Lately there have been reporting practices I've found very troubling. I've criticized reporting in this industry before in cases where I felt that reporting was poorly handled and in some cases misleading. Consider the following:
Reporting on Microsoft Windows NT:
Mar. 1, 1997, Computer Reseller News reported that in a NONDISCLOSURE
briefing, Microsoft announced to developers that NT 5.0 would not
ship till first quarter 1998. I don't know when Microsoft's "first
quarter" starts, so that doesn't tell me which month of the calendar
year it refers to. This report correctly handles the identification
of this information near the top of the article, as coming from an
anonymous source. You can believe what you want to about its
reliability which is commendable.
From an end user standpoint, it just emphasizes what I've said all
along: No matter how well planned and how hard the effort, you can't
count on "future products." The box on the shelf with the price tag
on it is what you can buy today. Even if this report was never printed
that much would still be true. In case anyone has forgotten, "Windows
95" was supposed to be Windows 4.0 and at one point was targetted for
around 1993.
[1997/03/03]
June 27, 1997, Windows Magazine reports that 200 - 233 MHz
Intel Pentium MMX based notebook computers should be coming
by late summer. They project other specifications such as
USB support, 32MB EDO RAM minimum and +1GB HD's. [Is this
supposed to be news? They are too easily surprised. -- JO]
[1997/07/01]
Feb. 21, 1997, McKenna (Newsbytes) headlined "Analyst Says Apple Could
Lose $800M Next Quarter". If you read the article closely you would find
that the "analyst" was talking about the figure that might be put as a
charge for the cost of buying NeXT. Half of this figure was already
known -- announced around January. The rest was not explained and thus
seems to be associated with the purchase. An accountant would probably
tell you, a purchase of assets in "equity neutral." But moreover, most
investors have already accounted for the purchase in valuing the shares,
so there's not much reason to expect that reporting that loss in the
coming quarter will have any significant long term affect on the
performance of the stock. If the shares start a new trend up or down
from that point, it will probably be due to other business aspects
reported at that time. Yet the article, for no other reason provided
speculated substantial share value losses.
[1997/03/03] revised
In order to have a more complete picture of the industry I recently began using Mac computers. It has been interesting to observe over the past year that Mac support and overall popularity has not diminished and indeed sales seem to be stronger than ever. During the early part of the year, when Apple reported their losses and Spindler stepped down, I was appalled by the poor quality of the reporting including some media "experts" for the business and computer fields that fueled rumours of a company in huge trouble. In general, I think there was a lack of competency in the field. Anybody who looked at the situation carefully could see that it wasn't that bad. I would not say that it's necessarily wonderful either, but the company was never even close to bankruptcy. Nor were they the first major computer company to post a loss and recover.
I am somewhat tempted to go hunting for old articles by some writers and
re-printing them with their names attached, forcing them to live with
their words. But as a writer in the field, I can think of some errors
in my articles that were not my doing, and it could just be my word
against others, if I denied them, and yes, I can think of some errors
that were my own fault, and maybe a bit of forgiving is only fair. But
I hope the coming year sees better quality journalism in the computer
industry, and maybe in other fields as well. I hope readers will also
learn to look closely at what they read and test for themselves what writing
is worth trusting. More than that, it's up to readers to push the
publishers and editors to improve their standards.
[1996/12/09]
Mar. 14, 1997, Apple sent me the restructure plan. There's a lot to read, but from a Mobile perspective, the big news is that the Newton continues. If you read the Newsbytes version McKenna missed that. Oddly, McKenna does mention that the Pippin is also continuing, though Apple still refuses to market Pippins themselves. Having been watching Apple more closely these last couple of years, I find the general coverage of Apple unfathomable in many ways.
Not so "unfathomable" but related: 3 out of 3 "areas of concern"
according to previous Newsbytes postings turned out to be wrong.
Instead, AIX and OpenDoc were among the cuts, neither of which
Newsbytes mentioned as being on the blocks. I wouldn't laugh at
them too much. Predicting the future even a couple of days, is always
risky in this industry. AP on the otherhand, has shown strange lack
of research. They point out that Apple isn't on top yet but ignore
that Amelio is still pretty well within his predictions. While Apple
shareholders could wish the recovery was faster, and arguably, it
could have been, there are good signs, including recent figures that
show growth in MacOS system sales (including clones) in January
while Windows 95 sales were falling.
[1997/03/16]