From: jmalloy@itsmail1.hamilton.edu (Joseph T. Malloy)
Subject: Re: COMDEX Awards
Organization: Hamilton College - Clinton, NY
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 16:01:00 GMT

In article <OLAVT.92Nov23120406@ulrik.uio.no> olavt@ulrik.uio.no (Olav Torvund) writes:
>In article <1992Nov21.182944.4050@itsmail1.hamilton.edu> jmalloy@itsmail1.hamilton.edu (Joseph T. Malloy) writes:
>
>   But I find it quite humorous: when these magazines were critical of
>   OS/2, they and all their writers were a bunch of bigoted bums.  Now that
>   OS/2 gets some good press, it's trumpeted among the OS/2 folks.
>
>   Guys, if they were bums before, they're bums now.  What this really 
>   demonstrates to me is that they have been doing their jobs all along,
>   giving praise when due, criticizing, when appropriate.  If the only
>   measure of a journalist is how much she or he supports OS/2, we've got a
>   problem.  Besides, your critics will help you more (to improve the
>   product, say) than the blind supplication of your rabid zealots (who
>   are, after, quite off-putting).
>
>The problems with the journalists are that they follow the market, not
>the development. When a program is a success, then they start writing
>about it. Journalists should be well informed, independent, unbiased
>and critical. But they are not. Journalists who have been applauding
>NT for a long time as if it were an existing and successfull piece of
>software, they are letting themselves being used by Microsoft. A year
>ago the computer magazines was writing much more about NT deveolpment
>than about OS/2 development. They deserve no respect at all. If they
>had been writing about OS/2 in they same way, it had been just as bad.
>The major part of the computer magazines did not report on the
>deveolpment of OS/2, and for that reason did not do their job
>properly. One reason might be that IBM is not as good as MS on
>marketing, but a journalist who want to be taken serioulsy should go
>out and get information, and not only reciculate press-releases from
>the companies.
>
>When the magazines now write more about OS/2, it does not say anything
>about OS/2. But it says something about market attention, and taht is
>important. Nothing succeeds like success, and one reason is that the
>media will not cover it unless it is either a big success or a big
>scandal. I do not respect journalists or computer magazines more
>than I did a year ago. But nevertheless, the attention is good for the
>product and for us OS/2 users, and it will enhance the success of OS/2.
>
>Olav Torvund
>University of Oslo
>Norway
>Olavt@jus.uio.no
>
That journalists should be unbiased and all if fine as a goal, but it
runs into problmes when they say something you don't like, I gather.  If
they concluded, and explain why they conclude so, that Windows 3.1 is a
good product, you simply know better and know that they are merely
cowards following the market, right?

First off, columnists are opinion givers.  So I assume we can leave them
out of argument.  Second, journalists are human beings and to expect
them to behave as if they were merely pieces of silicon programmed to
follow *your* priorities is both unrealistic and undesirable. Finally, I
don't necessarily want all or even most journalists to look at computing
strictly from the tecnical side of things; if they did only that, they'd
have long ago tried to convince us all to move to some flavor of Unix
and I'm pretty darn sure that's not a general answer!  I expect the
publications I read to be up front enought about their converage of,
say, Windows, to keep abreast of OS/2 and point out its advantages and
disadvantages, but since OS/2 is still a niche product that is more
popular with programmers and corporations (which is almost redundant,
since few corporation ask the secretarial pool which OS or application
they want to use!), since there are Windows apps in qreat numbers
(outselling DOS apps this year), I expect them to go where there's
something to cover.

I have no stake in this OS war other than that I am glad there are two
major players to spur each other on.  I happily tried OS/2 and was just
as happy to abandon it (hopeful about a distant,future version, perhaps)
for Windows again.  As a fence-sitter, I find the coverage of the
magazines I read (Infoworld, PC-Week, PC-Magazine, PC-World,
PC/Computing, Byte) to be pretty useful to me and pretty unbiased.  The
measure of the valueof their reporting isn't whether or not they agree
with me but what they tell me about what's out there.  You can't claim
they've ignored OS/2. 

That they give coverage to Windows NT doesn't surprise me or make me
declare them biased shills of Microsoft.  They talked (less, to be sure)
about OS/2 2.0 while it was in its long beta period and I didn't think
that was bad either.  In both cases, they were telling me about what was
on the horizon and that could very well have an impact on my planning
today or at the time I read it.  That Miscrosoft knows how to market and
IBM doesn't, which is, I think, what it really comes down to, is hardly
the fault of the magazines or their writers, frankly.  i

I guess I cannot share your 'righteous' indignation since I'm not
blindly following either the MS or the IBM camp.  To suggest that the
magazines are doing anything but covering what people want to read
about, to imply that they should be proselytizing your religion is
wrong.   Besides, what's so awful about letting the marketplace, with
all its warts and flaws, decide?

(I'd appreciate an e-mail flame/response, since our system will have
deleted any news postings before I return to campus after the break).

Happy Thanksgiving!  (In the OS wars, at least we can give thanks for
having some choices!)

Joe
jmalloy@hamilton.edu

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy