development  start to become clear in the development community (1 point.) This didn’t happen to the degree I expected it to but I’m calling it a win because it has already started. Multiple promising mobile developers have died this year, largely because they foolishly believed the mobile gold rush meant nobody could fail. I’ll flesh this out more with my 2013 predictions.
  • Many Facebook developers will continue to struggle or in the case of the big boys like Zynga, show themselves to be grossly overvalued and not as big a money press as once thought (1 point.) Nailed it! Zynga’s in a death spiral, Facebook itself has a disastrous fraud-filled year and we haven’t heard a peep in months about a big new social startup. A lot of this is because most Facebook games don’t work on mobile platforms and that’s increasingly where Facebook usage is going. This field isn’t going away but much like mobile, it’s getting kicked in the face by reality instead of hype.
  • AAA publishers that are not Activision will keep losing money and AAA developers will continue to be hit-or-die (1 point.) Nailed again but again, I wish I was wrong. Most of the few AAA publishers left are either losing money or just squeaking out modest profits whereas Activision is still sucking the marrow from Blizzard and Call of Duty. Numerous developers went under this year and almost all of those can be tied to the failure of a single title. This is a dark time to be in AAA and it makes me sad.
  • Diablo III will come out some time this year and it will be a huge hit but not as big a one as Blizzard or Bobby Kotick thinks (half point.) It did come out and was a huge hit but as far as I know, it’s done extremely well. It’s up to something like 7 million sales now and despite being basically broken, the real money auction house is generating revenue. I do think that part is doing worse than Blizzard wanted but I don’t think they’re disappointed with the money the game’s made.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic will experience a sharp drop in subscribers (1 point.) Bang on. They flailed about trying out a trial model, then went to a horrible exploitive free-to-play system and by many accounts, this detonated the upper echelons of BioWare. I actually think it’s a good game, it just came out at the wrong time with a foolish business model.
  • John Riccitiello’s leadership at EA will be strongly challenged (0 points.) There were rumblings in the press that he was in trouble but nothing public happened.
  • Free-to-play will start to really shine this year in non-Asian RPG ways (1 point.) Oh yes! One of my top 10 games of the year is free-to-play and I’ve got like 5 or 6 of them installed on my PC right now. Not all of them do it right (particularly on mobile platforms) but those that do are making great games and best as I can tell, tidy profits too.
  • Half-Life 2: Episode 3/Half-Life 3 will not release this year (1 point.) Is anyone really surprised? I know Valve’s way of doing business means this won’t happen until they feel like it but seriously guys, enough is enough. This series made you a success and your fans are owed closure.
  • Highly intrusive DRM schemes on PC games will be scaled back, though DRM in general will still be an issue (1 point.) Ubisoft dropped their always-on DRM (though activations are still needed) but Diablo III embraced the horrible practice with both hands, which caused highly publicised launch nightmares. It’s definitely a lessening trend though which I am very happy to see.
  • I may potentially buy an iPad 3 to try out iOS gaming (half point.) I split a used iPad 2 with my girlfriend which is why I call this a halfsie because I did specifically say iPad 3. Overall, I’ve been very disappointed. iOS uses dated design and most mobile games that I’ve tried have been terrible. I was wrong about the iPad 3 having Retina too, they totally figured that out. If I even need a tablet of my own any time soon, it will either be Windows 8 Pro or Android.
  • SECTION SCORE: 11.5/16

