C|Net offers "unbiased and objective" comparisons of the Nano and a Samsung wannabe: Yeah, and my Uncle's the Pope

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C|Net offers "unbiased and objective" comparisons of the Nano and a Samsung wannabe: Yeah, and my Uncle's the Pope

Date Created: 16 Jul, 2006, 05:47 PM

Not everyone's impressed with how C|Net treats Apple, its products or its design philosophies.

Daniel Eran, on the roughlydrafted blog, takes C|Net editor Charles Cooper, to task over his take on Apple's attitudes to Open Source, and skewers him, with a twist of the blade for extra good measure. Go read about it if you want, and enjoy how Eran offers a point by point analysis.

For myself, a few days before reading Cooper vs Eran, I came across an RSS feed pointing to C|Net's review comparing the iPod nano with the Samsung YP-Z5.

For this exercise, C|Net brought on three "judges", Jasmine France, James Kim, and principal author, Justin Yu.

The three put the flash-based music players through their paces over five comparison "rounds", called "Navigation, Sexiness, Compatibility, Sound and science, and Wallet factor" to use their terms.

I won't beat around the bush here, but before giving you the results and saving you the trouble of going there yourself, here's the criteria by which C|Net's goes about its reviews, at least with respect to the market leader, the Nano:

"To this day, the Nano proudly holds its own as the ringer for most popular, but how does it fare against other flashies that have come out of the forge since? Here at CNET, we pride ourselves on providing an unbiased and objective viewpoint for our readers, so we must give other manufacturers a chance to send their best to battle the Nano."

Notice the words "unbiased and objective" in the paragraph.

Now by this time, you would start to deduce that any review that has a round called "sexiness" is hardly going to be unbiased and objective is it, given the very subjective nature of sexiness.

For some, to anthropomorphize products like an mp3 player with this categorisation is to reveal that no claim of objectivity is possible - objectification, yes, but objectivity? I don't think so.

But this is not the concern I have for bloggingabout this review, however. As it turns out, of a possible maximum score of 15 on the "sexiness" factor, the Nano scores 15, while the Samsung competitor scores, 13.

Jasmine, writing about the Nano's sexiness, says: "OK, the Nano is just H-O-T. There's no denying it -- I love the superslim profile."

And about the Samsung, she writes: "Very nice -- big screen (complemented by large, centrally displayed album art) and sleek, brushed-metal exterior. It's kinda fat but still quite hand-friendly."

Er, read into her comments what you will, but the melding of plastic and metal into an apparatus referred to in sexual terms is pretty much par for the course for young people under 25, which I assume Jasmine to be. They've grown up with these products and the use of sexual attractiveness to sell them, thus their merging shouldn't come as a surprise.

But it's a later category that has me dismissing the comparison review, which after five rounds of comparisons, sees the Samsung win by two points. That win of course will be rendered meaningless when Samsung replaces the model soon because it simply won't beat the Nano at its own game, no matter how "objective" this review.

It's in the next round, Compatibility, that sees the iPod lose out to the Samsung, by a margin of 9 to 11, or two points.

Here's how the review itself describes what it means by Compatible:

"Round 3: Compatibility
File formats, music services, software

This is a subjective take on its compatibility with software and music services we personally like to use."

Hmm... what happened to objective?

Anyway, Justin scores it 4-3 in favour of the Nano, James scores it 3-4 in favour of the Samsung, and Jasmine gives it a 2-4 in favour of the Samsung.

Here's her comment:

"Bah. No iTunes for me, thankyouverymuch (except of course for Desperate Housewives, which isn't compatible with the Nano). At least it's Mac compatible."

Huh? This is worse the subjective, since she gives no reason whatsover for her dislike of iTunes, probably the most popular cross-platform application out there, given the number of iPods sold. And it's this score, from a personal point of view, that costs the iPod the competition. How pleasing it must be to Microsoft and its Plays-for-Sure partners that it has this reviewer on side and receive her two point difference, to make the difference between winning or losing.

Curiously, in giving the Samsung a 4-2 "victory" here's how she rates the Samsung's compatibility:

"Janus support is a must-have for me nowadays, and I use Rhapsody and Napster, both of which are compatible with the YP-Z5. Minus one point for no Mac support."

Janus is Microsoft's version of DRM it has developed to allow certain mp3 players, like Samsung's to play subscription downloads as long the user keeps paying for the sub. each month.

This is anathema to Steve Jobs, who say he believes music lovers want to own their music, not rent it. The idea behind Janus would appear to be an "all you can eat model" where you can listen to as many tracks of music as you like, and if you want to own the music, that can be arranged too, for an extra cost additional to your monthly sub.

However, just want to listen to it for a limited period? That's OK, just don't pay your monthly. Trouble is, you can't just stop per track. Stop paying and you lose all the tracks you've downloaded - your music player won't play them.

This is meant to be a method to wean illegal file sharers away from Kazaa and its ilk, where young people have become inured against appeals to their being thieves from mainstream media. Whether a subscription service is the answer remains to be seen, but I have little doubt we will see calls for iTunes to go this way continue for some time.

It also seems likely that Steve Jobs will resist the call, and maintain his "own it" attitude to media, given reports of him negotiations with film studios for sales of movies on iTunes.

Round 4 of the comparison, Sound and Science, is supposedly an effort to:

"... measure the sound quality, the build quality, the transfer speed, the bonus features, battery life, and any other wonders of science."

No effort is made to measure sound quality using any consistent objective measure, again leaving it to the reviewers' subjectivity. No mention is made at all of transfer speed, and only one mention made of the iPod killer-deal: the iPod economy, meaning the industry that has sprung up about the iPod (and ALL iPods at that) where a huge range of accessories make it the mp3 player of choice for 70% of consumers.

In its brief and limited summing up, the reviewers offer the belief that the student (the Samsung) has taught the teacher (the iPod) a lesson, winning by two points.

Whatever, C|Net's reviewers will be ignored when it comes to recommending the Samsung over the Nano.

Consumers will walk into a store and pick up each, and easily and quickly make an emotional decision. They either hate Apple (and so the Nano is a no-go to begin with) or have no opinion of the company, as long as the Nano works on their Windows box, which it will, easily synching.

Only if they have a large collection of DRM'd WMA files or a subscription to MTV's URGE will they reject the Nano, and go for the Samsung, although it too has to compete in that domain with a huge number of other Windows-only flash and small hard drive players.

Why bother with such reviews?

So, next time you see one of these so called unbiased and objective reviews, throw a huge lump of salt over your shoulder, especially if it comes from C|Net.

For a different kind of review and comparison, head over to everythingusb.com to see the Samsung get its just desserts, here. And where you'll see more pictures comparing the two, like the one below from the site.

And why bother to point out when C|Net's reviewers offer their biased views? Try the "Broken Windows" philosophy of crime management: Don't wait until the big crimes are committed, start with every one you catch, no matter how small.

The C|Net reviewers are like a very small broken window in a large apartment complex.

The likes of Dave Winer, blogged about here on a number of occasions for his consistently erroneous broadsides about Apple, are like a large plate glass window in Bloomingdales in Manhattan - lots of people notice.

But unlike Bloomies who would repair the damage immediately, the likes of Dave never acknowledge when they've got it wrong with respect to Apple, and never make corrections to their blogs, preferring to leave their windows broken always.

Which is why some have preferred to do their own policing, such as the blog known as the pseudonymous Eye on Winer, whose principle aim appears to catch Dave in error or hypocrisy or acts of malevolence.

Judging by his entries, he'll be a kept busy for a while still!