Gizmodo criticises Louis Rossmann's review of the Macbook Pro, Rossmann hits back

[MMKing]

This is literally the first time i ever heard of Gizmodo (or however it was spelled).

 

If it is in fact true that their viewer count is falling behind, and that more people are get their information from independent Youtuber. Criticizing those youtubers, may be a strategy to bring in more viewers. Ad revenue is ad revenue, even if visitors to your site come to write negative about you.

[Sakkura]

8 minutes ago, MMKing said:

This is literally the first time i ever heard of Gizmodo (or however it was spelled).

 

If it is in fact true that their viewer count is falling behind, and that more people are get their information from independent Youtuber. Criticizing those youtubers, may be a strategy to bring in more viewers. Ad revenue is ad revenue, even if visitors to your site come to write negative about you.

They've been around for many years, but you haven't missed much.

 

They were part of Gawker Media, which fell apart due to the Hulk Hogan sex tape case. And here's how their Alexa rank is doing:

 

Spoiler

Note the dropoff starting in September. They've been under new ownership since mid-August.

[Dash Lambda]

9 hours ago, Snadzies said:

To be fair,  Louis Rossmann is a whiny little shit stain that would rant about anything Apple makes or does.

Now I don't like some things Apple does and very rarely buy their products, but much like there are people who think Apple can do no wrong, he is firmly on the side of Apple can do no right.

Did you watch his comparison between the Macbook Pro and the Razer Blade Stealth?

[VerticalDiscussions]

Ah, both are invalid and non credible in terms of temperment and actual information provided (the other one is one crazy guy who takes care of repaired hardware like rotten pears on the ground being eaten by 5 raccoons while simultaneously faking a deadly bacteria on theyr mouth and threating to bite humans and transmit them rabies!). Apple better get some bauls of steel and start fighting publicly these flag carrier internet rest points!

[Notional]

10 hours ago, Snadzies said:

To be fair,  Louis Rossmann is a whiny little shit stain that would rant about anything Apple makes or does.

Now I don't like some things Apple does and very rarely buy their products, but much like there are people who think Apple can do no wrong, he is firmly on the side of Apple can do no right.

Found the Apple user!

 

No but serious. After Jobs died, most of Apple's products has been extreme compromises without any upside to them. The new Macbook "pro" 13" is a great example of this. 2 cores, 8gb ram max, no dedicated gpu, no proper connections, not even an SD card reader, so you need a billion dongles. And this is on a pro product? It's not even a mainstream product in performance. All because they want it to be a little thinner and only use USB C. In the long run, USB C might take over most things, but as long as you need all those dongles, it's just a hassle.

 

But at least you get to pay an obscene amount of money for it?!?! I also agree on the keyboard. Too short travel distance might be bad for you fingers in the long run, and students tapping on that shit in classes or the library might result in some road rage like mayhem at some point. No reason to be so noisy.

[Oberon.Smite]

15 hours ago, Shahnewaz said:

My brain hurts...

Yes because Kaby Lake is *so* much faster than Skylake. This is what happens when ignorant people decide to talk about things they don't understand. An excerpt from another Gizmodo Article:

 

"Back in September, Intel surprised everyone with a new processor microarchitecture, dubbed Kaby Lake. It’s faster than the Skylake design launched last year, uses less energy, and works on the same CPU socket. Theoretically, Kaby Lake is an improvement in every way,"

 

Suprised everyone? Everyone knew about Kaby Lake BEFORE Skylake was even out. Yes it's an improvement over Skylake but so marginal it doesn't actually affect real-world performance. Yes, they are the same CPU socket, but in DESKTOP systems you numbskull, not in laptops where the CPU is soldered to the motherboard. This is why no one takes tech journalism seriously. Same with Mashable, the most biased tech news source IMO by far. ALWAYS circlejerking Apple products, never actually taking time to do anything other than pump out half-assed reviews. Hell, one of their articles straight up said "We know, we know. Microsoft, right? Eww". Never trust a tech news source unless it is known credible (Anandtech, Tomshardware, LTT)

 

 

[Phate.exe]

18 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Gizmodo? Why didn't they fucking died with Gawker? They need to fucking die, Kotaku as well. Only keep Lifehacker and even then not really needed anymore.