Technology

  • Apple will not release a branded television (1 point.) I can’t believe I’m seemingly one of the only people who didn’t think this was obvious. There is no market for a TV that will end up costing 30-50% more (which it will have to for it to have the margins Apple wants) but which just has the guts of an Apple TV box you can buy for $99. One line from Jobs’ biography where he says he “cracked it” means exactly squat.
  • This is the year Android tablets finally become competitive (0.5 points.) I’m calling this a halfsie because while Android tablet sales are up significantly (particularly with the introduction of the Nexus tablets), the iPad still dominates the tablet market and from what I can tell, most Android apps are still made for phones exclusively or primarily. It’s getting better but it’s still not the competitor it needs to be.
  • Research In Motion will finally remove Balsillie and Lazaridis from their leadership roles at the company (1 point.) BOOM! Most of my secondary predictions were right too. Their stock plummeted but is recovering well and by all accounts, BlackBerry 10 could be something special. I really hope so, I don’t want to see this company die.
  • More than 50% of laptop models released this year will not include an optical drive (0 points.) There’s no doubt that far fewer laptops have them but I’ve not been able to find a statistic that confirms whether I’m right or not. If I can, I’ll update this but I think if more than half were ditching the optical drive, it would have made the news somewhere.
  • Hard drive prices will return to pre-flood levels (1 point.) Checking a few places online where I can buy a hard drive, I’m saying this is right.
  • Microsoft will announce a scaling back or removal of the new Start Screen in Windows 8 or make it 100% optional (0 points.) I was so wrong about this, I should almost be deducting points for it. I think the hate for Windows 8 is overblown but I do have major concerns about what it means for the future of Windows and the Start Screen is still stupid on anything that isn’t a touch screen. It’s questionable how well Windows 8 is selling right now so I hope Microsoft is taking the negative feedback to heart.
  • Windows 8 will shine on tablets and will also start to compete with Android for a big share of the iPad’s market (0.5 points.) I’m calling this a halfsie because by all accounts, Windows 8 is killer on tablets but Surface has apparently been a sales flop and the app ecosystem is not taking off like many (including myself) thought it would. This could still change but so far, it hasn’t made a dent in the market share of the other platforms.
  • Windows Phone 7 will get a massive marketing push and gain a lot of market share (0 points.) Windows Phone 7 became Windows Phone 8 and while it looks like interest and sales are ramping up, it hasn’t gained a ton of market share yet, certainly not even to make anyone besides maybe RIM nervous. My girlfriend bought a Lumia 920 though and thinks the iPhone pales in comparison to it, as do many other people. Microsoft is traditionally horrible at marketing but if they can figure that out, I still think they could have a winner here.
  • Twitter will continue to grow in popularity but still won’t figure out how to make money (1 points.) Calling it a win because it’s definitely still growing but given how there have been no stories about the financial success this year, no IPO and how they’re clamping down hard on how much third party clients can bang on their servers, I’m guessing they still don’t have a long-term business model yet.
  • Facebook will remain insanely popular but each user will do less with it (0.5 points.) It’s obviously still popular and a ton of people I know personally are using it less and less but I’m not convinced that’s the overall trend. As they continue to test the limits and patience of their users with more invasive ads and terms of use changed though, this might change.
  • 3D will continue to decline and possibly die off in the home entirely (1 point.) Most TV manufacturers are using 3D as a bullet point now but they’ve all run away from making that a reason to convince people to buy new sets. The big Japanese TV manufacturers are all nursing sucking chest wounds right now so they better figure something out fast. I was also right about how the idea of mainstream 2K or 4K TVs didn’t happen. 3D is still a thing in theatres but that’s about it.
  • Best Buy will announce a major corporate restructuring this year, closing underperforming stores and refocusing on providing high quality service (0.5 points.) If I allowed myself three quarter points, that’s what I would get because I was right about everything except the announced refocusing on high quality service. The company’s bleeding, stores have been closed and one of the original guys is trying to take the company private. Refocusing on service is the only thing that can save them but they’re still arrogantly convinced that the horrendous experience they currently offer is quality service.
  • Canadian third party Internet prices will rise but not as much as people fear (1 point.) Nailed it! Prices went up but only a little bit and as I understand it, the third party Canadian ISP industry is still squeaking out razor-thin margins. This makes me very happy to see, especially since more and more people I know are dumping the telecartels for them. They’re still fighting a tough war but I’m glad the fight’s being made.
  • I will continue to search in vain for a tech podcast that doesn’t spend most of its time fellating Apple or that realises tech news exists that doesn’t involve phones or tablets (1 point.) This was a joke prediction but I’m still right. I’ve tried me damndest to find one since dumping This is Only A Test after both the content and the attitude of the guys from that site finally drove me over the edge. I’ve yet to find another one that doesn’t continue to trumpet how Apple is our lord and saviour or that phones and tablets aren’t the only neat things in the world. It’s a shame but such is life. I don’t currently listen to any tech podcasts and I don’t really miss having one anyway.
  • SECTION SCORE: 9/14

TOTAL SCORE: 20.5/30

Overall, I’m still way more accurate than the majority of analysts that get quoted in the enthusiast press. That’s ridiculous and sad. I’m a guy with no knowledge of business or the inside scoop on anything and my largely uninformed guesses were better than guys who make orders of magnitude more than I do to spout this stuff. Insane. I’ve had better years but also worse years but to be honest, most of the stuff I was right on is stuff I would have been happy to be dead wrong about. I don’t like to be a prophet of doom but it seems like that’s my skill sometimes.

Check back tomorrow where my new predictions for 2013 will be unleashed! There will definitely be plenty of them as well as this is shaping up to be an even crazier year in gaming and tech than 2012 was.

Business, Business, Computers, Coverage, Coverage, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Predictions, Tablets, Technology, Video Games , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Could the iPhone 5 be the beginning of Apple’s plateau?

Leave a Comment Posted by on September 12, 2012

Breaking news here I’m confident you’ll not read anywhere else: Apple announced the iPhone 5 today. I know, hot scoop, though there was no sight of the iPad Mini or any of the other stuff that was widely expected to be there as well. I had to get a tire replaced today so I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the live blogging gushfests, electing instead to just read a couple of summaries after the fact. With Nokia stupidly bombing the intro of the otherwise impressive Lumia 920 with that camera scandal and Motorola’s new RAZR model dropping with a thud, Apple didn’t have to try very hard to impress. I had my suspicions of how the reveal of what the iPress claimed could be the biggest product launch in history would be received but I know my views are often coloured by my living in a reality where Apple can actually do wrong. Based on the stunning amount of “Meh” I’ve read since, it appears even many of the faithful have joined this reality.

I’ve said for a long time that Apple’s current growth is a fashion trend, that it’s unsustainable and that while they’re going nowhere any time soon, they are in a bubble that’s only going to pop faster with Steve Jobs now gone. This view has largely been met with rolled eyes but I believe I’m one step closer to being proven right today. The first sign of this was the iPhone 4S. It’s only big new feature aside from a spec bump (which is always expected) was Siri. It launched in beta (which Apple never does) and while other phones already had voice recognition features, none had the theoretical capabilities of Siri. After the initial lustre wore off though, people realised that Siri didn’t actually work very well and most stopped using it. Apple omitted it from the next iPad that followed and has kind of neglected to talk about it since. Apple loves to toot their own horn so when they don’t talk about something recently introduced, it means they aren’t pleased with how it’s done. I predicted that the iPhone 4S would be the beginning of a cooling off period for the Apple fashion trend and that it would sell well but would be the first phone to not trend as well as the previous one. I’ll admit it, I was dead wrong. The 4S is the best selling iPhone to date. There is no doubt whatsoever that the iPhone 5 will sell many millions and continue to make Apple buckets of money. However, I do believe this could be the tipping point and I’ll tell you why.

The overwhelming view expressed which I agree with fully is that the iPhone 5 offers literally nothing new. Siri was new in that like Apple often does, they took an idea someone else came up with and evolved it into something neater, at least on the surface. The iPhone 5 is in every single way, a spec bump. It has a faster processor, a slightly bigger screen, 4G LTE and it’s thinner. That’s it. That size screen (and larger) as well as LTE have been available on Android phones for years now. There are even Windows Phone 7 devices with them, forget the Windows Phone 8 ones around the corner. Those are not new features, they’re playing catch-up at best. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a spec bump but the generally accepted rule is that every second year, that’s when the big innovations come to the iPhone. The second one added 3G and third party apps, the fourth changed the design and added the Retina screen. With the iPhone 5, we arguably got less innovation than the 4S, just features that the competition’s already perfected. None of that is going to make anyone but the hardcore iCult break a contract to upgrade early and it’s certainly not going to convert anyone who wasn’t just waiting to buy an iPhone regardless of what it had. They didn’t even improve the camera, the one thing where the iPhone has solidly stepped on the competition’s throat for 2 years now. It looks like the Lumia 920′s camera will be the top dog this generation far and away, something that was enough to sway my girlfriend from being sold on the iPhone 5 to waiting for reviews of the 920 and likely going with that if the camera fares as well as it appears.

