David Pogue Needs To Settle Down
I loves me my New York Times but two things that they consistently screw up are news of the West and technology reporting. They blow it on timeliness, they blow it on accuracy, and (particularly for news about the West) they often use a condescending style which is maddening.
David Pogue is not the best technology reporter/reviewer in the world. His review of the IPod nano in today’s edition is embarassingly cloying and extremely poorly edited. In it, he says:
Some music players contain a tiny hard drive, offering huge
capacity. Others store music on memory chips, which permit a much more
compact design. (This type is known as a flash-memory player, or flash
for short.)What’s so clever about the iPod Nano ($249) is that it merges these two approaches.
Well, no it doesn’t, it’s just a flash player. What Mr. Pogue may have meant to say was that the nano offers the best of both worlds, but this quote implies that the device is somehow both a flash player and a hard drive device, which makes absolutely no sense. I realize he’s trying to hit a non-technical audience, but there are accurate ways to describe the product that don’t bombard the reader with technical details.
He also credits Apple with the "gutsy" move of discontinuing the IPod mini. This is gutsy like falling off a bicycle is gutsy; the mini was their mid-range player and now it’s being replaced with another mid-range player. Yes, it’s gutsy of them to disrupt their own market by coming out with a new product that displaces one of their old products, but that’s how you stay on top (it’s the same thing that Sony did when they released the audiocassette Walkman in the 1980s; everybody said it would cannibalize sales of their high-end audio equipment, but it actually led to two decades of dominance in consumer audio). But the gutsy part didn’t involve taking the old product off the market. So, memo to Mr. Pogue: if you’re going to pontificate like this, read the Innovator’s Dilemma and check back when you’ve found a new copy editor.
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I mean seriously, is it so hard to get the details right? All you have to do is go to the Apple site or watch the special event video.
i really want one of these ipod nano’s
i cant see anyone wanting a ipod mini or ipod shuffle now that the nano is here.
no wonder apple have been doing promotions with famous world wide crisp companys giving away the ipod mini.
Jeffrey, you’re entitled to disagree with my descriptions or assessments. But you should do so fairly, as though you knew that I might read your comments.
You make it sound as though I didn’t say WHY I feel it’s gutsy for Apple to discontinue the iPod Mini. In fact, I pointed out that it’s the #1 bestselling model (for Apple and the world) that they’re killing off. And they’re replacing it with a model that has 1/2 the capacity for the same price.
That is not just “coming out with a new product that displaces one of their old products”; it’s much riskier than that.
And I stand by my comment that the Nano merges the two approaches: Large capacity, color screen, metal case (from the hard-drive player world); RAM-based, super-compact (from the flash world).
David, thanks for stopping by. Kudos for reaching out, but I fear you’re confusing a difference of opinion with “unfairness” and making yourself seem a tad defensive in the process. It would have been unfair if I’d have mischaracterized what you said, but I didn’t, I quoted you directly. I’m also aware that anyone in the world can read my blog comments; this is why I publish them on the interwebs.
So, again, I urge you: settle down.
Your assertion that the nano somehow combines the approaches of the flash-based Shuffle and the hard-drive based nano is indeed in error and should be corrected. Large capacity, color screen and metal case are not “approaches,” they’re features. Your quote could cause even an informed reader to think that the nano sports both flash memory and a hard drive, which isn’t the case.
As for whether discontinuing an old product to make way for something new is gutsy or simply smart: that’s a matter of opinion and not something you or I could really debate.
You should read his book: “Hard Drive”, it’s practically Mac phallacio. Seriously, half of it reads like a supermarket romance novel to everything from it’s startup sounds to the 3 1/4″ floppy drive.
why would they discontinue thee ipod mini???
In my opinion, it made no sense, what so ever…..