Jalopnik is pretty great.  Or more specifically, anything Jason Torchinsky writes is amazing, and Raphael Orlove is fun to laugh at.  The commentbase is cancer, and the rest of the gawker sites are also bad.

 

12 minutes ago, Notional said:

Found the Apple user!

 

No but serious. After Jobs died, most of Apple's products has been extreme compromises without any upside to them. The new Macbook "pro" 13" is a great example of this. 2 cores, 8gb ram max, no dedicated gpu, no proper connections, not even an SD card reader, so you need a billion dongles. And this is on a pro product? It's not even a mainstream product in performance. All because they want it to be a little thinner and only use USB C. In the long run, USB C might take over most things, but as long as you need all those dongles, it's just a hassle.

 

But at least you get to pay an obscene amount of money for it?!?! I also agree on the keyboard. Too short travel distance might be bad for you fingers in the long run, and students tapping on that shit in classes or the library might result in some road rage like mayhem at some point. No reason to be so noisy.

My work laptop is a mid-2015 MBP Retina (running win10).  As far as I can tell it's better in pretty much every way than the new one, especially for someone that wants to accomplish anything with it.  I've got a 4c/8t i7-4770HQ, 16 gigs of ram, 2 USB3 ports, 2 thunderbolt ports, an HDMI port, and a cardreader.  And it's thick enough to have a bigass battery in it.  It lacks an optical drive, but plugging one into a USB port every so often is really not a big deal for the rare occasion I have to use one.

 

Kinda hate the keyboard though, greatly prefer the keyboards on my Lenovo T440s (other work machine) and Asus Zenbook UX31E (personal screw around laptop).

 

Other than "SHINY NEW THING!", why the hell would somebody buy the new MBP over one like mine?

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Notional said:

Found the Apple user!

 

No but serious. After Jobs died, most of Apple's products has been extreme compromises without any upside to them. The new Macbook "pro" 13" is a great example of this. 2 cores, 8gb ram max, no dedicated gpu, no proper connections, not even an SD card reader, so you need a billion dongles. And this is on a pro product? It's not even a mainstream product in performance. All because they want it to be a little thinner and only use USB C. In the long run, USB C might take over most things, but as long as you need all those dongles, it's just a hassle.

 

But at least you get to pay an obscene amount of money for it?!?! I also agree on the keyboard. Too short travel distance might be bad for you fingers in the long run, and students tapping on that shit in classes or the library might result in some road rage like mayhem at some point. No reason to be so noisy.

The 13" Pro is spec'd and priced similarly to the XPS 13. The 13" Pro can also be upgraded to 16gb of RAM. 

 

As for the I/O, that's subjective. I'd rather have all usb-c than ports that I won't use in a couple years. Plus, I rarely plug anything into my laptop anyway. 

 

Also, just because it has the name "pro" in it, doesn't mean it's targeted at the professional market. Apple might try to add that as a selling point, but the 13" is clearly an ultrabook, and as such is priced and performs as such. But even still, if your workflow can make use of FCP/Logic Pro, then even the 13" MBP is far superior to anything else running Premiere. 

[Trixanity]

The previous MacBook Pro 13 was also dual core. The change is that the non-touch model doesn't have the 28W processor but the 15W like the Air or any other ultrabook. Rest I agree with. 

[Guest Kloaked]

19 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Gizmodo? Why didn't they fucking died with Gawker? They need to fucking die, Kotaku as well. Only keep Lifehacker and even then not really needed anymore.

Univision bought Gawker.

