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Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Following the departure of founder and chief editor Anand Lal Shimpi in August, Anandtech.com is being acquired by Purch Media, the owners of Tom's Hardware Guide.

Anandtech's announcement posted:

Before his departure, Anand spent almost a year meeting with all of the big names in the publishing space, both traditional and new media players. The goal was to find AnandTech a home with a partner that had a sustainable business model (similar to AnandTech’s), but could add the investment and existing reach to allow the site to better realize its potential. That search led to a number of interesting potential partners; it was a refreshing experience to say the least knowing that there are groups in the world who really value good content. Ultimately that search brought AnandTech to Purch.

AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another. To further invest in the areas that make us different, and together with the rest of the Purch family help to bring a higher standard of quality to the web.

The AnandTech team is staying in place and will continue to focus on existing coverage areas. We’re not changing our editorial policies or analytical approach and have no intentions of doing so. The one thing that will change is our ability to continue to grow the site. This if anything starts from the top; with a publisher to more directly handle the business of AnandTech, this frees me up to spend more time on content creation and helping the rest of our editors put together better articles. And in a hands-on business like journalism that benefit cannot be understated.

AnandTech was an incredibly powerful force as an independent publisher, but it now joins a family whose combined traffic is eight times larger than what AnandTech was on its own. Our goal is to continue to invest in what we feel is the right approach to building high quality content; now we have an even greater ability to do just that.
While the announcement tries to be upbeat, it's hard to read this as anything other than the death of one of the last sources of editorially independent, in-depth content. Look forward to Top 10 lists and "reviews" of registry optimizers!

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mAlfunkti0n
May 19, 2004
Fallen Rib
This really sucks. Toms is nothing but a bad joke.

You Am I
May 20, 2001

Me @ your poasting

mAlfunkti0n posted:

This really sucks. Toms is nothing but a bad joke.
Yeah, Toms used to be good in the late 90s/early 2000s, but it is a shadow of its former self these days. Anandtech is still going on nicely after Anand's departure, but I can't see anything good coming out of this

Yip Yips
Sep 25, 2007
yip-yip-yip-yip-yip
Glad to see the movement towards clickbait garbage is universal.

YouTuber
Jul 31, 2004

by FactsAreUseless
gently caress this clickbait poo poo, lets make a webpage where you guys write some poo poo and I collect the paycheck.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

You Am I posted:

Yeah, Toms used to be good in the late 90s/early 2000s, but it is a shadow of its former self these days. Anandtech is still going on nicely after Anand's departure, but I can't see anything good coming out of this
I will say that they seem to have toned down the most grossly unethical fake reviews since the Purch acquisition, but yeah they sure as hell aren't publishing content that has value for anyone.

I still can't believe the two smartest people at Anandtech went to work for Apple of all companies.

wwb
Aug 17, 2004

I'm not that shocked to be honest. If you want to play with bleeding edge hardware then there aren't that many options and you might as well get in bed with the devil.

pram
Jun 10, 2001
At least we still have The Verge.

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

Alereon posted:

I will say that they seem to have toned down the most grossly unethical fake reviews since the Purch acquisition, but yeah they sure as hell aren't publishing content that has value for anyone.

I still can't believe the two smartest people at Anandtech went to work for Apple of all companies.

:dolla bills yall:

Professor Science
Mar 8, 2006
diplodocus + mortarboard = party

Alereon posted:

I still can't believe the two smartest people at Anandtech went to work for Apple of all companies.
There's exactly one journalist with any serious technical competence left that doesn't work for a tech company (David Kanter at Real World Tech). It's not really surprising; the money (not to mention being the person that designs things instead of the one always writing about other people's work) is too good.

Menacer
Nov 25, 2000
Failed Sega Accessory Ahoy!
Kanter works for The Linley Group (publishers of Microprocessor Report, Networking Report, etc.) now, and he hasn't written a RWT article in more than 6 months. The Linley Group makes quite a lot of their money writing whitepapers and doing competetive analysis for tech companies.

While he isn't working for a tech company directly, he's moved on to the real business world.

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Professor Science posted:

There's exactly one journalist with any serious technical competence left that doesn't work for a tech company (David Kanter at Real World Tech). It's not really surprising; the money (not to mention being the person that designs things instead of the one always writing about other people's work) is too good.
Jack Clark with Bloomberg (formerly with The Register) knows what the gently caress he's talking about. Sadly, Bloomberg has him reporting on boring enterprise stuff instead of the distributed systems/HPC things he was doing with The Register.

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️

wwb posted:

I'm not that shocked to be honest. If you want to play with bleeding edge hardware then there aren't that many options and you might as well get in bed with the devil.

