Tired of iPhone and/or Apple news on Engadget?
By Ryan Block 
posted Jun 20th 2007 8:22PM
posted Jun 20th 2007 8:22PM
Ok, we'll level with you. It's our job to cover the gadgets and consumer electronics space the best we possibly can -- and that often includes covering gadgets that one crowd or another isn't particularly interested in. (See: iPod fans when we blew the door off the Zune launch; or Microsoft fans when we took over WWDC this year.)So here's the straight dope: it's not like we're going to ignore the iPhone or anything, so for those of you told us you wanted to opt out of our iPhone or Apple coverage, we hear ya! We whipped up some slightly modified Engadget RSS feeds with Yahoo Pipes; we wouldn't suggest using these forever, but until we get our blog platform up to speed on exclusionary news it's a good enough temporary solution.
Opt out of Apple / iPhone news
Engadget classic without any iPhone news - RSS feed, Pipes page
Engadget classic without any Apple news - RSS feed, Pipes page
Engadget Mobile without any iPhone news - RSS feed, Pipes page
Engadget Mobile without any Apple news - RSS feed, Pipes page
Of course, if you have laser-like focus on this stuff and want a separate feed for Apple and iPhone news, we offer that too!
Get only Apple / iPhone news
Engadget classic only iPhone news - RSS feed, tag page
Engadget classic only Apple news - RSS feed, tag page
Engadget Mobile only iPhone news - RSS feed, tag page
Engadget Mobile only Apple news - RSS feed, category page
And hey, let us know if you see any problems with the Pipes feeds!
Don't know why you went through all this trouble just cause of a few trolls. I am a mac user and loved reading about the Zune.
But I guess giving the complainers a choice can't hurt. It'll keep their comments off the threads.
Ah! Now I get it. Great idea!
"It'll keep their comments off the threads."
We'll see.
"I am a mac user and loved reading about the Zune."
What's a zune? :P
YHBT.
Its about time one of these tech blogs realized they're posting about 50 stories a day, and 30 of them are either Apple or iPhone stories for half a year now. I mean, I like how Apple pushes forward technology, but sheesh! We don't need to know when iphones have been spotted in the wild, or what Steve Jobs is having for dinner.
I know the Zune had lots of coverage, but nowhere NEAR the amount the iPhone is having. Don't get me wrong- I love to know the news on all technology, but i believe it was Engadget or Gizmodo that decided to have a roundup of iPhone articles to throw them at us everday (unless it was breaking news type stuff). Unfortunately, that never happened and iphone/apple details have become basically spam.
Dude, why are you complaining? You got what you wanted!
Continuation: Forgot to mention- I don't feel Engadget goes too overboard on iPhone/Apple news. Gizmodo on the other hand... basically, Foxnews is to the Republican Party as Gizmodo is to Apple
I'm not complaining that Engadget is taking initiative- I'm complaining that this doesn't seem like a good fix. A "Roundup" is a better fix- basically, put ALL the minuscule and not-so-useful iPhone articles into one main post daily (hey, maybe even bi-daily!) and if theres breaking news.
Basically- the "all or none" deal seems a bit drastic. How about just putting a little more thought into what is actually news before putting it out there?
We don't like doing roundups of minor news, it's not really our thing.
As for what gets written up, we are extremely judicious in picking stories. Not everyone thinks every story is news, but hey, you can't please everybody! We write about the stuff we think is interesting, and we hope you like what we come up with. If not, it's not exactly complicated to scroll past it in your aggregator or on the page!
I understand. I've stated a few times Engadget doesn't really do it so bad as Giz. But I go back and forth between both of them daily and I mix up the articles sometimes and mistake that you are the ones doing it. I think what I'm mainly getting at is I hope Giz takes notice of Engadget and realizes people are getting sick of the 6-7 articles you posted in the past 20 hours compared to their 13-15 "yay apple, boo microsoft" ones
I heard dinner is at 830
kvocal:
This is NOT an issue of freedom of speech and/or someones rights at all. It is not censorship. If you want to be a smartass and try to define it for us, try to realize that in no way is Engadget keeping anyone from viewing these stories. Even if they chose not to EVERY show an Apple story ever again, thats not censorship in anyway.
What they are doing, is allowing people like myself who have had enough of reading 30 different apple/iphone stories every day that are less than useful in the life of even an average Apple fanboy, to not have to deal with them anymore... however, as brought up numerous times- its too drastic and despite our hatred for being bombarded with these articles, we still like to know whats going on in the Apple-world with RELEVANT and useful NEWS. NOT non-news (Steve Jobs is caught sending an e-mail on his iPhone while eating dinner he ordered from his Mac!).
Dan, you wrote that tech blogs have been "posting about 50 stories a day, and 30 of them are either Apple or iPhone stories for half a year now". I was curious how accurate that is, so I counted the stories at Gizmodo (I went over there since others commented that Gizmodo is more Apple-centric than Engadget).
