Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Dvorak's Invective ... sheesh

You know, I ask myself, why even bother replying to Mr. J. C. Dvorak? I mean, go and read his article at CBS MarketWatch. He talks about how Apple is starting to believe their own press in regard to the iPod ... sounds like John's starting to beleive that he's a really good tech writer. I mean, come on, CBS is publishing his stuff.

Glad it is filed under "John Dvorak's Second Opinion."

I won't bother with a point by point refutation ... other sites will glady jump on that. Suffice it to say, it's a fun read, though rife with, IMHO, rather uhh, silly analysis.

I realize that the G5 iMac has hit with a lot of praise, naysaying as well as folks scratching thier heads. John is pretty much just another one of the guys who tap their watch, hold it up to their ear and say, "Is this thing working? Wasn't Apple supposed to be dead by now ... what's going on? I better think of something to write about Apple that is negative. Am I late for dinner?"

The first thing he finds to complain about is Schiller's remark that September can't come soon enough ... though it was just the next day. Okay, yeah, kind of silly. Then he complains about Schiller's choice of shirt, his gushing about the iPod and wishing he could dance like those silhouettes in the commercials.

Hey JOHN!! Your opinion is yours, and you are free to voice it. But dude, why smack Phil in such a personal way? It wasn't ad hominem, but it was one of those things that reminds you of a bully picking on another kid only to make himself feel better. Please.

That bothered me and set the tenor of the entire read - again, it was fun, but in a "gee, is this guy serious?" sort of way. But here I am smacking John. Well, I guess it's okay since I don't write for CBS or PC Magazine or other.

Go ahead and read the article. When you're done laughing, let me know what you thought. I think I can count on one hand the number of articles over the years John's written that I found I agreed with. Go figure.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Johnny D's writing sucks. He's like a frustrated, under-endowed shadow of Dave Barry, whose material he frequently lifts. Readership goes down, bosses look to replace his article with tide schedules, so what does he do? What has always worked for him in the past. Throw a firecracker into the hornet's nest of Apple enthusiasts. Then he go to his editor and hold up a big list of his emails and say "Hoo-hah! Look how popular I am now!" when 99% of those mails are Macfans telling him where to go and kindle properly there. Nothing new.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, went to his article and looked for comments; there are no posts in response to his article. Figure it's better not to leave a comment so when his bosses look at his board and hear the crickets creak it'll only make him look stupider.

Darren Mahaffy said...

Now Dave Barry is funny. So when you say under shadow, you mean WAY under, right?

And to the other poster - yeah, no comments on CBS's site. The lack of comments reminds me of one other pundit who is sometimes right on, but other times not - Paul Thurrott. He needs to enable comments on his site, IMO. Though he praises MS and usually is cynical toward Apple, in fairness, he has praised Apple, too. More often than Johnny D.

Darren Mahaffy said...

Correction, you said "under-endowed shadow" of Dave Barry. My bad.

Anonymous said...

I didn't read the article (Don't want to give him the hits), so I'm just going on what was said here.

After the seeing the video, one important fact stands out: Phil Schiller is no Steve Jobs. I mean, I'm sure he's a wonderful person, a smart guy, etc. But when he speaks, he has the stench of a salesman.

When Steve Jobs says "This is amazingly cool", even his detractors believe that Steve Jobs thinks this is amazingly cool. His detractors might disagree with him, but no one doubts Steve's belief that this is amazingly cool.

Phil Schiller, alas, does not have that ability. When Phil says "This is amazingly cool", he comes across as a salesman trying to sell you something rather than someone trying to show you something.

Darren Mahaffy said...

RE: Watching the video.

Indeed, I have not yet watched it. I meant to throughout the day as I saw news posted that it was up. I'll try to watch tomorrow.

But I get your point. I suppose I don't have to see the video per se, so much as the product videos that Apple releases after intros - where Phil is often featured extolling the praises of said product.

Which brings me to another point that I may blog on ... what does Apple do to replace Steve when that time arrives? Likely Apple will pick a capable leader and not necessarily a replacement for Steve. I don't think he can be replaced.

Anonymous said...

John is a dork.

darth said...

so do guys like thurott and dvorak post mea culpas when their predictions go laughably wrong? last i checked, thurott predicted that a) dells DJ would be the iPod killer, b) HP's iPods would support WMA, and c) iPod mini was just WAY too expensive to succeed. (from daring fireball)

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