The nice thing about Digg and social sites and RSS is that you can absorb a crap load of content around stuff you're interested in. Unfortunately though, I'm starting to realize that "crap load" is exactly what it has become.
The problem is that all the people doing the writing take a simple view of what they're covering and gauge its relevance on that. They form opinions that ultimately aren't useful because they lack context from the things they're covering.
Certainly the iPhone has been the biggest target as of late. It doesn't do Exchange support well, I can't install 3rd party apps, my iPhone was bricked by an update... etc. Why is it that none of this matters? Because it's a segment of the population that is so minor and so not part of the greater customer base. iPhone customers just want to make calls, surf for porn, and listen to tunes. It wasn't built for the geeks. If you want to launch rockets and haX0rz your neighbor's Wi-Fi, buy one of those goofy little Linux PDA's and knock yourself out.
The problem is that the coverage is by geeks for a non-geek device, and the writers don't get it. The same lack of context happens almost daily when it comes to other consumer devices, like the HD disc players. Look at how they all thought the Nintendo Wii would be novel but not a hit. Again, not thinking like the general population.
Unfortunately, a lot of the time even the geeky stuff isn't covered in context. Witness this silly rant by Scoble about the .NET source being released and integrated into the next Visual Studio. He just outright dogs it and rants. Does he develop in .NET or even have a realistic view of how widespread its use is? Apparently not. As a developer using that platform, it's a huge deal because I can better understand how and why things behave, and learn a great deal about the design practices employed. Instead, Scoble makes some asinine rant about open source and other such nonsense. This ain't religion, it's the VS team giving its customers what they really can use. And yet he has the balls to castrate old school media. He's not doing anyone a service.
There's a part of me that wants to just stop reading all of this crap, because I'm no longer getting any value out of it. I love my Apple shit, I love Visual Studio and .NET, and I love my Xbox 360. I use them every day, and feel comfortable talking about the products. Outside of those realms, I can't say I'm all that qualified to make a lot of declarations about tech I don't use beyond, "I have no use for that."
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