Over the past two days (Tue and Wed), 11 or 12 stories out of 126 were directly about Apple. Another 6 or 7 were about Apple-related spoofs, third party products, competing products, etc. So ~9% of the stories are about Apple directly and another ~5% of the stories mention 3rd party products or competing products that relate to Apple.
That's a lot of Apple news, but it's no where near the 60% ratio you suggested, and if we went back and tallied it over the last six months, I'd bet there were less Apple-related stories than that (since we're currently in the midst of iPhone hype with a week to go to its launch).
Here's the detailed breakdown in case anyone is curious:
Wed 59 total posts; 11 directly/indirectly related to Apple:
- Apple announces YouTube will be on iPhone
- Gizmodo post saying that RAZR price was similarly priced
- iPhone dock revealed
- Leapord probably pirated
- Gizmodo giving away iPhone
- OS X 10.4.10 out
- Apple YouTube tour
- WSJ story about iPhone being unable to send email through BlackBerry servers
- Onion iPhone parady
- iPhone commercial spoof
- iPod speakers compared
Tue 67 posts; 7 directly/indirectly related to Apple:
- Apple tests iPhone battery
- 3rd party Macbook case
- 3rd party product to speedup itunes downloads
- nintendo working on iphone games
- Opera browser supposed to take on iPhone
- Gizmodo job opportunity for something Apple-related
- long AT&T job line in Manhattan (story speculates that the extra employees will be needed for the iPhone launch)
at the end of the day there was a simple answer.... read the news title if it doesnt intrest you dont read the rest of it you lazy ass moaning people! These guys just report all the current tech news whoever its from, just so happens that Apple are in the spot light atm, in 3 months time could be MS or Intel or anyone. Just face it Apple are doing all the mainstream ground breaking stuff and if your into gadgets then you should read them, its showing u whats likley to come soon from other outlets.
Anyway back to my point, there was no need for Engadget to have to mess around making this special feed for the lazy people out there who are too lazy to read the title of the article and decided if they wanna read it. I dont read anything AMD related as i am not a fan of AMD, i have always had Intel chips in both macs, PC's and Laptops.
Matt
Thankyou so much! I've got no problem with Apple nor the iPhone but when EVERY LITTLE THING is reported as BIG NEWS it gets /really old/, /really quickly/.
'ZOMG IPHONE RUMOR - MIDI SYNTHESIZER TO HAVE THREE EXTRA CHANNELS!'
Btw guys, check your links -- the top two are around the wrong way. :)
Fixed!
YES NOW STFU ABOUT IT. ITS A PHONE.
Why would I STFU about the iPhone. I just said it's freekin awesome. Your a square butt. Go to sleep now.
in 8 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, 21 seconds engadget will go COMPLETEly apple! and i cant wait till then have they not noticed they get more Hits (visits) when they talk about apple!
can Engadget share with us how many people click on each of the links??? that would be some interesting info
Apple haters will still want to see all the Apple news - the fact that they post on Apple stories is proof enough
pssst!!! Theres an ENTIRE blog in the Weblog, Inc. network dedicated to Apple ;)
http://www.tuaw.com/
Can Engadget share with us how many people click on each of the links??? that would be some interesting info
Apple haters will still want to see all the Apple news - the fact that they post on Apple stories is proof enough
Wow, I have to say, Engadget really DOES care!
ok so what about the feed im using right now? will that have everything .. by the way this has to be the gayest move you guys have ever made .. its biased and i demand a feed without any microsoft news as a result .. if your going to do it do it right .. have users choose what tags they want to omit from streams.
you give a little... they take a lot
this was a favor on engadgets part not a necessity, give them a break. If you want a customized feed use yahoo pipes yourself, it is simple enough.
nah i like engadget at 100% feed power .. no watering down just because i may or may not like something .. just because you DONT talk about it doesnt mean that its not there .. ;) anyway its no big deal really .. i just think its weak .. going to check out that pipes thing .. although here we go again solving a web sites problem with another web site ;) this trend blows.
Or you could learn how to filter your own feeds so that keywords are omitted - or simply let your brain do the filtering.
ill do the brain filtering ;) seems like i need to use that thing for something.
To be honest, I think the Cell phone stuff should be at Engadget Mobile....to many duplicate stories on both blogs....get's annoying after a while...why do you have Engadget Mobile if you are going to post the same stuff here?
Apple and iPhone NEWS = good.
Apple and iPhone NON-NEWS = bad.
The problem is that a lot of the stuff being posted at Engadget (and elsewere) is simple non-news. It's crap fabricated for nothing else that to create a post for that hour. I can ignore it from other sites, but Engadget, please don't re-publish their FUD.
Better judgement would alleviate the issues completely.