What this tells me is that Apple is running out of big innovations to make to the iPhone. They undoubtedly have an R&D superteam with a virtually unlimited budget crunching away on new ideas but there is a limit to what can be done right now and I think mobile phones are coming up on it, if they aren’t there already. If the best they can offer with the iPhone 5 is matching features others already have, that will start to take some of the sheen off the fashion trend that they’re carefully balanced on. If they can’t outspec the competition, they might have to start competing on price or offering things like more than 16GB of memory in the base model, eating into their precious high margins which remain an abberation in the tech industry. When those margins see even a small dip, expect their nearly $700 stock price to take a big hit as investors no longer see Apple as the new hotness.

Now, some of the smartest people in the world work at Apple and I believe they knew this long before I did. I also believe this is why they decided for no good reason to change the dock connector on the iPhone 5 to a new design ironically called Lightning. There was nothing wrong with the old connector. It was a bit large but it wasn’t obtrusive, it worked fine and it was on millions of accessories and cables. The new connector requires either the replacement of everything you used your iPhone with before or that you purchase a $30 adapter which Apple is rumoured to be selling exclusively. There is no benefit other than being smaller because this “Lightning” connector doesn’t even support the new USB 3.0 standard, meaning it’s probably not even much faster. This makes Apple’s partners happy because they get to sell the same thing to everyone over again and it allows Apple to hedge their bet a bit because if the iPhone 5′s sales don’t outpace the 4S, they can pad out those margins by making the new buyers pay for a $30 adapter that probably costs them $1.50 at most. If sales are lower, the new customers get the privilege of subsidising the drop and if the sales are higher, Apple just gets to make even more money. It’s the kind of scummy, disrespectful move that few other companies have the brilliance, gall and blindly ravenous fan base to pull off. I truly believe that this move has a shot at making Apple the same amount of money, even if the iPhone 5 ends up falling short of the sales bar set by the 4S. That will keep investors happy but it’s a move that will only work for a year. Lightning is something they’re going to be stuck with for a while.

I’ve insisted for a long time that Apple could only maintain the momentum they have for so long before they simply ran out of ways to milk it. Sure, they have the iCult that will blindly buy whatever Tim Cook tells them to and the success of iOS devices has grown that membership immensely in recent years. Much as I despise this company and the pretentious douchebags that ran before and run it now, they’re here to stay and I think it’s partially good because it forces everyone else to work extra hard to compete and make things better for everyone. As with all my predictions, I could be totally wrong on this but I think this is where their growth goes from stratospheric to merely atmospheric and where the other phone hardware and platform makers can really step up and show what they’ve got. Apple’s growth is wholly dependent on that ultra-high margin and if they can’t find a reason to get people to keep paying $200 + $80/month for an iPhone every year, the only way to keep the sales numbers up will be to join the “race to the bottom” that everyone else is in. When that happens, it’s no longer Apple and everyone else, it’s Apple with everyone else. That’s the way it should be and I won’t lie, if this is the first iPhone that sells less in the first month than the last one, I will take great pleasure in watching iCultists squirm as they try to spin it as a good thing. Apple’s done some great things but they need a shot of humility and I think this might be the start of it. In my house, they’ve now gone from a guaranteed sale to a 75/25 shot of losing to a Windows Phone made by Nokia. More people than just my girlfriend are thinking that now and that should be keeping Tim Cook awake tonight.

Coverage, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Technology , , , ,

Gizmodo shows what’s wrong with the enthusiast press

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 3, 2012

One of the things I’ve railed on for a while is how I believe the majority of the enthusiast press–at least in the tech and gaming spaces–is broken. Not just dysfunctional, bloody broken. It’s an important subset of the media, intended to cater to the most passionate fans. As someone who lives and breaths technology and gaming to what some might consider an unhealthy degree, I should be loving it and soaking it in. Instead, I now ignore all but a few places. Much like cable news, they’ve become little more than carefully manipulated outlets for big company PR, often terrified of being properly critical of certain things for fear of losing precious access. Everything’s about publishing first, not accurately, rumours are printed as fact, nothing’s authenticated and analysts are fished for quotes constantly and never called to account when they’re wrong.

