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Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

pogue.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#61

Post by ddelony »

petercooper wrote: post #10

I'd cut it right back to people merely being weird and antagonistic for no reason. It's easier to realize sometimes you're just the latest random target of a touchy, unstable human animal and drive away as if in a safari park. We had a woman come up to us on vacation and say our 2 year old daughter was an "evil little thing" merely for chattering away while eating lunch. I said nothing and just grinned at her until s…

Some advice from an old journalism professor of mine: no matter what anyone else says or does, just smile and says "Thanks for letting me know how you feel!" It's a difficult person disarming tactic.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#62

Post by ddelony »

planetguy wrote: post #3

Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days. Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products. Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever conside…

The topic that inspires the most vitriol by far is anything to do with Israel or Palestine. The comments on any YouTube video or nasty even by YouTube comment standards.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#63

Post by ThePherocity »

jkubicek wrote: post #55
ThePherocity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPad 1 released in 2010 (two years old) lacks all features. iPhone 4 lacks turn by turn navigation, 3D maps, Siri, and Facetime over cellular. So I get what with an iPhone 4? Passbook, Facebook, and a maps app that no longer tells me what train I can take? Im going to have to stick to the most features.

> So I get what with an iPhone 4? The ability to run apps targeting iOS 6 and above, which is arguably more important than everything else you listed.

Agreed.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#64

Post by Xcelerate »

I've gotten to where I don't have any particularly strong attachment to brand names. I've used Windows all of my life, but just recently ordered a Mac. I still like both operating systems a lot (and would like to experiment with Linux as well). I suppose a decade ago when I was 12 I may have made some disparaging Apple comment, but now it seems juvenile that anyone would spend a lot of time debating these sorts of things.

Then again, I spend very little time shopping for clothes or reading about cars so maybe this is just a product of being less social than most.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#65

Post by redthrowaway »

gfodor wrote: post #19
planetguy wrote: post #3

Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days. Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products. Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever conside…

Calling the things we carry in our pockets today "phones" is nothing more than an artifact of history. (In fact, my iPhone is a terrible phone.) Smartphones are devices we use constantly, all day, probably some absurd number of times per hour, and it is a statistic that is surely going up. It's hard to think of any other product we have a more intimate relationship with. It's become more and more of a tool that we ca…

> Smartphones are devices we use constantly, all day, probably some absurd number of times per hour, and it is a statistic that is surely going up.

I might be the odd one out here, but I'll often go days without so much as touching my phone. Either I have my laptop with me, which is better than my iPhone at everything save being a phone, or if I'm just looking to burn time I'll read my Kindle. I have friends who are constantly glued to their phones, and I simply don't understand the attraction.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

planetguy wrote: post #3

Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days. Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products. Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever conside…

http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#67

Post by jsz0 »

This seems to happen anytime people are forced to make a choice from a limited number of options. Everything from sports, to politics, to consumer electronics of different types. I think it's because our brains are really good at comparing two or three things. It may even be that we have a sort of obsession with comparing things. We just can't help ourselves. When your available options expand though it becomes far more difficult to compare. The thrill of comparing two objects and reaching the correct conclusion is gone at that point. The stakes are also much lower. Few people are going to sit down and compare a dozen different things so even if we do make the wrong choice no one is going to notice.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#68

Post by fa_il »

I call hypocrisy here. I've seen this guy on a news program and he was almost jumping out of his seat about "inanimate" gadgets.

"Why would someone take time out of his day to..." write an email about a product that hasn't even been released?

Why would someone spend his _career_ writing about gadgets that haven't even been released yet?

C'mon Pogue, get serious.

My guess is people are are worked up about lots of things that have nothing to do with gadgets. But then they read some guy whose sole job it is to write about gadgets, who actually gets paid to do that, and it's a little too much to bear. Remember that people are being coaxed into buying these gadgets year after year, continually upgrading devices that should continue to work for many years, with the manufacturers raking in enormous amounts of income... while the average user is probably not. And who is helping the companies do this coaxing: David Pogue.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#69

Post by hristov »

This is not as much about tech as it is about advertising and commercialism. Our young generations are exposed to more and more advertising, commercialism and crass materialism throughout their lives, so it is no freaking wonder that young people will turn their phones into some kind of pillars of their existence.

This was fueled by the so called "tech journalists" that fueled the original mania about the ipods and iphones, etc. which basically resulted in a bunch of monsters that defined themselves by the type of gadgets they use.

So in a way that NY Times writer has only himself to blame.

Re: Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech

#70

Post by sbuk »

marklindhout wrote: post #54

Free software allows for freedom. Most (if not all) frustration in tech comes from the lack of it.

This post perfectly illustrates the kind of passive aggressive statement that can light the touch paper of a flame war. It's essentially the same as saying "it just works" from an Apple perspective. It's another example of tribalism and closed thinking.
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