You mean Gizmodo? Like I said- Engadget does probably one of the better jobs compared to the rest of the blogs of being balanced. Gizmodo, I counted about 13 iPhone/Apple articles in the past 21 hours of June 20, 2007. Not to mention about 1 or 2 articles about Microsoft... and you guessed it- it was all "booo microsoft!! YAY APPLE!" in those articles.
You're only contributing to the next American civil war where Apple and Microsoft users will face each other. Trading in their IPhones and Surfaces for more suitable weapons and heading to the frontlines.
in the end... Linux users will be the only true winners.
Long live open source.
here here!
Until Linux gets hardware support and ease of use, even Ubuntu isn't going to convince people.
I mean, how could Microsoft cope if all their driver/hardware support was reliant on someone reverse-engineering it? They wouldn't. I tried Ubuntu on my PC and my network card wasn't supported. Still hasn't been reverse engineered.
Not even Linux current market potential can rely on Linux for driver support let alone the 92% or so of the Windows-using world.
Hmmm, and I was just going to suggest a countdown clock with updates on the quarter hour. .... nevermind.
Thanks, Engadget... this is another reason I can now rack up for coming to this site every day.
Good form!
Psychologically, it is very interesting that people would become so angry at seeing an abundance of iPhone or Zune news. Perhaps it's jealousy? Who knows...
But anyways, I think it's fairly lame that people can't simply look over a blog about the Zune or iPhone or whatever.
And this is coming from a guy who owns a Mac Pro, isn't into the Zune, and thinks the iPhone is too little for too much money in a too fragile package.
When I come to sites like this, I want to see news items that were important enough to justify a post. A picture of the iPhone's dock does not qualify, just as a picture of the xv6800's dock, or any other phone's dock, would not qualify. Now these posts come around once in a while? Sure, whatever. But these are more than frequent, they've become regular. And it's a little too much.
It's not about skipping the articles as a reader in this case, as you imply. It's about the moderators of the site not posting lame news that waters down the rest.
Now I know there's a great deal of interest in the iPhone. If I were getting one, I'd love seeing it like this. That said, for those of us who aren't getting one, seeing one of our favorite sites become watered down with "Here's the dock!" type stuff does just that to the site - waters it down, lessens the quality, whatever.
So good for Engadget for hooking up those of us who don't want the site to be watered down with endless, non-exciting news on a phone we're not going to buy while still giving those that are interested a chance to see it. Just don't imply that we're acting ridiculous for not wanting to read what's basically become half of an iPhone blog when we came here for Engadget.
That makes sense and I agree.
iPhone, Zune, Alienware, Apple, whatever news doesn't bother me. But I, too, am bothered by unimportant news posted by Engadget for the sole purpose of having something to post.
Can I have a feed that filters out idiots with no sense of humour? No huh. Well that's biased!
thank you for doing this, i was wondering if apple owned engadget, or the other way around. hallelujah, kudos, omG!
Hey Ryan why don't you do a poll, curious to see the ration between iPhone attics and iPhone haters.
I think doing this is uncalled for. Nice Gesture but not worth it. The people who complain will always. Like woman they are never happy (In my experience and Except in the Bedroom) It is a wasted effort. If they dont like it dont read this website. The ENGADGET family will stay and support the site...
They can always write some code that doesn't show the things they do not want to see.
I believe engadget is taking itself too seriously. There has been posts that they are 'journalistic' and 'integrity' and they refer to some well established publications as 'old media'.
If what is published here would actually cost a dime to publish, believe me, that would be a different story altogether. But this is a blog. What is the cost of running and posting a blog versus that 'old media'? A lot.
So the answer is not how much Apple+Iphone news are been reported, rather, take the editorial discipline that cost per page have and apply it. This is a blog, an entertaining one at it, but should look itself in as what it is: cheap indefinite digital news snippets. Remember the wisdom from that old media publication 'all the news thats fit to print'.
It's sad you guys have to waste your time to come up with something like this. Some people.....
I agree, This is just sad.
All you have to do is what I do, ignore the post that have no interest to you.
I am NOT buying an iPhone - period, ever. But it's entertaining to click on the post and read the resulting flame wars. Then that gets old quickly and I go back to looking for news that I find interesting.
It doesn't bother me all the yapping about the iPhone, I've even commented in some of them. (It also helps keep me abreast of the latest round of group think Apple fans are known for. Sorry, had to slip that in;) That doesn't mean I think you have to cave to folks that don't know how to bypass posts they don't find interesting/relevant/important to them.
Be yourselves and do your thing, I'll do the same and ignore ANY post that I don't find interesting whether it's about Apple, Microsoft, Linux or whatever.
Are you kidding? Would you stop talking about the advent of warp speed or discovery of sentient life on another planet or the second coming of Christ. The iPhone ranks right up there with those topics. The world clamors to know every minor detail about the iPhone. Will it come in colors? Will the pope buy one? Will the iPhone change the face of history and join all mankind under AT&T? Will just touching the iPhone cause an iPhone and Apple stock buying frenzy that the world has never seen before? We must know these things. What rational man would not want to constantly hear about Apple and the iPhone? More info ....please!
