AnandTech hardware and Ars Technica's software (especially OS X) reviews are works of art by themselves. The level of details that goes into these pieces is nothing short of amazing. They are examples of tech journaling done right.
AnandTech is often the only place that measures and reports anything about the screens of computers, tablets, and phones aside from how many pixels they have (color space, color accuracy, etc.). For this alone they are gold.
> AnandTech is often the only place that measures and reports anything about the screens of computers, tablets, and phones aside from how many pixels they have (color space, color accuracy, etc.). For this alone they are gold.
Not the only place. I have found the German site NotebookCheck.net to be more thorough than Anandtech when it comes to laptop reviews.
Not only do they measure color space and color accuracy, but they also measure backlighting levels across the screen, comment on backlight bleed, test for viewing angles, check the reflectiveness of screens, etc.
In addition, they also test decibel levels of the fan, temperature of the laptop surface, etc. at various loads. They point out situations where a certain laptop may ship in two configurations. They point out the pros/cons of the nearest products from competing vendors, which have also been tested with equal thoroughness.
In other words, they actually test the machines against a checklist, to assess the performance of each element. In contrast, when an Anandtech reviewer claims that a machine is quiet or that the screen is matte, you don't actually get all the information. Maybe the ventilation system was masking some of the sound. Maybe the screen is only semi-matte.
The only problem is that NotebookCheck is based in Germany, so some of the machines they review are not available in the United States. Still, I'm happy restricting my choices a bit to avoid being surprised with a laptop purchase.
>I like Anandtech but they have come into criticism recently, from some of their long-time readers, for fawning over Apple products.
Which, instantly, should be reason enough to understand that said criticism is BS.
Apple products are among the best in the industry, period. Not just from the industrial design part of it, but overall: coherence of product vision, attention to important characteristics for the target market (battery time, portability, weight), quality machining and materials, attention to small details (from multitouch touchpad to magsafe adaptor and from backlit keyboard to magnetic, non protruding, lid hinge).
These people think that because they are not speced and designed like gaming PCs they are not worthy ("I can have a better GPU for less money in my custom box, and with xeon lights on the sides too).
And they attribute their popularity to some BS "reality distortion" effect, ignoring the fact that hardcore hackers, prominent programmers and old school neckerbeards, from Rob Pike, DHH, and Duncan Davidson to Jamie Jawinsky and Miguel De Icaza (the frigging founder of the Gnome desktop) down to Linus Torvalds, who waxes poetically about his MacBook Air as the best in the market.
So, "fawning over Apple" justs translates to "did some favorable reviews of products, instead of making up BS reasons to dislike them".
As for Miguel De Icaza, he's eating his own dog food, as he now makes his money selling an IDE for iOS development, so of course he's going to choose the Mac because that's where the toolchain is.
>Rob Pike wrote a blog post "Thank you Apple" (sarcasm) because of the problems he was having with his iMac and Apple's software.
Half of it it's about how it's Apple's fault that he didn't have a USB to boot off, so he tried to boot of a (camera) CF card (unsupported) and then an old Mac that wasn't up to running the latest OS version. Because Apple should consider what olders machines an OS supports not on hardware specs needed by the new OS, but on the needs of people upgrading their OS without a USB that want to use their older machine as a firewire devices (huh?). It's like the kind of complaints you read on Tripadvisor ("the bell boy didn't smile enough to me", "the bedsheets where not the exact Pantone blue they had on the hotel website" etc).
Yes, but he said a MBA just until then, of which he writes on his Google+ page. Also, if you read the article, what he solely likes about the Pixel is the screen resolution. And he dislikes its weight. He looks like a perfect candidate for the inevitable retina MBA.
>As for Miguel De Icaza, he's eating his own dog food, as he now makes his money selling an IDE for iOS development, so of course he's going to choose the Mac because that's where the toolchain is.*
Well, it's not just that. He also wrote a post about why he moved to OS X, and how he got dissillusioned with the Linux desktop prospects.
From now on when people ask me why I use Linux instead of OSX and why I refuse to install closed-source, copy-protected software, I'm going to send them to Rob Pike's eloquent description of his self-inflicted torture.
Self-inflicted sums it about nice. He didn't have a USB drive (needed for installation), so he tried a few offbeat methods which didn't work, and he didn't have a bootable backup image (so he had to mess with a lengthy copying process). The only legit thing in his complaints is that Time Machine wouldn't let him restore off his Time Machine backup. The other stuff is self-inflicted.
Well, FWIW, I have had 3-4 magsafe cords (MBA, MBP, MBPr) and have used them from 5 (MBP) to 3 (MBA) to 1 year (MBPr) without issue.
