It’s a special week in America. All over the country, families are gathering in warmly lighted homes. They’re sitting down to fancy feasts at decorated tables. They smile, they pour libations, they raise their glasses.
The latest in technology from the Times's David Pogue, with a new look.
David Pogue's first column in The New York Times, which appeared on Oct. 26, 2000.
Yes, that’s right — it’s the 10th anniversary of this column in The Times!
As tech decades go, this one has been a jaw-dropper. Since my first column in 2000, the tech world has not so much blossomed as exploded. Think of all the commonplace tech that didn’t even exist 10 years ago: HDTV, Blu-ray, GPS, Wi-Fi, Gmail, YouTube, iPod, iPhone, Kindle, Xbox, Wii, Facebook, Twitter, Android, online music stores, streaming movies and on and on.
With the turkey cooking, this seems like a good moment to review, to reminisce — and to distill some insight from the first decade in the new tech millennium.
Things don’t replace things; they just splinter. I can’t tell you how exhausting it is to keep hearing pundits say that some product is the “iPhone killer” or the “Kindle killer.” Listen, dudes: the history of consumer tech is branching, not replacing.
TV was supposed to kill radio. The DVD was supposed to kill the Cineplex. Instant coffee was supposed to replace fresh-brewed.
But here’s the thing: it never happens. You want to know what the future holds? O.K., here you go: there will be both iPhones and Android phones. There will be both satellite radio and AM/FM. There will be both printed books and e-books. Things don’t replace things; they just add on.
Sooner or later, everything goes on-demand. The last 10 years have brought a sweeping switch from tape and paper storage to digital downloads. Music, TV shows, movies, photos and now books and newspapers. We want instant access. We want it easy.
Our grandchildren will find it hilarious that people, when they wanted to watch a movie at home, used to get in a “car” and drive to a “building” to rent a plastic “disc” that had to be “returned.”
Some people’s gadgets determine their self-esteem. Being a tech columnist is like being onstage: feedback from readers is instantaneous, impassioned and voluminous.
For years, I was baffled by the degree of emotion they’d express. ( There was this gem from 2006, for example: “In my oppinion you should be fired for wrighting such a biast article in a (somewhat) professional newspaper. Oh and in case you think i work for microsoft or have bad grammar, or something, you should know that im 15!”) Eventually, I came to understand. Today’s gadgets are intensely personal. Your phone or camera or music player makes a statement, reflects your style and character. No wonder some people interpret criticisms of a product as a criticism of their choices. By extension, it’s a critique of them.
Which brings me to my next realization:
Everybody reads with a lens. Some of the cultural wars in this country are deep-rooted, eternal and irresolvable. Gun control. Abortion. Justin Bieber.
But feelings run just as strongly in the tech realm. You can’t use the word “Apple,” “Microsoft” or “Google” in a sentence these days without stirring up emotion.
When I reviewed the iPad, I tried something radical: I wrote two separate reviews, of equal length, in the same column. One was negative, one was positive. My point was that you could view this machine very differently depending on your technical background.
But on blogs and in e-mail, anti-Apple readers wrote about the “love letter” I’d written to the iPad; the Apple fanboys got riled up about the way I’d “trashed” it. Incredibly, each side completely ignored the other half of the review.
It’s not that hard to tell the winners from the losers. The best part of this job is stumbling across some obscure product that’s truly great — and helping bring it to the public’s attention. (Some examples: GrandCentral, Readability, Line2, the Canon S95, LightScoop, OpenDNS.) I’ll admit it: I get a secret thrill from learning that some little company’s servers have been crashed by the Pogue Effect.
But the truth is, telling the winners from the losers usually isn’t very difficult. Anyone could do it. And some of the flops were colossal.
There was the Microsoft Spot Watch (2003). This was a wireless wristwatch that could display your appointments and messages — but cost $10 a month, had to be recharged nightly and wouldn’t work outside your home city unless you filled out a Web form in advance.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com.
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