From,
Dedicated Wintel User
I think many of us would still read Apple news, however we do not like every single no-news update. Stuff like some CEO has a Iphone or obvious stuff like cradles, you know, stuff that aren't called news that would probably belong more at TUAW than Engadget.
BTW, not every Apple haters are MS fanboys.
While you're at it how about cutting all the Apple rumor coverage as well?
I love my Apple computers but I think spending blog space on baseless rumors and garbage is a waste of time.
keep up the coverage; your stuff on Apple has been better than TUAW as of late...
To be fair, why no Opt out of MS news?
Because this is temporary and because there's a LOT more Apple news right now than MSFT news. It's super easy to create an MSFT opt-out Pipes feed though.
Ryan, don't be an appologist, you've demonstrated a solution that will work for everyone. Use Yahoo Pipes and create your own perfect feed.
Seriously, I really like Pipes, and I think this is an excellent example of how that tech can be very useful. Stop complaining and start piping.
I don't mind Apple news, but I'm happy that I no longer have to read the iphone news!
Let me start by pointing something out that I think you may be missing: if we didn't think the world of Engadget, we wouldn't be complaining - we'd go somewhere else. So take these comments in that spirit, please.
I think the problem falls into two parts:
We DO want to know when something like the iPhone or Zune is announced. That's interesting and gadget-related news. Same with really important news, like when it'll be available and how much it'll cost.
Where things start to go off the track is when there's three or four posts a day about the iPhone or Zune or any product for that matter, that really doesn't give much new info, or are speculation, or (as one person noted) are really just silly - like the post about seeing someone on CalTrain with an iPhone. That's kind of drifting out of 'gadget' into 'obsession'.
Moreso, that obsession seems unevenly distributed with Apple stuff being one of the main and unrealistically positive focusses.
Let's put it in perspective: Apple makes about a dozen core products (iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod, AppleTV, iPhone, Mac mini, iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, displays, one retail OS and maybe six applications), yet they get a surprising amount of relatively uncritical reporting on their products here. Dell makes a much larger range of products. So does Gateway, Sony, Samsung... well, almost any PC maker - or MP3 player - or... yet very few of them get the coverage Apple does.
No? Well - how much coverage did the last Microsoft WinHEC (which is the hardware equivalent to WWDC) get here? Or the last DevDays? Or TechFest? When was the last report on the new Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC? It's shipping now, you know.
Which leads me to the other problem - Apple gets a pretty light hand here compared to other companies. Compare the coverage of the Zune (which, to be honest, I thought was rather over-reported itself) to the iPhone for example. In the end, they'll probably have about the same unit sales, but you'd think the iPhone was hand-delivered by Christ and the Zune hand-delivered by Satan. I swear, if I heard just one more time about the 3x3 WiFi DRM thing, I swear was going to put my fist through my monitor - yes, it has 3x3 DRM - yes, it sucks - BUT.. the iPod has much worse WiFi DRM because it doesn't let you share ANY files over WiFi - it doesn't HAVE WiFi. How about spending some time ragging on Apple for having the worst DRM ever - every copy of MacOS X Intel is locked to a TPM chip in the hardware. THAT gentlemen, is far more onerous than simply limiting the number of copies of a song you can share. You want to be able to move your music - fair enough - but if I buy a copy of MacOS X, why is it that not being able to move that to another computer doesn't get an eyeblink. Conceptually (and ethically) they're exactly the same thing.
Yes, you guys like the iPhone. That's wonderful. But objectively, given what we've seen, it just isn't that great a phone. Most of what it can do, other phones have been able to do for a LONG time - and many things they can do, the iPhone can't. My WM5 phone can do most of what the iPhone will be able to do, but it does it right now. That's not to say there aren't things the iPhone will do better - the browser experience is definitely better - but here's trick I'd like to see iPhone users do: install a different browser. When you guys reported that the iPhone wasn't closed because there was an SDK, I'm not sure if you meant that tongue-in-cheek - most Apple people I know are actually kind of pissed about that announcement. I know I was unimpressed. Heck, you could tell the *audience* at WWDC was kind of underwhelmed by that announcement. Web 2.0 + Ajax? Please. How lame is that?
And don't try to tell me you guys don't throw in troll posts just to get the hit rate up. Some of the articles we see here are pretty iffy and seem to be intentionally selected to annoy the Mac or PC reader.
In the end, partitioning off Apple reports isn't really going to solve the problem for a couple of reasons: it doesn't actually solve the problem, which is the uneven reporting that seems to lean unreasonably towards Apple, and second, not everyone uses RSS to read Engadget so those readers (like myself) will still see it all.
