Dave’s WordPress home in the Fediverse :-)
If we really want tech to get back to basics we need pubs that function as product reviewers, like we have entertainment reviewers. There’s so much software and so many isolated bubbles of developers, when there’s a development that shakes the world less than ChatGPT, I might not hear about it for ten years, or might never hear about it. In the 80s we had lots of pubs that covered all kinds of products at a user level. There were 15 popular word processing apps, for example — all made a decent living, and remember there were a lot fewer users then. Three spreadsheets on the PC and 2 on the Mac. It was possible because we had PC Week, MacWEEK, MacUser, MacWorld, PC Mag, PC World, InfoW…
Dave’s WordPress home in the Fediverse :-)
If we really want tech to get back to basics we need pubs that function as product reviewers, like we have entertainment reviewers. There’s so much software and so many isolated bubbles of developers, when there’s a development that shakes the world less than ChatGPT, I might not hear about it for ten years, or might never hear about it. In the 80s we had lots of pubs that covered all kinds of products at a user level. There were 15 popular word processing apps, for example — all made a decent living, and remember there were a lot fewer users then. Three spreadsheets on the PC and 2 on the Mac. It was possible because we had PC Week, MacWEEK, MacUser, MacWorld, PC Mag, PC World, InfoWorld, Dr Dobbs, BYTE, Popular Computing, Creative Computing, and I’m sure I’m leaving some out. Some great writers, and insightful reviews about what it’s like to actually use the stuff. I had a product reviewed in the NY Times if you can believe that, and at the same time InfoWorld did a similar review. If you want to rock, we need good, thoughtful reviewers, with no conflicts, and enough time to put into each product.