Not only that with the general stagnation of PC industry as a whole, the other thing if you want useful information to decide hardware purchases on, Techreport reviews provides it so much better than Anandtech. For example, when TR has been doing SSD real-world load times and GPU frame time analysis for years while AT does neither it makes them look frankly amateurish in comparison.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Palladium posted:

Not only that with the general stagnation of PC industry as a whole, the other thing if you want useful information to decide hardware purchases on, Techreport reviews provides it so much better than Anandtech. For example, when TR has been doing SSD real-world load times and GPU frame time analysis for years while AT does neither it makes them look frankly amateurish in comparison.
I'll definitely give props to TechReport for their GPU frame time analysis, but Anandtech's SSD reporting has always been far better. Time measurements taken by hand aren't useful because the difference between drives is smaller than the margin of error. I mean look at this graph, it's the tested drivers in random order, without any pattern or logic. TR is doing good performance consistency testing now in their disk-intensive multi-tasking test, but that was pioneered by Anandtech and the way they present their data is very useful for exploring the behavior of drive firmware. TechReport also gave up on testing in motherboard reviews recently, instead just doing a marketing overview, which is pretty lame.

TheJeffers
Jan 31, 2007

This is unfortunate, but it doesn't surprise me. As I understand it, banner advertising is becoming less and less lucrative, and publishers that used to rely on it for the majority of their revenue (i.e., all of them) are struggling to find new income streams. A small but growing presence in the ad space is the kind of "editorial" or "native" advertising that Purch seems to specialize in, and I suspect that you'll see more and more of it in the future, because it allows companies to tell the stories they want to tell about themselves, and that's a huge deal in the ad world. Whether it's good for the reader is another matter.

It's loving gross, but Anandtech is a monumental name in the tech site world, and it's a huge arrow in Purch's quiver to have that kind of clout behind whatever advertorial content they want to slap a veneer of legitimacy on. Anandtech seems to have tried a little of this approach themselves—see the "AMD Zone" that used to get top billing there—but I would expect a much, much more subtle approach in the future.

Expect this to happen more and more unless somebody figures out a way to make money from tech news and reviews that isn't bound to advertising. It'd be interesting to see someone try an Andrew Sullivan-esque approach in tech media, but I don't know if any one site is big enough to make that work.

TheJeffers fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Dec 19, 2014

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

TheJeffers posted:

Expect this to happen more and more unless somebody figures out a way to make money from tech news and reviews that isn't bound to advertising.
Thousand-dollar Gartner reports.

VulgarandStupid
Aug 5, 2003
I AM, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, UNFUCKABLE AND A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT TO EVERYONE. DAE WANNA CUM PLAY WITH ME!?




A lot of hardware reviews have been migrating to Youtube, and are now devolving into unboxing videos. It's probably more lucrative than having 6 ads on your website.

cowofwar
Jul 30, 2002

by Athanatos

Alereon posted:

I still can't believe the two smartest people at Anandtech went to work for Apple of all companies.
Seriously? Apple does a huge amount of cutting edge hardware design. They push the envelopes in a lot of areas and have their hands in many pies.

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


Misogynist posted:

Thousand-dollar Gartner reports.

I got on my hands on one before and nearly spent what seemed a few minutes into an hour. Good stuff.

Does anyone have access?

dietcokefiend
Apr 28, 2004
HEY ILL HAV 2 TXT U L8TR I JUST DROVE IN 2 A DAYCARE AND SCRATCHED MY RAZR
It definitely piqued my interest seeing that news pop up although I'm not too surprised. I used to write for a family of consumer sites that was bought out with a huge user base by a publisher similar to Purch, then then got ads barfed all about in the name of profit with little regard to editorial content. The traditional model doesn't work well these days and consumer content in general is getting hard to make a profit over. Notebooks have improved, desktops have declined, few hard drive vendors out there exist anymore, most flash products are tolerable compared to the early days and above all else most ~1k consumer hardware comes with fantastic gear inside of it. The market for consumer upgrades to ultra-thin notebooks for example evaporated when companies like Apple started offering fantastic flash options and then moved up to PCIe-native. In short consumer commodity gear has hit a level where a ton of people just buy good gear that works and replace it when it wears out with the newest stuff.

On the banner ads losing value argument, it really comes down to the terrible rabbit-hole many sites got themselves into trouble with. Build good readerships, sell expensive ads make good money. Realize you can split reviews into 20 parts for additional page views and for a while make even more money. Watch CPM rates plummet and your ad sale prices tank as you over-flow your site with ads as you reach an equilibrium again, although now the damage is done. You can't revert back to less ads or fewer pages without absorbing a huge mid-term loss. So many sites got caught in that trap.