Yesterday, inexplicably popular technology blog Gizmodo provided one of the best examples of everything I bitch about.

David Pogue is not a journalist. Oh he calls himself one, make no mistake. He even works as the technology writer for supposedly one of the few remaining bastions of journalism, The New York Times. What Pogue is, is a professional Apple fanboy, something I say without hyperbole. He reviews Apple products and never finds a fault with any of them, though he finds and overhypes many that he manages to find in anything that competes. He goes out of his way to be smarmy and sometimes downright mean to anyone who dares to say that Apple products are not the best by default and claim that something else is perhaps of better value. He was one of the chief deniers of Apple’s many labour problems in China. Worst of all, his main source of income aside from the Times is writing books on the Apple same products he reviews, most of which come out the same day or the day after. Any way you slice it, he’s represents the very antithesis of good journalism. The man’s a two-faced hack.

Yesterday, he lost his iPhone, a clumsy thing that happens to many. So what does Gizmodo do with this utter non-event? They write a story about it, rally their community into action and post not 1 or 2 or 3 but 18 bloody updates throughout the day detailing the whole process of helping a wealthy fanboy find a phone he could probably get a free replacement for with a quick call to his masters in Cupertino. This is disgusting, there’s no other word for it. Why does anyone losing their iPhone warrant a full investigative piece with 18 updates, let alone a person for whom the event likely had less impact on than most Apple employees? If Ed Bott lost his Windows Phone 7 device, would anyone there write a story about it, except maybe to laugh? I highly doubt it. Really, I can’t explain everything that’s wrong with this garbage in a reasonable amount of words. Just click the link if you dare and see for yourself. You can’t not see what’s wrong with that if you have any sense.

Gizmodo’s one of the many hack sites that’s part of the Gawker network. They’re known for doing this kind of crap, not that it makes it right. This wouldn’t bother me too much if it had stayed within their realm as the people who volunteer to read that tripe usually know what they’re getting into. However, a quick search of “gizmodo pogue iphone” shows that this got rebroadcast by the likes of CNN, The Atlantic and a bunch of other places, all of which should know better. This event was junk non-news any way you slice it but it got everywhere and was treated as major news. I’m sure David Pogue is sitting back, smugly satisfied at the way he’s played his fans and the press like a two dollar banjo, giving both himself and the company he covers while taking paycheques from a bunch of free press neither earned.

I’m ranting about this a lot but frankly, it really pisses me off. We have a field that is in desperate need for proper journalism. Gaming and technology are expensive and growing markets where people need to be properly informed and honest details from reporters, not repackaged PR need to be out there. While there isn’t much, there are a few who are genuinely trying to cover this stuff with a proper attention to professionalism and journalistic standards. I fear that they’re having little impact though because they’re routinely drowned out by stories about a nationwide Internet manhunt for a professional fanboy’s iPhone. It’s not as if Apple doesn’t get a disproportionate amount of coverage and lack of criticism already but their PR people must have been grinning ear to ear watching this unfold yesterday.

Has journalism truly become this cynical, this amateur, this disrespectful of the people it serves? Is this really what people want or are people just reading it because unless you want to spend hours a day digging up the real journalism, this is the best they can get? Top that off with another Gawker site whining about how one of the biggest problems in gaming coverage is that publishers don’t bend over to give them all the access they want exactly when they want it and it’s enough to make an enthusiast like me tear his hair out.

Gizmodo should be better than this, David Pogue should be better than this and The New York Times should damn well be better than this. They should all be ashamed of themselves for what happened yesterday, as should anyone who willingly participated in that farce that spits in the face of journalism. I think we as consumers of the coverage they produce should be demanding better. People who write books for Apple shouldn’t be reviewing their products, sites with any respect shouldn’t be writing about when they clumsily lose their toys and we shouldn’t be giving traffic to this crap. Is it that they started writing this lazy tripe first or that we started demanding it? Is there any reason it can’t be both? We should be demanding better and when crap like this is printed as news, it should be mocked and ignored, not validated with readership. If you want real information and real journalism, you need to demand it and reward it. It’s getting harder and harder to just get the truth anymore.

Coverage, Technology , , ,

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