Impact of 'iSlate' Could Rival iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Impact of 'iSlate' Could Rival iPhone

nytimes.com

9 pointsphyscab16 comments

"Could rival" articles are a great example of what's wrong with newspapers these days. A quick paragraph by paragraph breakdown of the content of this article should be enough to show anyone what's wrong with it:

P1: People are excited about Apple's rumored tablet computer.

P2: People were excited about Apple's rumored phone.

P3: The iPhone was successful. (Plus an irrelevant point about Apple's controlling nature.)

P4: Bloggers are excited about a possible tablet computer, but Apple has failed sometimes as well.

P5: Irrelevant discussion of other possible industrial design releases this year.

P6: Nothing.

P7: Nothing. (The entire content of this paragraph is an incorrect statement that tablet computers have been becoming more popular since the XO laptop. The article's author has confused netbooks with tablets. It's also confused the XO computer with the design concept the OLPC organization recently created that they will soon fail to implement.)

P8: Continued confusion of the tablet and netbook markets.

P9: The rumored tablet computer from Apple will be able to do stuff that you would expect a tablet computer to be able to do.

P10: The market for eReaders needs a messiah. (If I were being more snarky, I might say that the writer has never met an Amazon Kindle owner.)

P11: An extremely popular eReader would improve the demand for content normally used by eReaders.

P12: The rumored tablet will need a corresponding store.

P13: Nothing. (Plus an incorrect point about Apple's sustainability. Whether she means environmental or economic, there's no evidence to support either point of view.)

Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Articles should be broken down like this more often. Makes it obvious how much it's about nothing...

Re: P7-P9. I don't think the author is confused at all. It seems to me that those in the market for a netbook would strongly consider a tablet as an alternative (if a tablet wasn't already in their consideration).

In a year or two, I could see somebody's technology collection consisting of smartphone/laptop|desktop/netbook|tablet. I have a harder time imagining the average consumer being interested in both a netbook and a tablet.

My problem with it is that tablets have not become significantly more popular since 2005, which indicates to me that she's confusing the two.

I think this is a great example of why print media should go out of business. This article contains no new information and no useful analysis. The author profits on the backs of all the people who have tracked down rumors. By virtue of her position at the NYT she can be the vessel by which this data is communicated to the masses.

Summary and delivery are valuable services.

Yes, but they are cheaply available now. If the "Paper of Record" can do no better they will be Telegram operators in a world of ubiquitous communication.

And yet, here it is on the front page of a fairly popular website, probably getting a fair number of hits, some of which will trust the NYT brand, skim over this particular article and then go on to soak up their multimedia content and other [hopefully better] articles. This seems to be a tactic.

This is the same publication that broke the NSA wiretap story; it operates 20+ foreign bureaus and has won more Pulitzers than any other paper. But, yes, let's shut it down for running linkbait about Apple.

I meant "should" in the sense that it is a good thing they rapidly being eclipsed by newer types of journalism, not that they should actively be shut down.

"Sure they have a ton of Pulitzers." Given that blogs have only become serious competitors to print media in the last 5 or so years this shouldn't be a surprise, and it certainly isn't a defense.

"They maintain lots of foreign bureaus." Again this is awesome, except now we can just get the info from residents of these areas.

"They broke the NSA wiretap story". Sure and folks on the internet broke "Document-gate" when people were trying to frame GWB.

I'm not against the NYT, but I am against them just slurping up content from the web, adding no value and then passing it off to their customers without credit to the original sources. I'm really against the factual errors brought up in the top post.

I find these comparisons amusing. The NSA wiretap story documented unconstitutional malfeasance by one of the largest, most secretive organizations in the US government. The "GWB was framed" story involved knowing the typeface used in a fake document circulated by a private citizen and inadvertantly authenticated by a private news organization.

Similarly, I'd like to know who in Darfur is going to file the CNN "i-Report", or how many 140-character "Tweets" it's going to take to document the next genocide.

I'm not in favor of the NYT, but I think I have a decent bead on what the "new journalism" has in store for us (breathless promotion of context-free Flip Mino clips of Iranian protests on Andrew Sullivan's blog; TechCrunch), and I'm confident that most of its advocates don't really understand that @BreakingNews actually gets its news from big companies that pay people to actually report.

I'm glad I can amuse you. Another example would be the "Citizen Reporters" who documented fraud committed by ACORN by going under cover with a flip cam. The NYT did almost no substantive reporting on the matter. I'm sure you'll try to write that off by saying it is just righty propaganda, a tacky spectacle, etc.

However Al Franken won by a razor thin margin in a state with active Acorn voter registration efforts. Might they have been the difference that got him elected? Now his vote makes a massive overhaul to our health care system possible. I'm not sure if reshaping 20% of our economy is on par with "documented unconstitutional malfeasance by one of the largest, most secretive organizations in the US government", but on a day to day basis it will certainly impact more people, in more significant ways.

And yes I can see where you could stress test this argument successfully. Congrats. Take great satisfaction in citing the supremacy of of a 100+ year old medium with an established business model that has managed to keep a slight edge on a 5 year old medium that is still getting its legs.

You're not doing the "new journalism" any favors with the examples you're choosing to advocate with. The O'Keefe ACORN video you're talking about has been roundly criticized for editing out details that exculpate ACORN staffers. The fact that O'Keefe probably had a real story to chase down makes it worse, because his sloppy efforts --- which by his own admission mix "attack-attack-attack" political tactics with reportage --- make it impossible to talk about ACORN without talking about the credibility of the reporters.

You seem eager to talk about politics. I don't care what your politics are. I care that we're exchanging The Wall Street Journal (35+ foreign bureaus) for Twitter, TechCrunch, and the YouTube exploits of DailyKos and Malkin "diarists".

I'm not eager to talk politics, however most big news stories share that subject so it's hard not to. In fact, my original criticism of "old media" and all the bureaus and trappings that lend it legitimacy, was that it had gotten lazy and shallow. This seems to be your quarrel with "new media". I'll reiterate my original point. I don't like repoters who write factually incorrect articles that are read by millions when there are better original sources.

I would like high quality journalism be it new or old.

Nary a partisan statement to be found:)

It's interesting that both the Newton and Cube--which the article correctly points out as unsuccessful financially--still have cult followings. From what I've read, the Newton--which is, I believe, the first PDA--did many things better than any PDA since, including the iPhone.

The author called App store a "successful exercise in design democracy", to which I can only say "what?".... the App Store is anything but democracy.

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