Personally I'm still on the "one page reviews, try to pry it from my cold dead hand" attitude that no site seems compete with us on anymore. Its sad that in the consumer and enterprise review space I can't think of anyone that follows our trend outside of a white paper that technically comes in a single PDF form :v:

Scaramouche
Mar 26, 2001

SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

Thankfully I've moved on from needing to know the stuff Anandtech and Tom's provided, having not hand built a system professionally or personally in years. But back when I cared about which video card was fastest those guys were there for me. I think if it even came up now I'd probably ask in a thread somewhere here rather than wade through ads/articles of questionable bias.

socialsecurity
Aug 30, 2003





cowofwar posted:

Seriously? Apple does a huge amount of cutting edge hardware design. They push the envelopes in a lot of areas and have their hands in many pies.

I'm curious as to what, it seems their most successful products are just copies of other things that have been released but made more user friendly/better quality, but I don't follow things too closely they could be developing all sorts of poo poo I'm just not seeing.

Astrobastard
Dec 31, 2008



Winky Face

socialsecurity posted:

I'm curious as to what, it seems their most successful products are just copies of other things that have been released but made more user friendly/better quality, but I don't follow things too closely they could be developing all sorts of poo poo I'm just not seeing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFeC25BM9E0

They never have and never will

MeruFM
Jul 27, 2010
if you go with that logic
no one has ever invented anything

anything ever created was just an idea spawned from existing creations
not to mention many things "invented" are created in multiple places simultaneously

socialsecurity
Aug 30, 2003





MeruFM posted:

if you go with that logic
no one has ever invented anything

anything ever created was just an idea spawned from existing creations
not to mention many things "invented" are created in multiple places simultaneously

Then what cutting edge hardware stuff have they designed I'm not trolling here I just would like to actually know, googling this just goes nowhere.

Professor Science
Mar 8, 2006
diplodocus + mortarboard = party

socialsecurity posted:

Then what cutting edge hardware stuff have they designed I'm not trolling here I just would like to actually know, googling this just goes nowhere.
last few iphones and ipads have had custom processors designed in-house, for one.

more like dICK
Feb 15, 2010

This is inevitable.

socialsecurity posted:

Then what cutting edge hardware stuff have they designed I'm not trolling here I just would like to actually know, googling this just goes nowhere.

The original iPhone was so revolutionary that RIM execs literally thought it was a trick.

socialsecurity
Aug 30, 2003





Professor Science posted:

last few iphones and ipads have had custom processors designed in-house, for one.

The A-series is nice and all but it isn't "cutting edge hardware design", it's only real advantage vs the Tegra and Atom seem to be some battery life. Even then they didn't design the manufacturing process or anything they used the Samsung HKMG process, not to say they aren't using it well or they didn't make something good but I often hear about Apple is designing all this amazing cutting edge tech and I would really like to get to the bottom of it. To not derail this too much here's Anandtech talking about the A5 http://www.anandtech.com/show/5742/apples-ipad-24-also-uses-32nm-a5-s5l8942-soc

CitizenKain
May 27, 2001

That was Gary Cooper, asshole.

Nap Ghost

socialsecurity posted:

The A-series is nice and all but it isn't "cutting edge hardware design", it's only real advantage vs the Tegra and Atom seem to be some battery life. Even then they didn't design the manufacturing process or anything they used the Samsung HKMG process, not to say they aren't using it well or they didn't make something good but I often hear about Apple is designing all this amazing cutting edge tech and I would really like to get to the bottom of it. To not derail this too much here's Anandtech talking about the A5 http://www.anandtech.com/show/5742/apples-ipad-24-also-uses-32nm-a5-s5l8942-soc

They are the only company to make a trackpad on a laptop that isn't hot garbage.

Canine Blues Arooo
Jan 7, 2008

when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with

Grimey Drawer
e: this was a monster derail that didn't need to happen.

Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 29, 2014

Captain Pike
Jul 29, 2003

CitizenKain posted:

They are the only company to make a trackpad on a laptop that isn't hot garbage.

The macbook trackpad is far less sensitive than any PC laptop trackpad. I think it sucks actually.

wooger
Apr 16, 2005

YOU RESENT?

Captain Pike posted:

The macbook trackpad is far less sensitive than any PC laptop trackpad. I think it sucks actually.

Ha! It's the only one of a size that makes trackpads actually useable imo. I prefer thinkpad trackpoints, but even those have been ruined now.

cowofwar posted:

Seriously? Apple does a huge amount of cutting edge hardware design. They push the envelopes in a lot of areas and have their hands in many pies.

