You see this flippin’ everywhere. That song you like and think is new? Probably a cover or sample that goes back decades.

We have an inherent recency bias, totally natural of course. But this is where you do journalism and research stuff.

> tech journalists

> don't really use other devices

Sometimes I feel like I might as well read the spec sheets myself than read “reviews” written by these people

Reviews in any medium are entertainment whether it’s film, music, games, hardware, food. Ultimately it’s someone’s subjective opinion on something. If you actually want to be happy with your choices your best bet is to find a reviewer with the same tastes and preferences as you and follow their train of thought. If you hate horror movies, you’re not going to enjoy “bring her back” no matter what the critics say.

and thats why "influencers" are big

Easy way to outsource your thinking. Next step in this epopee will be/is already GenAI.

You can’t do all of your “thinking” yourself. You’re not a lone, isolated subsistence farmer. People have been reviewing things for other people for centuries, and it’s been a valuable service.

You are not wrong, but one thing is thinking about what others said and thought previously, generating maybe new ideas, or maybe not, but at least making them yours. Just parroting or blindly believe what others says, it's a tad different.

I can't relate to their behaviour, so even if they had the same taste i would not want to be associated.

you might not have found the ones that like the same stuff has you just yet

You know, thats true.. I wonder how much pain one has to endure before finding the right one.

Most of the time, I don't think it's subjective, I just think the reviewer has a conflict of interest. Especially pre-release products.

I think if a layman picks a niche, and really goes into it, then the layman has a fair chance beating the professional in that specific niche. So, you are not wrong with this feeling at all. What professionals have in their favor is a higher level overview of the subject, and experience with similar subjects. Usually this means that while they might not know a niche in an out by heart, they can discover it very quickly, or consider things that are not fitting into that specific niche.

Also, these journalists might not be professionals at all.

That is also true in medicine, as a side note. If you have a specific combination of conditions, or a rare condition, you will know more about it than doctors. The good ones know this and accept it. The bad ones are offended you know more than they do in this area – or simply go into denial.

In the end, each body is a niche, which each one is uniquely positioned to know better than anyone else. But it’s hard to accept, for medical personal sometimes, and often for the patients themselves. They tend to want the doctor to be the all-knowing god.

Yes, medicine was specifically what I was thinking about! And it's a touchy subject, just as you mention. A patient, a layman, isn't supposed to know more than the doctor. It's a delicate situation.

Take all human knowledge as a whole pie. Out of that is, the experts only know 1/100 of a slice. We maybe experts in some minute context, yet there are so many that know so much more when removed from that context.

Or rephrased, that Person who has to deal with something 80 percent of their life knows more than the person having to deal with it 20 percent of their life.

I mean, yes? That has been true for as long as I can remember

It seems like they do use other devices, but the reviews never make sense, or they focus on the spec sheet too much. Since like 2009, the most talked about smartphone in those tech magazines was always some random thing like an HTC Plus+ Maxx 25.

Apple however often is the first to do a new thing successfully however. Earlier products often did not achieve enough success to be viable or just in a niche. A lot of labor lies in the path from idea to a viable product.

Defining success is hard then. If they go with a certain design trend and then change it, was that success? Just because of widespread adoption? “Enough success “ is also hard to pin down. What’s a thing Apple has done successfully first?

With a product it's pretty simple: sale numbers, market share, adoption rate. The iPhone is just the best example. Sure there were already mobile internet devices out there like the Nokia N800 I owned myself, and android was already in development, but Apple put out a mass-market compatible modern smartphone first.

Like what? No they aren't they wait for stuff to be proven in the market then do it the majority of the time. Face id is just them buying the company who made xbox kinekt etc.

> Like what?

Like smartphones with an entire interface focused on multitouch. There wasn’t another one of those “proven in the market” before the iPhone.

Or, you know, the first mass-marketed personal computer with a GUI, and the first successful one with a mouse (Lisa, Mac).

The Kinect example is nonsensical, it wasn’t as an authentication device. Even if they used the same team and technology, so much more went into it (like the Secure Enclave) than simply repackaging what already existed.

Got anything more recent than the invention of the iPhone? That was almost 20 years ago now....

I do, but don’t really feel like nitpicking what counts or not with arbitrary rules we make up as the conversation goes along. I chose those examples deliberately because the conversation was about the company’s history and they are pretty unambiguous in their importance. Going in circles with “oh, that doesn’t count because it was not as recent as this undefined period of time I have my head” or any other restrictions is not interesting, and I don’t really care about defending Apple, I was simply providing a factual rebuttal.

Just look at the size of Kinect and compare it with faceid embedded in a phone. The word “just” is doing a lot of work in the parent comment.

Multitouch touch screens already existed. Shrinking technology, fine - but neither did Apple invent the technology to shrink existing multitouch down.

And for computers, much of that was derivative of the MoaD.

What have they invented?

Comparing a screen to a whole smartphone and a concept demo to full mass marketed successful products is quite disingenuous. You can do better. Either we argue in good faith or the conversation isn’t worth having.

The original point, and what Apple is known for, is precisely that they often don’t invent all the parts but put them together in a way that makes sense for and the general public wants to buy. Which also allows competitors to rise. Nitpicking every single component will always lead to “none of them invented transistors, or electricity”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9huNI5sBd8

Denying Apple’s influence to certain classes of products is like denying Google’s influence to the internet, or Microsoft’s influence to offices. It’s nonsensical. I am not interested in flame wars or arguing with others about their biases for or against specific trillion dollar corporations.

The press releases from Apple say "first time" and the journos paste it into the article.