I've had other parts crap on me though, e.g a battery after 2-3 years of use that had to be replaced. Also had an iMac (sold now), which had a faulty DVD (also replaced).
The thing is, those things happen to ALL production runs, there are some % of defective units. You can be Apple, IBM, Dell or BMW, and you still get this. I've had "upmarket" IBM hard disks die on me for example ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGST_Deskstar ).
And, for tens of millions of machines sold, you only get to read about the far fewer faulty ones on such problem forums (well, duh!) -- so it's not much to get an accurate picture on.
I like to do extensive research before I buy something (I buy lots of tech gear, from stuff like DSLRs to Audio interfaces), and if I gave much promimence to the occasional forum complaints, I wouldn't have bought anything at all, because there are always people that have issues with any product you search. I prefer to stick to reviews, seeing units in action from friends and in the store, etc. Case in point, my latest buy, a Focusrite Scarlett interface. Pages of complaints about strange audio glitches with Mountain Lion / iMacs etc in audio forums. Have been working 100% fine for me.
The trouble with reviews on that sort of product is that almost nobody has any reason to ever write a good one, because everyone writing one is buying the thing because their old one broke. Unless you have a product that _never ever fails_, reviews on spare parts are always going to be pretty awful.
Which Apple is fixing with a free replacement policy. There was a similar glitch with 2010-era MacBook Pros, which was uncovered in a new OS or firmware version in 2013 - 3 years later. They fixed mine (complete replacement of the main logic board) free of charge, 2 years out of warranty.
Even their known defects make Apple come out smelling like roses. Contrast that with obvious design defects in other, cheaper PC laptops, which get ignored or refused at the 3rd party retailers they come from, and it makes Apple a pretty simple recommendation for power users and casual users both. Nobody I've recommended Apple laptops to has been disappointed.
Well that's silly. "Anandtech does great reviews unless it's favorable to something I'm not, so then those reviews must be biased". Either you trust Anandtech or you don't. And if you do, then you shouldn't call the reviews that go against your views as biased.
By "you", I don't mean you, yapcguy. Just in general towards those that are criticizing Anandtech.
I can see why. They've been quite selective in what they compare the Mac Pro to in this review, for instance, because otherwise it wouldn't have come out so well. When they're arguing that it doesn't need expandability, they compare it to laptops and desktops that aren't expandable. Yet when it comes time to justify the pricing, they exclusively compare it to workstations that are aimed at a completely different market to desktops or laptops and have far more expansion options because that market expects them. If they compared the pricing to desktops and laptops or the expansion options to workstations, the Mac Pro would look a lot worse.
They compared it's price to a few workstations to show that the price isn't unreasonable for similar hardware (i.e. Apple isn't adding a $1200 workstation tax).
For the rest of the review they compared it to other Macs, because chances are that's what buyers are going to compare it with. If you want a Mac, those are your choices. I really doubt too many people who are in the market for an HP or Dell workstation are going to consider a Mac Pro.
Plus there is the problem of benchmarks. The OS can make a big difference, so you'd either have to run every benchmark twice on each system (once on OS X, once on Windows or Linux), and then the non-Macs can't run OS X. It would be a ton of extra work, but I'm not sure how much gain it would give.
Again, I think the number of workstation shoppers who will consider this machine is small. I expect the vast majority of it's sales will be to Mac users who want something more powerful than an iMac or a MacBook Pro.
> I really doubt too many people who are in the market for an HP or Dell workstation are going to consider a Mac Pro
Especially with the gap in Mac Pro releases over the past few years, I have seen many people deciding between Mac Pro and a custom built hackintosh. For the stuff that really justifies a Mac Pro, these were the only two options for some time (short of moving off of an OSX stack). Sure, someone custom building a multi thousand dollar work station is not your typical consumer, but neither is your typical buyer of a spec'd out Mac Pro.
I feel like he addresses the new design as a risk which he thinks something that should be taken. If that's something target market doesn't appreciate,then ultimately this will be a failed product. But Mac Pro is targeted towards a different audience than a HP workstation. Its targeted towards Hollywood and Animation community where there is a lot of Thunderbolt penetration.
I always attributed this to the anti-Apple-ism of the "enthusiast" crowd that like their machines big, over clocked, and running hot.
Anandtech fawns over a lot of products, but I suspect perhaps this is due to them reviewing products they are interested in, and not wasting time on stuff they aren't. I'd start to worry if people can't reproduce their lab numbers but at the moment, they're considered the most detailed and accurate of the lot.
"Some say…" is the Fox News way of saying "we just made this up on the show that preceded this one".
Unless someone can actually call their conclusions and numbers into question using actual facts, then it's just anti-Apple whining, whether it's him or "some readers".
