The latest issue of Wired Magazine’s (February 2005, issue 13.02, not yet available online) “Wired, Tired, Expired” lists the mythical “iPhone” as “Wired,” the Apple iPod as “Tired,” and the Apple iBook as “Expired.” Interestingly, approximately 8,000,000 iPod sales ago, Wired’s January 2004 (12.01) issue also listed Apple’s iPod as “Tired.”
MacDailyNews Take: Thirteen months seems a long time for the iPod to be “Tired,” huh? Hopefully, Wired will designate Apple’s iPod as “Expired” soon – that should be good for at least 15 million or so additional annual unit sales.
I’ve always disliked Apple because of their hardware/software monopoly. I like to build it or replace it myself, as Sara knows. But there is no denying that the iPod wins just through sheer ubiquitousness. I LOVE the new Zen Mini, it’s better than the Mini (IMO), but will you be able to find any accessories 2 years from now? I doubt it. After 2 weeks of agonizing and researching I am now the proud owner of a 4thG 20gig and have no regrets.
Just because an irrelevant and obsolete rag like wired says something doesn’t make it so.
Wired now officially blows. I won’t even start on that P.O.S. Dell Dj.
Wired sucks.
It blows, too.
When it was started by Negroponte of the MIT Media lab, it was hip, futuristic, edgy, interesting, and unique.
But Negroponte left it to talentless would-be-oh-so-chic assholes whose goal is to prove to dad that they’re a “success”, and Wired has deteriorated into nothing but an advertising mode living on it’s former reputation.
Wired isn’t “tired”, it’s dead.
Offbeat articles about nerds, McLuhan, semiotics, and hackers have been replaced with interviews with the editors’ friends about their pointless opinions. The cover will likely show the (necessarily) unsmiling face of an unremarkable artist or musician, and inside you’ll always find reviews of whatever CDs the editors listen to in their cars.
I learned about memes, burning man, and ADD from the wired of 15 years ago. Now you learn things like their monthly stock market “recommendations”. Presumably to keep the SEC away, they note in the fine print that these are not objective, and that the editors stand to make money if you buy these stocks.
Forget the stocks; the question is: why buy this magazine?
Nothing in it makes you go “WOW” anymore. What articles they have about computers are now no more insightful than the “tech trends Tuesday” page of your local paper. The best it gets now is X-box, playstation, and Asimo the robot.
Gone are the investigative pieces, replaced with articles about ho-hum dot-com businesses trolling for investment capital… the very kind of thing they mocked in their iconoclastic days when the writers were intense, driven, and only owned one pair of pants. Now, every other page is a glossy ad for expensive cars, expensive clothes, and expensive perfume.
I hope Wired goes under, in the Nietzschian sense.
— faye