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, Oberon.Smite said:

Yes because Kaby Lake is *so* much faster than Skylake. This is what happens when ignorant people decide to talk about things they don't understand. An excerpt from another Gizmodo Article:

 

"Back in September, Intel surprised everyone with a new processor microarchitecture, dubbed Kaby Lake. It’s faster than the Skylake design launched last year, uses less energy, and works on the same CPU socket. Theoretically, Kaby Lake is an improvement in every way,"

 

Suprised everyone? Everyone knew about Kaby Lake BEFORE Skylake was even out. Yes it's an improvement over Skylake but so marginal it doesn't actually affect real-world performance. Yes, they are the same CPU socket, but in DESKTOP systems you numbskull, not in laptops where the CPU is soldered to the motherboard. This is why no one takes tech journalism seriously. Same with Mashable, the most biased tech news source IMO by far. ALWAYS circlejerking Apple products, never actually taking time to do anything other than pump out half-assed reviews. Hell, one of their articles straight up said "We know, we know. Microsoft, right? Eww". Never trust a tech news source unless it is known credible (Anandtech, Tomshardware, LTT)

 

 

Umm... Kaby Lake has some pretty beefy benefits over Skylake, not sure what rock you've been living under.

 

HEVC 10-bit hardware decoding, VP9 8/10 bit hardware decoding, VP9 8-bit and HEVC 8/10-bit hardware encoding, HDCP 2.2 on the integrated GPU, 4 extra PCIe lanes which would have helped a ton with the thunderbolt 3 performance issues the system runs into, and not insubstantial chip power efficiency boost (2-5 percent for the same performance)

[Guest Kloaked]

12 hours ago, Snadzies said:

To be fair,  Louis Rossmann is a whiny little shit stain that would rant about anything Apple makes or does.

Now I don't like some things Apple does and very rarely buy their products, but much like there are people who think Apple can do no wrong, he is firmly on the side of Apple can do no right.

To be fair, he's probably the only person on Youtube who is overly critical of the hardware that he gets and doesn't sugarcoat any of his criticisms. He isn't reviewing Apple's software and it's ecosystem in that video. If that's a whiny little shit stain to you, then don't bother getting a job anywhere.

 

Youtube needs people like him because, in my opinion, people like MKBHD are being dishonest when they find something to complain about in a phone for example, as he'll always say some shit like "..But that can be fixed in a software update." This is dishonest to always say because there's a very good chance that problem he found will not actually be fixed in a software update.

[Misanthrope]

26 minutes ago, Kloaked said:

To be fair, he's probably the only person on Youtube who is overly critical of the hardware that he gets and doesn't sugarcoat any of his criticisms. He isn't reviewing Apple's software and it's ecosystem in that video. If that's a whiny little shit stain to you, then don't bother getting a job anywhere.

 

Youtube needs people like him because, in my opinion, people like MKBHD are being dishonest when they find something to complain about in a phone for example, as he'll always say some shit like "..But that can be fixed in a software update." This is dishonest to always say because there's a very good chance that problem he found will not actually be fixed in a software update.

Aye MKBHD has gone from being somewhat objective and critical to focus on his "Team Crispy" crap far too much: he just produces promotional b-roll basically. Which is not to say his skills on b-roll are not there (Though not inherently better than Dmitrii or our own Brandon here, just with more expensive toys to play with) but if I want to know more about whenever the product is actually worth it and not just hardware porn, I go elsewhere.

[79wjd]

30 minutes ago, Kloaked said:

To be fair, he's probably the only person on Youtube who is overly critical of the hardware that he gets and doesn't sugarcoat any of his criticisms. He isn't reviewing Apple's software and it's ecosystem in that video. If that's a whiny little shit stain to you, then don't bother getting a job anywhere.

I've been watching his videos/streams for a while, and I don't think he has a hatred for Apple, but I also don't think he always knows what he's talking about. For example, him bitching about Apple being the only company to segment performance by screen size (Dell does the same thing with the XPS line -- which he was saying was a good laptop in the same video), and then he was complaining about the price of the base mbp ($1500) and comparing it to an XPS 15 that was purchased on sale (since it's normally $1850 and since the 13" is normally $1400). Then arguing that it's sad that a "1 year old" XPS (quad core 15") can out-perform the new MBPs (even though they're both running Skylake because Kaby Lake still hasn't been fully launched). Then when he got the Blade Stealth he was completely surprised that it's GPU performance was so lacking (even though it obviously should have been HD540 vs. HD620 isn't even a contest). 