Pretty much every review of Apple gear has people moaning about bias in the comments.
I'm not saying there is any favoritism, but certainly the perception amongst Anandtech readers is that there might be.
At the end of the day, there's no reason why the writers at Anandtech would be any more immune to access journalism than other folk who have tried and failed.
Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products.
You are actually saying there is favoritism. It's dishonest to claim otherwise. You've just suggested that Anand has succumbed to access journalism.
Why not just be honest about what you think, rather pretending to be disinterested reporting on the views of others?
Let's also note that the commenter accusing AnandTech of bias in that comment thread you linked is resoundingly and overwhelmingly rebutted by other readers.
Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products.
Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of any product. If someone likes Google Glass, four hundred comments by people calling you a glasshole and telling you that you must like Google stealing all your data. Positive reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note got huge criticism among the Apple sphere, everyone agog over how anyone could possibly like something so big (must be payola). And on and on and on.
Apple gives special treatment to outlets and bloggers who treat them "well" (and punish those who don't). It's all the same inducement, and it's all just as grubby.
So knocking Gizmodo — who chose to profit from the receipt of an ill-gotten prototype — off the list of invitees is somehow just as bad as buying journalists outright?
If you want to present a boorish caricature and then snarkily knock it down, I guess congratulations? Gizmodo and the stolen phone debacle has absolutely nothing to do with this.
Having early access to products and personnel for Apple reviews is a huge coup for media outlets: They need Apple far more than Apple needs them (if Anandtech didn't get sent a day 0 $7000 review unit, AnandTech would have gone without a lot of views and a front-page of HN and many other sites. Apple would have lost nothing -- the target market for the Pro would have just read the reviews elsewhere, and are at no risk of buying a competing workstation).
Apple hand-selects who gets these early access units, and thus who gets the attention of an early review. There is a strong incentive for those reviews to gently understate negatives and to overstate positives, remaining on the list for the next go around. In this case a workstation that prioritizes the irrelevant (box size is never even a discussion point when talking about high power workstation, but suddenly it's the primary design point?), and has some astounding faults that most other companies would be eviscerated for: The dongle approach of expansion; Power draw that at times exceeds the power supply rating; Chipsets going to 100C+ because the "thermal prioritized" design was actually "being novel small" designed; Performance that even in CPU+GPU scenarios only marginally improves on the performance of a box from four years ago?
I would posit that had this box carried a Lenova or HP tag on it, the reviews would be extremely negative, if not mocking.
This is not unique to Apple: Exactly the same thing has happened over the years with various industry or namespace leaders, reviews veering towards the positive to assure that you get to the front of the list for the next wave, in a perpetual cycle. There was a time when getting early access to Microsoft inspired a whole industry of fawning and soft-gloving.
Bizarre that gress is so desperately trying to present the notion that I'm somehow defending Samsung and their pathetic attempts at astroturfing support (though such is the entire business model of the PR industry, which every business engages in, so pretending it's so unique is delightfully naive). Their tactics seem very trollish so I'll simply ignore their nonsense.
If you want to attack his "caricature" you should be able to point out some way in which it is inaccurate.
Samsung has been convicted of paying shills to make false forum postings and reviews.
You are accusing apple of choosing who to give review units and press invites to based on who they prefer.
Every company does this. What else do you expect them to do? Provide a review unit to every blogger who asks for one? If you claim their behavior is underhand, you should be able to explain an alternative.
Comparing giving out review units to paying for shills is plainly absurd.
As to your comments about the review itself, they certainly reveal things that you would like to complain about, but none of these things were whitewashed or concealed by AnandTech, in fact they were fully exposed in statements, charts, and numbers.
Your chief complaint seems to be that you would have liked the review to have a vitriolic tone.
It's hard to believe that you are equating the fact that Apple chooses who to invite to press conferences (what else do you expect them to do?), with Samsung paying for shills to fake reviews and forum postings.
> Pretty much every review of Apple gear has people moaning about bias in the comments.
Well, yes, but any time just about anyone anywhere reviews an Apple thing and doesn't say "This is worse than iHitler", there are cries of bias, evil conspiracy, etc. People are a bit funny about Apple.
That's just them being silly, since Apple actually do make fantastic products and care more than the superficial marketing specs wars (GHz race, number of cores race, megapixel race, screen size race, etc).
It's funny how most PC review sites get into trouble for allegedly fawning over apple hardware once they start reviewing it regularly. I wonder why that might be?
Really? It's the same format that's been around since the earliest days of Web reviews. Newer sites are moving on to data allowing comparisons between anything (storagereview was an early leader in that). Although it's not quite as pathetic as sites that post screen captures of benchmark programs, I find sites like anandtech are like quaint bedtime stories in comparison.