So, rather than *just* dumping on you all, here's a suggestion that would work:
Post major Apple news in the main Engadget front page. That's new announcements and breaking changes (iPhone shipping date, for example). Then create an EngadgetApple link and post just the Apple stuff there. This is how other blogsites do it and it works really well. We still hear the important stuff, but we don't see the irrelevent stuff.
To me, the irrelevent stuff is posts counting down to WWDC or any Apple product (or any OTHER product for that matter - it's not just Apple), or spotted in the wild reports, or what Jobs like for dinner or who he's dating or that kind of stuff.
You can do this with ANY product you're going to obsess over. An EngadgetMicrosoft sub-blog would have spared all the Apple people the seemingly endless discussion on the Zune.
Or.. simply level out your reporting. If I didn't cringe everytime I saw the word iPhone (or equally but in the opposite direction when I saw the word Zune) I probably would care less about the fluff posts. You could also batch up news that's less time-sensitive and post ONCE a day (or less - maybe a weekly 'here some amusing things about the iPhone we found out this week) sort of thing. Then I could just skip over one instead of several.
Anyway, that's my take on it. It's not like I'm not going to stop reading Engadget or anything.
Or complaining when I think people say stupid things. :)
Cheers.
Long live the Boy Genius!
Your argument has holes. Like the whole "you cover more apple news than other pc and mp3 manufacture". The last time i checked, ipod has an overwhelming market share in the mp3 arena. And as far as conferences, the wwdc gets more publicity in general than the other ones. Usually for a good reason, they actually introduce products that are available that day, not promises about some crappy OS that will be coming out in the next few years, or is some crappy mp3 player that cant even compete with a creative or an archos. And please don't compare a wm5 phone to the iphone as you haven't played with an iphone to know what it does well or what it doesn't do well. And its not like Apple has to do alot to make something perform better that WM5. I keep having to settle for symbian or BBerry because every time i test a wm5 phone its just too slow and crashes too much. IF the iPhone can be quick and not crash it will already be better than wm5. Yes, no sdk is a major dagger compared to wm5 and every other decent phone OS, but it has almost everything the average user wants anyway.
Engadget, as a web dev i appreciate that you have met a need of your community, however, its a pretty similar situation to people complaining about cursing on the radio. If you don't like it, don't listen, or in this case SKIP THE STORY and use your jealousy on something constructive like helping make your favorite mp3 player/pc os/ or whatever a better product.
I pretty much agree with Jeff Lewis' take on things about different sections here.
Personally I've always been a mac user (although I have used Windows at work) and I might've even been a bit of a fanboy with the first couple of macs I owned. I visited the mac forums daily and well, I didn't mind the fanboy-dom for a few years. But slowly the whole "Steve is our God" mentality really started to piss me off. I mean come on, he's a salesman, and some people are smiling like idiots pouring him money if he just asks for it. That's not to say I don't appreciate all the things Jobs and Apple's other workers have delivered us during the years, since I think that Mac OS has done so much good for the user friendliness in the computer.
I've got 3 macs now, not pc's at all. I've had to stop reading the mac forums and many mac sites because I'm so embarrassed of the fanboys, I just don't want to feel that I'm part of a group of people who think so higly of themselves. But don't get me wrong, there are loads of really nice mac people who are just friendly and nice. I guess it's the teens and the zealots that just are so vocal.
I'm not too crazy about Jobs'/Apple's wish for a world dominance. To me Apple has been a computer company with a great OS. I understand that change is happening because all different kinds of gadgets are getting smarter all the time. But I'm not sold on Apple's idea that everything that they do is as magnificent as OS 7-9 was when compared to Windows at the time.
Times change, and Apple has changed. It's just becoming a new Sony but with a cult like following. For a reason I don't really understand anymore.
I was a mac fan about 15 years ago but recent years I started to find Apple unfaithful to the community and ripping off people's mind, it's not Apple who invented mp3 or aac, it's not Apple who invented portable media player, it's not Apple who invented GUI (Xerox did), but that Steve just behaves as if Apple does all of those and he turns Apple into a big superficial marketing machine, and he is god? Apple's technology is no more advanced or no more original, just being marketed/hyped well, a good merchant and money making machine for its owners. I almost forgot why I liked mac, except I still admire the other Steve (Woz) who created Apple Computer, which drove the young me into an engineer who likes to be engineering and improving people's life.
Bravo Bravo!! and then there was peace in the Land.
This is a really nice move but it is lost on the general public who will still crave to fight over all apple and PC products but again nice try!!
this is stupid. quit crying people. im ashamed that engadget is now offering quasi-censored tech news. i dont have any interest in UMPCs but i have a magic thing called the down arrow and i can skip right by it. catering to fanboys and/or haters now...maybe when i turn on the 11oclock news i can push a button so i only see war-less news. mmmmmmm....censorship.....
Any chance of an version of Engadget that's complete except for the pictures of guys with Zune tattoos?
I don't hate Microsoft or the Zune--it's just that one guy who kind of weirds me out.
im tired of windows/microsoft news on engadget
but its always old news anyway, of something they have copied.
