> It's not the onboarding, it's how the experience goes a month, or even a year, in.

No -- as any product or marketing manager could tell you, it is the onboarding.

Using any product is a "funnel" that starts when you open the website/app for the first time. Every piece of friction/confusion that results in lost users, well it results in lost users, period. And that's 100% the fault of the onboarding process. It's never the fault of users who won't stick it out for "a month" or "even a year" (!).

And journalists should be reporting on the experience of the average user. Sure, they should get the perspective and some quotes from die-hard fans as well, but you certainly can't expect a journalist to use a product for a year before writing an article about it that needs to be published tomorrow.