I'd have to agree with Gruber on this one. The forums on the verge have some very anti-Apple group which complain about anything Apple. One of the features that they have on the Verge is where their writers show what is in their bags and 9/10 of the time, its a Mac laptop and iPhone. That really gets the anti-Apple folks in a tizzy for sure. Unrelated, this seems like a weird article to be discussing on Hacker News.
So every product review should have a section discussing where the various design elements of the product may have been inspired, even though such a section would be nothing but a waste of space for 99.9% of the review's readers, who probably just want to use the review to decide whether or not the product is worth buying?
When it's this blatant, yes. It's not that the Verge are being pro-Apple or anti-HP or whatever, there is a massive elephant in the room that has been seemingly deliberately ignored that warrants at least a passing comment.
Why does a review, whose nominal purpose is to give the reader enough information about the product to make an informed purchasing decision, need to mention this sort of thing at all, ever?
Arguable how a device looks is part of that. In this case, there is more than a passing resemblance. Topolsky is defending the integrity of his bloggers, but the integrity is questionable if their reviewing skirts around undeniable facts. Doesn't matter if it's Apple or Fisher-Price!
Comments
I'd have to agree with Gruber on this one. The forums on the verge have some very anti-Apple group which complain about anything Apple. One of the features that they have on the Verge is where their writers show what is in their bags and 9/10 of the time, its a Mac laptop and iPhone. That really gets the anti-Apple folks in a tizzy for sure. Unrelated, this seems like a weird article to be discussing on Hacker News.
So every product review should have a section discussing where the various design elements of the product may have been inspired, even though such a section would be nothing but a waste of space for 99.9% of the review's readers, who probably just want to use the review to decide whether or not the product is worth buying?
When it's this blatant, yes. It's not that the Verge are being pro-Apple or anti-HP or whatever, there is a massive elephant in the room that has been seemingly deliberately ignored that warrants at least a passing comment.
Why does a review, whose nominal purpose is to give the reader enough information about the product to make an informed purchasing decision, need to mention this sort of thing at all, ever?
Arguable how a device looks is part of that. In this case, there is more than a passing resemblance. Topolsky is defending the integrity of his bloggers, but the integrity is questionable if their reviewing skirts around undeniable facts. Doesn't matter if it's Apple or Fisher-Price!
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I'd be rather surprised if there was anyone alive who hates Apple that much but has no idea what their products actually look like.