Is Pogue a Fanboy?

Every now and then, someone online calls me an “Apple fanboy.” The implication is that, in my New York Times column, I give Apple a free ride, that I applaud Apple’s every move with enthusiasm.

Now, I’m a technology critic. And credibility is all a critic really has. My job and reputation are far more important to me than — well, whatever it is that the fanboy-callers think I get out of praising Apple. So I’ll admit that the criticism bothers me, and I’d like to respond.

First of all, I do generally like Apple’s products — not because it comes from Apple, but because Apple’s products often exhibit an enormous attention to elegance, simplicity, and beauty.

There are also music critics who generally admire Sondheim, and book reviewers who generally like Updike. Does that make them fanboys? Or what about how Consumer Reports names Toyota and Honda the top car brands, year in and year out? Is Consumer Reports therefore a Toyota “fanboy”? Or is it possible that those cars really *are* better?

This does not mean, however, that I have a pro-Apple “bias,” or that I give Apple a free ride. Because Apple had one good idea doesn’t mean the next one will be good. So if you believe that I find no fault with Apple products, then you haven’t been reading closely enough.

Here are a few recent examples from my Apple reviews:

• iMovie ’08: "iMovie '08 is an utter bafflement. What the [bleep] was Apple thinking?"
  
  "It’s incapable of the more sophisticated editing that the old iMovie made so enjoyable. It gets a D for audio editing. You can't add chapter markers. Bookmarks are gone. "Themes" are gone. You can no longer export only part of a movie. All visual effects are gone--even basic options like slow motion, reverse motion, fast motion, and black-and-white. And you can't have more than one project open at a time."
  
  "I've used the real iMovie to edit my Times videos for three years now. But the new version is totally unusable for that purpose."
  
  
• iPod Touch: "The Apple scalpel may have slipped when it excised the volume buttons, which could be considered important controls on a music player. The earbuds have no iPhone-like clicker that pauses or switches songs, either. So the only way to pause, change songs or adjust the volume is to take the iPod out of your pocket and use two hands to summon the onscreen controls. In that regard, music playback is, oddly enough, the iPod Touch’s least successful feature."
  
  
• iPod Nano 2007: "The headphone jack is on the bottom, so the Nano doesn’t sit level when you prop it up on a treadmill. And while the Nano’s face comes in five brushed-metal colors (is there an echo in here?), its back is now the same mirror-finish chrome as the larger iPods—a fingerprint magnet."
  
  
• iPhone: "The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."
  
  "Making a call can take as many as six steps: wake the phone, unlock its buttons, summon the Home screen, open the Phone program, view the Recent Calls or speed-dial list, and select a name. Call quality is only average. There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash. You can’t capture video. And you can’t send picture messages (called MMS) to other cellphones."
  
  "Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee. Then there’s the small matter of typing. Tapping the skinny little virtual keys on the screen is frustrating, especially at first."
  
  
• iPod Photo: “Why can’t you download your pictures onto this thing straight from a digital camera? Why do you have to use iTunes, a music program, to manage the photo loading? And, inevitably: Why can’t it play video? After all, for the same $500, you can buy a Windows Mobile Portable Media Center that plays not only music and photos, but videos too.”
  
  
• Original iPod: “As sometimes happens in products built at the altar of coolness, function occasionally suffers. For example, there is no belt clip, which could be an issue for joggers whose sweat pants lack pockets. And unfortunately, fingerprints and streaks dull its shine faster than you can say, ‘Honey, where do we keep the Windex?’”
  
  
• Mac OS X Panther: “Now the big one: Apple wants $130 for Panther. That’s a fine how-de-do for everyone who dutifully paid $130 last year for version 10.2 and $130 a year before that for version 10.1. Microsoft, at least, has the decency to wait a few years between upgrades.”
  
  
• iPod Nano: “If your computer has only a regular U.S.B. 1.1 connector (and this includes Macs that are only two years old), you could practically sing your songs in the time it takes to transfer them to the Nano.”
  
  
• Apple TV: “It has an Internet connection and a hard drive; why can’t it record TV shows like a TiVo? Furthermore, it’s a little weird that menus and photos appear in spectacular high-definition, but not TV shows and movies. All iTunes videos are in standard definition, and don’t look so hot on an HDTV.”
  
