\n\nGruber -- hang your head in shame.\n
Reviewing the Reviewer
\nI've written magazine software reviews for real money way back when people like me still read magazines. Even when the typical computer user's principle source of information was magazines (such as Australian MacUser -- the now defunct publication I wrote for) and reviewers got packages months in advance and had weeks to write their reviews, most reviews were hopelessly superficial. (Mine were not, but I also tended to hand them in rather late.) So it should come as no surprise that in these days of incredibly rapid releases and zero lead times, most reviews are utter crap. Pretty much the only reviewers worth reading are either (a) reviewing a product long after release, or (b) dedicated beta testers. Anyone else simply doesn't have the \"real world product experience\" to say anything much useful.\n\nIt's astonishing to me that despite the dozens of fairly prominent bloggers who discuss graphics software for the Mac, none seem to ever mention Photoline. OK, it's not Mac-only (but then neither is Photoshop or Photoshop Elements), and it doesn't have a gratuitously chic UI (like Pixelmator) but it's actually useful. No-one who uses graphics programs for anything but the most trivial of edits (redeye reduction, fixing exposure, cropping) would give Acorn -- say -- anything other than short shrift as a general purpose image editor. Pixelmator is at least vaguely useful for basic image editing. I've seen some decent work done with Pixelmator. The only real use I have for either product is as a wrapper for Core Image filters (and since I figured out how to graphically set focus points for filters in Acorn, that means I have no use for Pixelmator whatsoever).\n\nThe gold standard for reviews (at least in my experience) is the New Yorker's non-fiction book reviews. A typical example will start by discussing the recent publication of a particular book, or several books on a given topic, and then broadly sketch out that topic's landscape, including the strengths and weaknesses of the existing \"definitive\" works covering the same material. The review will then go on to give you a rough outline of what the new book or books cover, what they add to the existing literature, and what their weaknesses -- if any -- may be. The result is that I -- for one -- often end up reading reviews of books I have no interest in, find any given review both educational and interesting, and end up either wanting to read the book(s) discussed or happy enough not to, but with some kind of vague understanding of what I'm missing out on. Fabulous.\n\nObviously, simply having read the book or books in question and being well-versed in the pre-existing literature covering the same subject matter is but a feeble and insufficient prerequisite for writing such a review.\n\nA good software reviewer should do something similar. They should discuss the problem domain the program or programs handle, the dominant products (if any) in that category, and describe what the reviewed products add (if anything) and any obvious weaknesses. It follows that they must have a broad understanding of the problem domain, solid familiarity with at least some existing competing products, and have seriously used the product being reviewed. It's pretty clear when you're reading such a review, and it's pretty clear when you aren't.\n\nThank goodness for Ars Technica.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T09:24:37.044+00:00",path:"advertorials-opacity-reviewing-the-reviewer",_created:"2024-07-09T20:32:07.948Z",id:"1612",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:32:07.948Z","$id":"1612",_path:"post/path=advertorials-opacity-reviewing-the-reviewer"},"page/path=blog":{path:"blog",css:"",imageUrl:"",prefetch:[{regexp:"^\\/(([\\w\\d]+\\/)*)([\\w-]+)\\/?$",path:"post/path=[3]"}],tags:["public"],source:"",title:"",description:"",_path:"page/path=blog"}}