Filed under: iPod Family, Cult of Mac, Internet, Blogs
Funny post about Apple and Slashdot
Ian Betteridge has a funny (and insightful) post up on his blog, Technovia, called Why I rarely read Slashdot anymore. He points to this old Slashdot thread about the announcement of the first iPod and asks us to gaze at the typically pessimistic Slashdot comments on the post. One comment that he singles out and that was rated 4 for being Insightful notes "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod."Betteridge follows up the comment by noting: "As of March, Apple had sold over 15 million iPods." So much for /. insight. ;-)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
narco said 4:06PM on 8-18-2005
I remember someone shared that link with me when the iPod started to get really popular. It's funny too, lately I've heard a lot of people complaining about Slashdot (I refuse to do that "/." thing) being "pro-Apple" now. I always thought that all UNIX geeks were all one happy family, apparently not. I never visit Slashdot anyway because if it were real life, it'd probably smell as bad as a LAN party.
Fishes,
narco.
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johnny Won said 4:19PM on 8-18-2005
I think the post unfairly critizes a mute point. The iPod came out with valid pessamism and no one dreamed that it would achieve critical mass as it has today. Its a cheap shot at /. because the 'tech elite' failed to see into the future. The archived post is a clear example of the huge hurdles Apple has overcome. Technovia is really taking the easy dig, find a post in Oct 2001 that says the iPod will change everything.
The point about /. being less relevent today than 4 years ago is a much broader argument and I would have to argue there is truth behind that point. Slashdot needs to be reorganized.
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stevej said 4:45PM on 8-18-2005
I'm very much in agreement with johnny Won's statements above.
Slashdot may have fallen off somewhat, but it's still pretty good.
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Akshat said 4:54PM on 8-18-2005
If you go down to the comments of this post, it states, very fairly, that since the iPod was released, it has gone on to be a USB device that works on a PC. There was no way it could have caught on without that, so it's not really fair to blame that post on Slashdot.
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LD said 6:08PM on 8-18-2005
I stopped reading /. because it sucks. Old news, lame comments, lots of fighting.
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 7:20PM on 8-18-2005
narco: Rating 5, Funny
LD: Rating 4, Insightful
/. has dropped off my radar too. Old news, and if you get to comments more than 16.3 seconds after the post goes up you have 395 comments ranting about SCO, Jobs, Gates, monkeys, butter, or all 5 at once. Plus, they have rejected some pretty boss stories (ahem).
Besides, why slashdot when you can read the fine blogs here?
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umijin said 9:18PM on 8-18-2005
I dunno about the current efficacy of Slashdot, but their original comments about the first iPod were spot on.
The first gen units really sucked, and at that time iTunes was not nearly as useful as it is now. That's why folks flocked to other options like Rio.
Apple didn't get the iPod right until the 3rd generation, in my opinion.
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ED said 10:37PM on 8-18-2005
It's a "moot" point, not a "mute" point.
Nevermind.
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Ian Betteridge said 6:00AM on 8-19-2005
And it's Ian Betteridge, not "Betterbridge" :)
I am being slightly cruel to /., in that I remember when the iPod was announced I wasn't overly impressed. However, a couple of days later I got my hands on one - and instantly ordered my own.
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C.K. Sample, III said 7:47AM on 8-19-2005
Sorry Ian! Fixing now...
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Bootes said 8:31PM on 8-19-2005
Pfft what are you talking about. The first iPods were great. iPods have lost many of the great features they once had. 1 hour for almost a full charge, Firewire port for charging/connecting to your computer so that you didn't have to use anything extra just for your iPod. All that they have added has been more space, a couple new games, notes, and some crappy new dock connector.
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Tom said 8:00PM on 8-19-2005
Hmm, when I read the post the comments were pretty positive. Depending on your moderation settings, you can get some varying results. Also, you mention one negative response. There's 737 replies to that post. Thats kind of why Slashdot is so good, because of the amount of responses and varying points of view. Don't read Slashdot if you don't want to, but not reading because you don't like certain responses seems lind of lame.
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