Brian X. Chen for The New York Times:
As a tech reviewer, I’ve watched the smartphone market evolve… Despite all these market changes, many smartphone reviews, including mine, had not revised the formula that was born over a decade ago. As per tradition, we took a deep dive on the new phones, made comparisons to competing products and wrote about how much faster and better they were than their predecessors.
Assuming the new phones were better than old ones — and when are they not? — we reviewers encouraged people to upgrade. I wondered last week: Are we putting upgrade pressure on people when even the carriers are not?
MacDailyNews Take: You see, whatever The New York Times and Brian X. Chen proclaim makes you stupid sheep run right out to stores, stand in line, and spend money that The New York Times and Brian X. Chen don’t think you have. You’re too stupid to read a product review that actually reviews the product and then make rational distinctions between your current product and the one about which you’ve just read. You’re also far too stupid to know if you can afford to improve your device or not. Let The New York Times and Brian X. Chen tell you what to do. They know your financial situation and they know far better than you whether you need an ultra-wide camera or 5 hours more battery life per day.
So with all this in mind, after testing the new iPhone 11s, I talked to my editor about how things felt different, and we devised a fresh approach: a review that discusses the new features while taking into account market changes, followed by recommendations for those who truly need to upgrade, those who can maybe upgrade and those who don’t need the upgrade.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, it’s so nice to have The New York Times and Brian X. Chen lead you by the nose, isn’t it, you silly, stupid, bleating sheep?
Anyone can come up with a reason that they “need” a new gizmo. But the most objective advice we could come up with for people who are thinking about upgrading from an old iPhone is that they need a new device if their current one is at least five years old. That’s because Apple’s new operating system, iOS 13, which arrived last week, stopped supporting iPhones that were released before 2015.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s right iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus users, there’s nothing to see here in the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. An iPhone 6S vs. an iPhone 11 Pro, they’re pretty much the same. You just do what you’re told by us smart people, m’kay?
Who can upgrade if they feel like it?
MacDailyNews Take: Ooh, the anticipation is killing us! Who will be allowed to upgrade by the all-powerful, all-knowing Wizard of… New York Times and Brian X. Chen?
I wrote that for owners of the iPhone 6S (from 2015) and iPhone 7 (2016), the new iPhone 11s were a nice (but not a must-have) upgrade for their bigger screens and increased speeds, among other perks. But this time we included this context: Those older iPhones are still fast and their cameras are still great, and owners of those devices can replace their batteries for cheap to extend their lives.
MacDailyNews Take: And what The New York Times and Brian X. Chen wrote is what goes, capiche? Again, dumb-asses, your iPhone 6S is still “fast” and your camera is still “great” and, what are you, stupid?! Just replace your batteries, morons. Again, you don’t need an ultra-wide camera or 5 hours more battery life per day. You certainly don’t deserve them, either. You just do what you’re told.
The New York Times and Brian X. Chen have lost the plot.
An iPhone review should explain what is new, how things work, what’s good, what’s bad, and how much it costs without proclaiming that $X is “expensive,” since the reviewer has no zero knowledge whether $X is “expensive” to the reader or not. Include some photos and screenshots. Period. That is the job of a product reviewer. Any publication or reviewer that executes that simple formula respects their readership’s intelligence and trusts their readers to make their own decisions.
The claptrap that The New York Times and Brian X. Chen is peddling in their iPhone 11/Pro/Max non-review is nothing more than sanctimonious twaddle that holds their readership in contempt.