  
• iTunes Music Store: “It’s annoying that no search by artist name produces more than 100 results; if you want that 101st Carly Simon song, you have to search for it by name.”
  
  
• iTunes 4.9: “Ever since Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997 after a 12-year absence, his company has thrived by executing the same essential formula over and over: Find an exciting new technology whose complexity and cost keep it out of the average person’s life. Streamline it, mainstream it, strip away the geeky options. Take the credit.”
  
  
• Mac OS X Tiger: “The second most heavily hyped Tiger feature is called Dashboard. But Dashboard isn’t a Tiger exclusive; the shareware program Konfabulator, available for Windows and older Mac OS versions, does pretty much the same thing.”
  
  
• iPod Nano: “The Mini held much more music; four gigabytes of storage instead of two. The Nano’s battery doesn’t last as long, either: 14 hours instead of the Mini’s 18, and rival flash players’ batteries run much longer still. And the Nano can’t connect to your Mac or PC with a FireWire cable, as all previous iPods could.”
  
  
• iPhoto: “iPhoto 5 can accommodate about 20,000 photos per library before it starts bogging down; for the true digicam fanatic, that’s about one afternoon’s shooting at Disney World. Picasa [for Windows] handily juggles 250,000 photos without breaking a sweat.”
  
  
• iPod Nano: “It can’t connect to a TV for showing off to the masses, as the big iPods can. None of the current iPod microphones, remote controls or digital camera photo-transfer adapters work on the Nano, which lacks the necessary jacks.”
  
  
• AirPort Express: “First, you can only send the music to one set of speakers at a time. Second, the connection between the AirPort Express and the stereo is not wireless. You have to supply your own cable to connect them. Finally, if you’re downstairs with the stereo, you can’t pause playback when the phone rings, see the name of the current song, or skip a truly awful song, without having to run upstairs to the computer... You could buy each of the Express’s features for less money.”
  
  
• iPod Mini: “If you want to buy pop music legally online [for this player], you must use Apple’s iTunes Music Store; iPods can’t play songs bought from other online music stores... Rival players hold more music than the Mini (about 250 songs more). Each contains a five-gigabyte hard drive instead of a four-gigabyte one. And each rival either costs less or offers more features.”
  
  
• Mac OS X Tiger: “Messages alert you — a little annoyingly, actually —every time you download a file that could theoretically contain a virus.”
  
  
• iPod Photo: “On Windows, synching is measured in minutes, not seconds. For best results, keep a stack of Popular Photography magazines next to your iPod cradle.”
  
  
• Flat iMac: “Even the top-of-the-line model comes with only 256 megabytes of memory. Programs like Apple’s creative suite (iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand and so on, all included) and Adobe Photoshop can run in 256 megs, but only barely; programs like Microsoft’s new Virtual PC 7, which lets most Windows programs run on the Mac, don’t open at all.”
  
  
• Flat-panel iMac: “Apple may have gone too far with some of its sacrifices on the altar of beauty. The power button would have been more convenient on the front, or on the iMac’s clear-and-white keyboard. The base is unsettlingly massive and white, like a guy in shorts with his foot in a cast.”

Finally, one more point. Apple is not the only company with a strong Attention to Detail Department, and I’m not shy about singling out similar companies. Yet you know what’s weird? Nobody has ever called me a TiVo fanboy, Sonos fanboy, BlackBerry fanboy, or Google fanboy.

And it goes without saying that the Apple bashers don’t notice when I praise Microsoft for doing elegant work, as I did when Windows Vista came out.

To me, all of this is evidence that to some people, the word “Apple” is a sensitive trigger word. It triggers a reaction so severe, it causes people to skip over entire paragraphs in order to draw the conclusion that I give Apple only rave reviews.

I doubt very much, therefore, that anything I’ve said here will change these readers’ minds. But at least I’ve offered a few concrete examples of the way I attempt balance in my Apple reviews (and all reviews).

I’ve been writing my Times column since 2000, and I’m still always trying to improve. Therefore, I’d welcome your reactions to this document — or anything else I’ve written!