Reviewing the Imaginary
Now that the gap between information being somewhere and information being everywhere is infinitesimally small, we reward companies who have information first, even when that information isn't very good. We reward them by reading their terrible news stories, by linking to their reviews, by commenting on their commentary. We rewards them with our attention.
With faster news cycles, more competition and smaller budgets, review sites review products they haven't tested thoroughly. They review products they haven't even touched, because if they don't, someone else will, and we read it anyway. When that's not quick enough, the review products that haven't been released, that no-one has tested, and for whom the only source of information is the manufacturer.
And when even that isn't enough, some sites start giving their opinions on products that haven't even been announced. This is most common with Apple, because Apple keeps their products secret for so long, experiments with all sorts of technology and their products are so highly anticipated.
It's hard to know where to draw the line. Writers write this stuff because they know we're interested. Some of them write it cynically to get page views, but most are probably just forming and sharing an opinion, something we want them to do, and something we clearly continue to read.
A little speculation is a good thing. I really value well-founded reviews from people with real experience with a product over the long haul, but when a product is new, we still want to know, as best as we can, how good it is. And when a product is just announced, we still want to know what people believe it will be like, particularly when the person offering the opinion is a market expert of some kind, someone whose opinion we feel like we can trust.
Heck, even when a product hasn't been announced, it can be interesting to hear what a pundit has to say, on occasion. When John Gruber or Jim Dalrymple want to say something relatively firm about an unannounced Apple product, I want to listen, because their opinions are either based on information I don't have access to, or at least based on lots of really solid understanding of how Apple behaves.
But it's also clear that speculation can go too far. Way, way, way too far. When a writer compares a product that hasn't been released with a product that hasn't even been announced, we have clearly left the realm of reality. That's not even amusing speculation, it's just a waste of everyone's time.
It's also pretty clear that the rumor cycle around Apple's product lineup is no longer particularly useful. Every patent is breathlessly reported as a potential product, even though anyone who's seen more than one or two Apple patents knows that almost all of them never surface on a real product.
I'm inclined to think that part of the problem is that we have a short memory. We don't call authors on their shit, and we don't look at their track records. When you write something controversial, it gets attention, and when you're wrong 90% of the time, we forget.
If Apple ever gets around to announcing a watch product, I'll consider it. It doesn't leap out at me as something that makes a ton of sense, but if they do go down that path, I assume it's because it's something they've thought through thoroughly and tested, and they believe that it will actually be useful for and desired by a large chunk of the mass market. So if Apple were to announce something like that, then I guess I'd listen. But in the meantime, can we refrain from speculating on whether or not the product they haven't even announced may or may not be better than any other products, and particularly products that haven't shipped or even beeen announced in turn?
Thanks.