It's hilarious. Although people can skip stories and NOT read it, they choose to as if a gun was pointed to their head and read it, then post a complaint about having to read it. Engadget caters to the whiners and they still complain about the solution that fits their needs. Lose lose situation.
If only there was a count of Zune articles within the 6 months prior to its release, and iPhone articles in the past 6 months...
THE IPHONE IS NOT REVOLUTIONARY!! Why does everyone say this? WHAT is revolutionary about it? Theres IMPROVEMENTS over previous smart phones, but it is by NO means revolutionary. PalmPilots (yes, I know the difference) were revolutionary. Blackberrys were revolutionary. Hell, even Sidekicks are revolutionary. iPhones are NOT.
Touch screen? NOT REVOLUTIONARY. MP3 playback? NOT REVOLUTIONARY. Video playback? NOT REVOLUTIONARY. No removeable battery, no 3g (or mobile broadband support), no 3rd party sdk, no keypad all in a HIGHLY overpriced package with uncalled for amount of coverage? Well, revolutionary in the phone world, but Sony already covered overpriced/overrated packages offering very little in the PS3.
But hey- Apple Fanboys will be in cloud9 forever and are impossible to talk sense into. I mean, they are smarter than a Windows/Linux user... but their #1 reason for buying Mac over Windows- WINDOWS IS TOO HARD AND BREAKS TOO EASILY!!
(psst! My 80 year old grandma uses windows just fine and I surprisingly have never had to format her computer yet! Just though I'd throw that in there as food for thought)
If you are comparing spec sheet to spec seet then you don't understand Apple. My friend has a crappy Motorola Nextel phone - not even of the smart variety (it's one of the free ones). He thinks it's just like the iPhone because it can play music, video, make calls, do e-mail, etc. Heck, my Sony Ericsson Z520a can do all those things. But nothing can do it LIKE the iPhone does.
The interface is what's revolutionary. They WAY of doing thigns is revolutionary, not what you can do. For some, it's only what you can do that's important. For others like me, it's the WAY you can do things that trumps everything else.
As a recent switcher to OS X, I can verify this line of reasoning. I'm not looking back.
Gshap said:
"iphone = [...] basically a umpc with a smaller drive"
I don't feel as strong as many of the ppl here either way on the iPhone, but seriously, this is so wrong, I don't even know where to begin.
Heard of apples to oranges?
zune = extremely late to the market mp3 player with bad features
iphone = revolutionary "out of the box" thinking for a phone - basically a umpc with a smaller drive
If only there was a way to skip a story I was not interested in...
I usually try to stay as respectable as possible on the internet, but quite frankly if you can't ignore stories you don't want to read and throw little hissy fits about them being posted you are a fucking moron. Period. Please realize you are personally responsible for your actions and that websites are not your daddy telling you what to do. Nobody is forcing you to read or comment on anything. Grow up.
Isn't this why TUAW exists ? I get more apple news on Engadget then TUAW... Cmon post more on their then here lol.
Id like a feed without Microsoft Thanks.
id like a feed without people whining about apple posts because they are haters if for no other reason than to be haters
"Tired of iPhone and/or Apple news on Engadget?"
GOD YES!! Thanks guys. Normally I wouldn't care however the hype around this thing is overkill which is what has turned me off from the iPhone. That and Apple outright arrogance that this thing has been touched by the hand of God. I'm just sick of the iPhone.
If you are sick of it then stop reading about it. You only have yourself to blame. All Apple has done is give one keynote presentation and make four commercials. How does this translate into Apple overhyping anything? Because Steve Jobs says the phone his company makes is the best? What the hell do you expect him to say? Any CEO will say this of their products.
Yay! I don't really have anything against Apple as a company, but it's the Apple fans that are a little too fervent for my liking.
Thanks Engadget! :)
Very much agree with Jeff's excellent post -- one post per week would be plenty about the iPhone. Apple missed the boat on this product completely, releasing it in the USA only to start. USA ranks 29th in worldwide phone use. So by the time they wake up, and release the product in markets where people actually use mobile phones, it will be obsolete, and the silly price tag will deter users, who reserve that sort of budget for the likes of Jean Paul Gaulthier and Issey Miyake. The net result: most of us don't give a toss about this product.
You're right, the US is a pretty insignificant country, actually. Major technology trends never start there. And Apple has no idea how to successfully manufacture and market a successful consumer electronic device worldwide. And there's no chance Apple would incrementally add features to this product over time. I mean, they have never updated that one product... what's it called, the total failure... oh yeah, the iPod. If there is one complaint about that thing its that it is never updated...
Not to get geographic, but I'm sick and tired of Europeans bitching about the iPhone. The iPhone hasn't launched in Europe yet, so stop complaining about features based on the American version!!! What if Apple is releasing a 3G iPhone in Europe (as they almost have to) and they will have cut the price by then? All your whining was for nothing. American cell networks suck and the iPhone's current features reflect that (no 3G). Until the iPhone European specs are revealed please refrain from bitching.
