So, NYT dude is not very much impressed, but at the end of the article he says he is seeing dramatic improvements in latency of his light bulbs and garage door, which apparently took seconds with his old Wifi.
That sounds odd.
That sounds odd.
This whole model seems pointless and strange to me. We no longer need "tech journalists" when you can have literal tech experts creating videos that cover all this stuff in far greater depth.
I'd love to see the metrics on this article versus the best tech expert YouTubers.
My point is why should anyone listen to this guy. None of his qualifications are on display. Does he build out WiFi networks for a living? "He works for the New York Times" is not a qualification anyone should give a shit about after how they've conducted "journalism" since 2015.
I want to hear from experts, not journalists. Maybe articles wherein journalists consult with a range of experts and then convey those experts' opinions to me, but I definitely don't care what a guy with a degree in journalism who happens to love tech has to say. I want to hear from people from work with these technologies from day to day.
If you want to know about heart health, you ask a cardiologist, not a health journalist.
You're not the intended audience for these pieces so it's not weird that you don't find them very useful. Most people just aren't interested in the depth of detail that you are.
Imagine if they replaced all the articles on topics you are just peripherally interested in with wonky deep-dives. You'd probably give up after the first few because you aren't equally interested in everything, and sometimes you just want a breezy high-level overview of what's happening.
NYT is writing to audience that just wants to know whether they need a fancy new router or whether they should stick with their current one for a while longer. That's it.
I know Wendell is the real deal because Dr. Ian Cutress wouldn't have had him on AnandTech livestreams if he wasn't. I also know Wendell's the real deal by watching Level1Techs YouTube videos. I also know he's the real deal because he literally builds out networks for companies for a living (Wendell Wilson Consulting in Kentucky). I don't know shit about this NYT writer. His credentials aren't listed on the NYT website. Does he have a degree in business information systems? Electrical engineering? Computer science? I don't know. That's the whole point.
I don't want to hear heart health advice from a "health journalist", I want to hear what an actual cardiologist has to say. Same with a "tech journalist". No thanks, I'll trust the opinion of someone who builds networks for a living when it comes to my network equipment.
In the past, finding people with these qualifications was difficult, and then you had to find time to liaise with them. Now you can find some of the best people in the world and gain their insight just from reading or watching YouTube.
Though there is definitely a much larger barrier of entry when it comes to video because product is much more involved than just writing an article. I've noticed over the past few years was that pros from the few non-tech hobbies have been trying to get into video and many are clearly struggling. I often wonder how much talent is out there that we don't get to see.
You should consider that not everyone shares your experiences.
I watch a ton of tech Youtubers and I have absolutely no idea who those folks are. The world is a lot bigger than you imagine.
Maybe the world's a bigger than you imagine.
Your internet celebrities are not as famous as you imagine and thus not references the layperson would know of let alone trust.
A major newspaper, despite its defects, is much more of a known quantity.
Who's going to spend $230 on a new router for slightly faster lightbulbs?
However, the old router was a Google mesh and 1 of them definitely died slowly, so that could have been causing the delay for a while before it fully died on us.
The only Wifi6 device the author owns is probably an iPhone.
It would be interesting to compare it to Ethernet usage of these devices.
Intel has a good write up here:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/resources/wif...
What a time to be alive! We truly are living in the future!