“Christopher Mims, writing for Quartz, ‘2013 Was a Lost Year for Tech’: ‘2013 was the year smartphones became commodities, just like the PCs they supplanted. Even at the high end, Apple and Samsung’s newest flagship phones weren’t big leaps ahead from previous versions. The most that Apple could think to do with the new, faster processor in the iPhone 5S was animate 3D effects that make some users feel ill and a fingerprint sensor that solved a problem that wasn’t exactly pressing. Apple’s new iOS 7 mobile operating system, which felt ‘more like a Microsoft release,’ crippled many older iPhones and led to complaints of planned obsolescence,” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball. “What a sad pile of piss-on-everything cynicism.”
“Today we have mobile phones and tablets running on a 64-bit desktop-caliber CPU architecture. Four months ago, we did not. If you’re not excited by the performance of the A7 SoC or, say, the quality of the iPhone 5S camera, why even bother writing about technology?” Gruber writes. “No one could argue that iOS 7 wasn’t a major update, so instead Mims takes to disparaging it. Is iOS 7 an improvement in every single regard? Certainly not. But on the whole, it’s quite good, introduces some well-needed conceptual cohesion, and best of all, it shows that the company is not afraid to boldly move forward from the Steve Jobs era.”
“There’s a nihilistic streak in tech journalism that I just don’t see in other fields. Sports, movies, cars, wristwatches, cameras, food — writers who cover these fields tend to celebrate, to relish, the best their fields have to offer,” Gruber writes. “Technology, on the other hand, seems to attract enthusiasts with no actual enthusiasm.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve read our fair share of Apple-related articles* and what we’ve found is that, in general, the more negativity the author displays, the less he has to say – which is why we’ve covered Gruber’s excellent rebuttal, but did not bother with Mims’ original pile of horseshit.
And, Mr. Mims, if “2013 was a lost year for tech,” why did you proclaim in September that Apple’s iOS 7 offers users “a ticket to the next generation of the internet,” you hit-whore?
*We’re shooting for understatement of the year here, at this late date.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]