Specifically the cameras in their phones are clear leaders in the market, despite the fact that they don't make the sensors.

Its a mix of balanced component selection, good image processing and QA that makes the difference.

Brian Klug is all about this, that's the appeal for him.

If you read recent Anandtech reviews of apple products, they're all rather glowing, specifically in the area of battery life, GPU, camera etc.

Professor Science posted:

There's exactly one journalist with any serious technical competence left that doesn't work for a tech company (David Kanter at Real World Tech). It's not really surprising; the money (not to mention being the person that designs things instead of the one always writing about other people's work) is too good.

Hey, Jon Stokes at Ars is great with CPU stuff last I checked.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

wooger posted:

Ha! It's the only one of a size that makes trackpads actually useable imo. I prefer thinkpad trackpoints, but even those have been ruined now.

It got bad enough for lenovo to unfuck the trackpoint on all the new thinkpads. Now there's a big touchpad with buttons for the trackpoint master race above it, the way it should have been in the first place :toot:

Or you could get a Latitude 6000/7000 series.

wooger posted:

Hey, Jon Stokes at Ars is great with CPU stuff last I checked.

...but ars is full of stupid buttcoiners as well.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Dec 29, 2014

Menacer
Nov 25, 2000
Failed Sega Accessory Ahoy!

wooger posted:

Hey, Jon Stokes at Ars is great with CPU stuff last I checked.
Jon Stokes stopped writing for Ars in 2011. He runs AllOutdoor now.

~Coxy
Dec 9, 2003

R.I.P. Inter-OS Sass - b.2000AD d.2003AD

Captain Pike posted:

The macbook trackpad is far less sensitive than any PC laptop trackpad. I think it sucks actually.

The trackpad is fine, you're probably just complaining about the OS X acceleration curve which is valid but can be "fixed" in software if you so desire.

Pryor on Fire
May 14, 2013

they don't know all alien abduction experiences can be explained by people thinking saving private ryan was a documentary

Naw the mac trackpad has problems, it often fucks up the multi finger gestures and does bizarre poo poo like decide your 10 degree off from north two finger vertical swipe is actually a horizontal swipe, for example. I've spent like five years trying to figure out if it's hardware or software and trying to fix it across many machines without much success but something is definitely broken there, especially when more then one finger drops.

At least macs made PC trackpads useable, so that's nice.

Captain Pike
Jul 29, 2003

~Coxy posted:

The trackpad is fine, you're probably just complaining about the OS X acceleration curve which is valid but can be "fixed" in software if you so desire.

This has nothing to do with speed or acceleration. I have to move my finger a fairly large distance before any input is recognized. Apparently, input is discarded unless X distance is covered. Probably for 'palm check' reasons. Most laptops have a Synaptics touchpad sensitivity slider. Macs do not. (I do appreciate your reply though. I have tried various settings in OSX, and I have searched Google for third-party software or kexts. None seem to exist.)

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

more like dICK posted:

The original iPhone was so revolutionary that RIM execs literally thought it was a trick.

This is because RIM execs are morons who weren't even making high end phones of any sort for years by the point the iPhone came out. That particular anecdote means little other than they've been out of touch for honestly like a decade by now.

I will also remind you that the original iPhone didn't even handle 3G on launch, let alone run anything besides built in applications. Which further reinforces how dumb RIM was, really.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Captain Pike posted:

This has nothing to do with speed or acceleration. I have to move my finger a fairly large distance before any input is recognized. Apparently, input is discarded unless X distance is covered. Probably for 'palm check' reasons. Most laptops have a Synaptics touchpad sensitivity slider. Macs do not. (I do appreciate your reply though. I have tried various settings in OSX, and I have searched Google for third-party software or kexts. None seem to exist.)

Maybe you have a weird fingertip or oily fingers or something? Or you need the trackpad replaced?

I mean I can barely just barely touch my MBPr trackpad and it gets picked up, and I use the factory settings except I turn on tap to click and reverse scrolling.

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MeruFM
Jul 27, 2010

socialsecurity posted:

Then what cutting edge hardware stuff have they designed I'm not trolling here I just would like to actually know, googling this just goes nowhere.
If you want to talk about new/cool hardware that no one else has bothers to implement or sell at an affordable price for consumers instead of your definition of innovation.

Currently
5k monitor
thunderbolt
trackpads, like people said
laptop hinges that aren't poo poo
finger scanner with an acceptable success rate (98%+)

Previously
64 bit mobile
high resolution laptop screen
high resolution phone screen
IPS screens in general

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