Tired of iPhone and/or Apple news on Engadget?

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!

[Camperton @ Jun 20th 2007 8:29PM]

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!

[denialG @ Jun 20th 2007 10:02PM]

"It'll keep their comments off the threads."

We'll see.

[brendan Sheehan jnr @ Jun 21st 2007 2:36PM]

"I am a mac user and loved reading about the Zune."
What's a zune? :P

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 8:35PM]

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.

[Ryan Block @ Jun 20th 2007 8:38PM]

Dude, why are you complaining? You got what you wanted!

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 8:39PM]

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

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 8:44PM]

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?

[Ryan Block @ Jun 20th 2007 9:01PM]

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!

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 9:10PM]

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

[paul @ Jun 20th 2007 10:41PM]

I heard dinner is at 830

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 11:11PM]

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!).

[deslock @ Jun 21st 2007 2:10AM]

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)

[crazyreaper @ Jun 21st 2007 6:03AM]

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

[GreatestTrollEver? @ Jun 20th 2007 8:35PM]

YHBT.

[Deluxe @ Jun 20th 2007 8:36PM]

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!'

[Deluxe @ Jun 20th 2007 8:37PM]

Btw guys, check your links -- the top two are around the wrong way. :)

[Ryan Block @ Jun 20th 2007 8:39PM]

Fixed!

[CHARLEY @ Jun 20th 2007 8:40PM]

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

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 8:48PM]

pssst!!! Theres an ENTIRE blog in the Weblog, Inc. network dedicated to Apple ;)

http://www.tuaw.com/

[CHARLEY @ Jun 20th 2007 8:41PM]

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

[MDB @ Jun 20th 2007 8:46PM]

Wow, I have to say, Engadget really DOES care!

[Mark @ Jun 20th 2007 8:48PM]

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?

[sean @ Jun 20th 2007 8:49PM]

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.

[Tom @ Jun 21st 2007 12:24AM]

here here!

[Taylor @ Jun 22nd 2007 7:43AM]

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.

[Whackmushrooms @ Jun 20th 2007 8:49PM]

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.

[Nick Tritz @ Jun 20th 2007 8:54PM]

you give a little... they take a lot

[Matt O @ Jun 20th 2007 8:56PM]

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.

[Whackmushrooms @ Jun 20th 2007 9:03PM]

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.

[Andy @ Jun 21st 2007 8:03AM]

Or you could learn how to filter your own feeds so that keywords are omitted - or simply let your brain do the filtering.

[Whackmushrooms @ Jun 21st 2007 9:13AM]

ill do the brain filtering ;) seems like i need to use that thing for something.

[Bruno @ Jun 20th 2007 8:50PM]

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.

[Mickey Jones @ Jun 20th 2007 8:50PM]

Hmmm, and I was just going to suggest a countdown clock with updates on the quarter hour. .... nevermind.

[Dan @ Jun 20th 2007 9:05PM]

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.

[Andy @ Jun 20th 2007 8:52PM]

Thanks, Engadget... this is another reason I can now rack up for coming to this site every day.

Good form!

[Jake @ Jun 20th 2007 9:19PM]

Hey Ryan why don't you do a poll, curious to see the ration between iPhone attics and iPhone haters.

[El Loco @ Jun 20th 2007 9:27PM]

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'.

[Steven @ Jun 20th 2007 9:33PM]

It's sad you guys have to waste your time to come up with something like this. Some people.....

[Aaron Walker @ Jun 21st 2007 1:36AM]

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.

[Constable Odo @ Jun 20th 2007 9:33PM]

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

[Jon @ Jun 20th 2007 9:37PM]

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.

[V @ Jun 20th 2007 9:37PM]

thank you for doing this, i was wondering if apple owned engadget, or the other way around. hallelujah, kudos, omG!

[Ted @ Jun 20th 2007 9:39PM]

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.

[Squirrels @ Jun 20th 2007 9:42PM]

keep up the coverage; your stuff on Apple has been better than TUAW as of late...

[rdrr @ Jun 20th 2007 9:43PM]

To be fair, why no Opt out of MS news?

[Ryan Block @ Jun 20th 2007 10:04PM]

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 @ Jun 21st 2007 12:38PM]

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.

[Jesse S @ Jun 20th 2007 9:44PM]

I don't mind Apple news, but I'm happy that I no longer have to read the iphone news!

[Jeff Lewis @ Jun 20th 2007 9:45PM]

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.

[El Loco @ Jun 20th 2007 9:58PM]

Long live the Boy Genius!