I think I'm going to start bitching about products launching in Japan and having Japanese text. "Don't you know that Americans can't read Japanese! That product is stupid, it will never sell in America"
James,
You're missing the point. Apple is (ostensibly) a global company. They release all other products at the same time worldwide -- operating systems, new computers, iPods etc. It is inexcusable, therefore, that 3/4 of the world (who just happen to also be the largest mobile phone consumers, eating 2-5 phones per year per person) need to wait A YEAR to get a product that is very cool right now, but will rapidly be surpassed by its competitors.
And BTW, I'm not European, but a US expat in Asia -- and I can thus assure you that while the US was where most technology trends started in the last century, it is now a mature, highly saturated (and somewhat sluggish) market, and in this century, the "tipping point" is more likely to be reached in the east, not to mention faster revenue given the sheer number of potential consumers. Apple have done 45% of a good job over here, having good penetration in some markets, and NO penetration in others (for example Korea, who have the highest per capita broadband usage in the world, has given only a decimal point market share to Apple).
Also note -- most of those Japanese-only (and now more often Chinese-only) local products remain local products, and their manufacturers remain local as well. While many of these gadgets seem very cool, they lack the polish to ship globally, and survive in a local market by selling at a low price point or addressing a very useful local task.
This is a perfect example of the WAAAA! mentality of people anymore. Quit whining and just read the news. People whined, so Engadget had to let them block the content that scares them.
You aren't too bad at whining yourself.
Ryan: It would really be awesome if you could "opt out" of CELL PHONE news in general, with the PODCAST. I know that might be technically more difficult to implement.
I was a dedicated listener to your first 50 or so, but the cell phone news got so boring that I haven't listened since. A lot of people don't get excited for cell phones as if they're "gadgets". For people NOT living in San Fran or Cali, and/or making 300k + a year (remember us students?), cell phones are as exciting as microwaves or toaster ovens (and often less expensive). We grab whatever comes with the shortest contract, or is the cheapest out of pocket with pay as you go.
As great as you guys are, which you are, and as much as I don't want to criticize, there have been some pretty empty stories on this stupid phone. I still believe, as I did the day Jobs did his Jedi Mind tricks number on this thing, and made it into a messiah, that's it's a weak, slow PDA, and apple competing against windows in the hardware world is amazingly retarded. From an incredible variety of WM PDA's to this, the choice is almost always going to be one the the windows PDA's. Will apple release a cell phone weekly, to keep up with the Windows PDA releases? I highly doubt that. Amazingly not-thought-out idea.
This thing has made the cover of the likes of the Wall Street Journal, etc. Seeing things on engadget that you're seeing in mainstream press is VERY not cool. I dont want to see stories on engagdget that I just saw on CNBC. This is niche stuff, I'm a gadget freak, and you guys are too. Peter and Ryan and everyone just do an incredible job of making this thing shine. Engadget stories assume a collective base of knowledge and opinions that we share (DRM is evil,etc.). This gives it a very enjoyable, bottom line me, don't be anyhing like the commercial news media, feeling. Keep our collective buzz going, don't KILL it.
I think your decision to separate out the apple/iphone coverage was a great one.
Ok I'm not going to read every comment here because there's just too many so this may have already been stated but here's my feeling on it...
It doesn't matter if you like Apple (or Microsoft or Google or whoever). It doesn't matter if you like the iPhone (or Treos or Blackberry or whatever). It doesn't matter if you like cell phones (or computer monitors or DAPs or whatever).
What matters is that the iPhone is one of the biggest consumer product launches ever.
Engagdget, as a consumer electronics-focused blog, has a duty to cover it. The importance of the event to the general populace dictates more attention on the blog - isn't that simple math? In fact, this may be one product that's covered here that means MORE to the general population than it means to us geeks. WE may be getting sick of it but most people are just eating it up. Personally, I can't wait to devour every tidbit of news about the iPhone, from the latest photos to that secret 12th app.
Keep feeding the hype, hits is how you pay your bills. It would be nice if you only reported real updates. Maybe you just need to create product profile pages you can update instead of trying to produce a story every time someone uses the word iPhone.
"Who controls your media, controls your mind." -- Marshall MacLuhan
"The computer's a tool, not a toy." - me
"It's a toy, you're the tool." - my sister
Well since you are going to all this trouble I would like the following:
Feed without Zune news.
Feed without Nokia news.
Feed without Sony news.
FFS Engadget have you forgotten the whole point of an RSS feed? It's so that you can see a summary of the available news stories and choose which ones you read. Stop pandering to whiners and just leave your feeds alone. They do a great job of bringing a broad range of news.
If people have a real problem with needing to filter your feeds, let them use a feed reader that supports filters.
Hey Ryan,
I believe that this is a major step for Engadget and it takes responsible writers to know how to customize information for their audience without while not censoring yourself. And as a reader from the real early days when it was Rojas, I feel that every time I think of a suggestion like crediting other bloggers, it might take a little while, but usually I don't even have to complain and it gets done.
However, while we are on the whole "How to make Engadget Better," I propose three suggestions that could greatly help the quality of the site.
1. NO MORE APPLE ADS. If you want to be taken seriously as a newsworthy blog who can give fair and equal reporting, then you can't tell me that Microsoft sucks and at the same time be feeding me a Hi I'm a Mac/PC ad.
2. The weekly article "Switched On" NEEDS to have a comment section, because commenting is essential to the reader-author interactivity that is a pillar of this blog. While we don't seek to change the opinion of the author, a different perspective can never hurt.
3. Less patent articles. Patent articles are very easy to find on the Internet and provide a very easy source of content. The problem is that patent law from the first filing of a patent to its application is a very intricate process, and the people who know this best are people who work in the industry (like yours truly), and these are the people who can give the best incite into these issues. It is not ethical to just throw in a comment by the author when you feel something is unjust, sure there are problems with the system (see East Texas), but I never hear about the appeals process or any part of patent law being described. This is where you need someone to help you understand the MPEP and the appellate process to give your readers more in depth coverage. (There's a reason why network and cable news has a different person for every discipline, you don't want to see Brian Williams giving medical advice.
3. Clearly what is needed is an Ombudsman who sums up the gripes of the readers.
Sweet! Can you do the same for Digg now?
Can there be any feeds with out any M$ products??? I am sick of hearing about this overpriced *table* where the only purpose is looking at pics & movies & other pointless sh**. I love to put my greasy (cheeto... flavored) fingers on a mouse so my mouse looks orange when I am done with it and impress my friends with my oversized belly.
Keep the iphone news rolling in please.
I have been saving up to get this thing since they announced it and can't wait. I want to milk the excitement for all its worth! I held out for so long and never bought an ipod because it just wasn't good enough, but now I have to submit, this thing is so awesome.
Great idea to weed out all the complainers in the comments. This is something great for us to be excited about not argue about. Personally I think the iPhone is so awesome, its like better than a star trek communicator! It's Amazing!
I know this things gonna be great because I have prepped all my media for it and have a better idea now. Photo albums, work videos and personal videos, nice set of music with all the album art set up for cover flow flicking, my calender, address book, mail, and background pics are ready to go.
ONLY 9 MORE DAYS! WOOOOOO HOOOOO!
thank you so much for including this! I was seriously getting pissed off with all the iphone coverage. I, like almost everyone else on this page love the iphone but I am also sick of hearing about the iphone in every 4 posts or so.
A roundup would've been cool, but as Ryan Block put it, its not your thing and thats fine, I'm sure a roundup would take a bit of extra time and your probably pretty busy as it is.
Thanks for writing a great gadget blog, giving us a choice to opt out of the iphone insanity and keep up the good work!
cheers!
Thanks so much for doing this. The overwhelming majority of posts concerning the iPhone are exceedingly biased, puff-pieces of non-news. No real tests, precious little real specs, etc. etc. It's annoying and I really appreciate the time and effort you devoted in being able to stage this.
Given the amount of applets posting on this site somebody ought to do a macgadget site- all apple, all the time. I own several apple products and think they're either quite good or best of breed. But I cannot stand the fanbois. They're overly defensive, humorless and such corporate hoovers. I'm embarassed when they have to trash everything not apple (and seemingly have NEVER used any of it) in order to support their company. Silly bois.
This is really so pathetic - why can't haters just continue to scroll down past the iPhone news without the need read/comment/post Nokia N95 specs!
At least this gives Engadget leverage to take action against users who continue to post cr@p in the comments.
What we need is an executive Engadget. Maybe half of the news here is intersting, the other half not. I, for one, am not interested in every new MP3 player that is released especially when the design or features at price point isn't interesting. The same goes for me to cameras, cell phones, etc. The iphone is interesting but not every tidbit (although the iphone shuffle was great). Information about teens unplugging lifesupport, publicity stunts (tattoos, zombies), etc are not useful information. One article for humor a day should be enough.
I am amazed at people who have time for Engadet and Gizmodo. I try to sort through the days news quickly and have choosen one source of tech news. I can only image the overlap and waste of time sorting this overlap out. Also, I'd never know if a storey was posted an hour "late" or not. I read it only when I get to it anyway.
I would just like to commend you on being so reader friendly..sheeesh any other blog would say "live with it" and just pass the iphone/zen news.
MAN that people actually complain(bitch) about these sort of things! hahaha ....no life what so ever :P
Keep the good news coming !!!
icem8n
I'd like to be able to exclude all phone news. I hate the wretched little things, but I don't want to have to subscribe to a whole lot of separate engadget feeds.