 

He knows what he's talking about when it comes to board repairs, but he doesn't seem to be all that aware of what the rest of the laptop market is doing. So he ends up complaining about a lot of things that Apple does as if they were the only ones to do that even though a lot of the competition isn't that much different. IMO he's only "unfair" towards Apple because he doesn't take into account what Apple is competing against.

[michaelocarroll007]

20 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

ROFL so you can't bitch about a loud ass keyboard (as if people don't hate on cherry blue switches for a reason) but you CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT A LACK OF ROSE GOLD?!?!

 

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? A FUCKING PINK COLOR IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN A SHITTY KEYBOARD?!?!?!?

 

 

EDIT: For the record, I wrote this comment before listening to his response. This is hilarious.

 i have not read anything Besides this post and this was my response Color option okay to complain about but Keyboard thoses arent important 

[Misanthrope]

12 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

I've been watching his videos/streams for a while, and I don't think he has a hatred for Apple, but I also don't think he always knows what he's talking about. For example, him bitching about Apple being the only company to segment performance by screen size (Dell does the same thing with the XPS line -- which he was saying was a good laptop in the same video), and then he was complaining about the price of the base mbp ($1500) and comparing it to an XPS 15 that was purchased on sale (since it's normally $1850 and since the 13" is normally $1400). Then arguing that it's sad that a "1 year old" XPS (quad core 15") can out-perform the new MBPs (even though they're both running Skylake because Kaby Lake still hasn't been fully launched). Then when he got the Blade Stealth he was completely surprised that it's GPU performance was so lacking (even though it obviously should have been HD540 vs. HD620 isn't even a contest). 

 

He knows what he's talking about when it comes to board repairs, but he doesn't seem to be all that aware of what the rest of the laptop market is doing. So he ends up complaining about a lot of things that Apple does as if they were the only ones to do that even though a lot of the competition isn't that much different. IMO he's only "unfair" towards Apple because he doesn't take into account what Apple is competing against.

Not really. What you're saying is that giving context to what the competition is doing would be a tiny bit more fair but if a shit practice is common among many vendors, it doesn't takes away the awful taste and smell of it's shittiness.

 

I really dislike this "But everybody else does it!" argument.

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Not really. What you're saying is that giving context to what the competition is doing would be a tiny bit more fair but if a shit practice is common among many vendors, it doesn't takes away the awful taste and smell of it's shittiness.

True, but if you just watched any one of his videos as fact that you would make the assumption that you should never buy a Mac. But in reality, a lot of the same issues the plague Macs plague many other (commonly recommended) laptops.

 

Critique towards any product, regardless of what that product is, should include references to the competing products. It's fine to talk about what's bad about a product, but if you don't put that into context, then you're not accurately representing the situation. 

[Misanthrope]

9 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

True, but if you just watched any one of his videos as fact that you would make the assumption that you should never buy a Mac. But in reality, a lot of the same issues the plague Macs plague many other (commonly recommended) laptops.

 

Critique towards any product, regardless of what that product is, should include references to the competing products. It's fine to talk about what's bad about a product, but if you don't put that into context, then you're not accurately representing the situation. 

I think that comes a bit from confirmation bias on his part: Macs are undoubtely the most popular brand of the kind of laptops you'd repair (i.e. there might be more cheaper models but people throw those away while they do pay 300 or 400 bucks to repair a 2k macbook) so he probably deals with a lot more of them and is way more familiar with the design flaws and failure points due to sheer numbers and repetition.

 

I'm sure if he was presented with failure rates data and it would contradict his views he'd revise them though, but that might be giving him far too much credit we don't really know.

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I think that comes a bit from confirmation bias on his part: Macs are undoubtely the most popular brand of the kind of laptops you'd repair (i.e. there might be more cheaper models but people throw those away while they do pay 300 or 400 bucks to repair a 2k macbook) so he probably deals with a lot more of them and is way more familiar with the design flaws and failure points due to sheer numbers and repetitions.

 

I'm sure if he was presented with failure rates data and it would contradict his views he'd revise them though, but that might be giving him far too much credit we don't really know.

He only repairs Macbooks (it's not cost effective or worth the hassle, in his opinion, to fix other windows laptops), so naturally he doesn't see anywhere near as many windows laptops (I'm sure he gets quite a few brought in that he turns away, but that's still no where as many as Macs as he deals with since he only fixes macs).

 

I'm sure you're right, I honestly don't think he has it out for Apple. I just think that he really needs to look into what everyone else is doing and offer some context when he complains about something. 

[AbeTrve]

4 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

The 13" Pro is spec'd and priced similarly to the XPS 13. The 13" Pro can also be upgraded to 16gb of RAM. 

 

As for the I/O, that's subjective. I'd rather have all usb-c than ports that I won't use in a couple years. Plus, I rarely plug anything into my laptop anyway. 

 

Also, just because it has the name "pro" in it, doesn't mean it's targeted at the professional market. Apple might try to add that as a selling point, but the 13" is clearly an ultrabook, and as such is priced and performs as such. But even still, if your workflow can make use of FCP/Logic Pro, then even the 13" MBP is far superior to anything else running Premiere. 

Did you see the keynote? The people that went onstage for the demos? If that's not targetting professionals...

[79wjd]

Just now, AbeTrve said:

Did you see the keynote? The people that went onstage for the demos? If that's not targetting professionals...

What Apple claims is irrelevant. It's clearly an ultrabook device (that also happens to be capable of handling professional audio/video editing better than more powerful laptops if FCP/LP meet workflow needs). I've said this before in regards to Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, and I'll say it again. What matters is who the device best suits the needs of, what doesn't matter is what the claimed use of the device is. But as I said, it can still handle professional work -- if FCP is just as good for your specific needs as Premiere, then a MBP will outperform even the best laptop you can find. 

[Oberon.Smite]

8 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

I've been watching his videos/streams for a while, and I don't think he has a hatred for Apple, but I also don't think he always knows what he's talking about. For example, him bitching about Apple being the only company to segment performance by screen size (Dell does the same thing with the XPS line -- which he was saying was a good laptop in the same video), and then he was complaining about the price of the base mbp ($1500) and comparing it to an XPS 15 that was purchased on sale (since it's normally $1850 and since the 13" is normally $1400). Then arguing that it's sad that a "1 year old" XPS (quad core 15") can out-perform the new MBPs (even though they're both running Skylake because Kaby Lake still hasn't been fully launched). Then when he got the Blade Stealth he was completely surprised that it's GPU performance was so lacking (even though it obviously should have been HD540 vs. HD620 isn't even a contest). 

 

He knows what he's talking about when it comes to board repairs, but he doesn't seem to be all that aware of what the rest of the laptop market is doing. So he ends up complaining about a lot of things that Apple does as if they were the only ones to do that even though a lot of the competition isn't that much different. IMO he's only "unfair" towards Apple because he doesn't take into account what Apple is competing against.

I'm pretty sure he does this because of the premium price that Apple's products carry. 

[Oberon.Smite]

20 hours ago, Snadzies said:

I don't think his customers are going to care whether he does or does not like Apple and their products.

So long as he is able to repair the items correctly, does it at a price the customers find acceptable and isn't rude or pushes his opinions directly onto them in person then people will continue to use his repair service.

That's not the point. If anything his occupation should give him more credibility because he works with these devices on the daily. This has nothing to do with his customers or business.

[Oberon.Smite]

4 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

What Apple claims is irrelevant. It's clearly an ultrabook device (that also happens to be capable of handling professional audio/video editing better than more powerful laptops if FCP/LP meet workflow needs). I've said this before in regards to Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, and I'll say it again. What matters is who the device best suits the needs of, what doesn't matter is what the claimed use of the device is. But as I said, it can still handle professional work -- if FCP is just as good for your specific needs as Premiere, then a MBP will outperform even the best laptop you can find. 

Your point is partially true. But consider that there are both hardware and software that have a certain aimed-at demographic which are actually the minority when you factor in all users of that device.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 11/17/2016 at 9:03 PM, Sauron said:

Yes, I saw that. I don't think I'll ever be able to take anything they say seriously after they claimed the lack of "rose gold" is worse than a loud keyboard.

 

On 11/17/2016 at 10:03 PM, LtRavens said:

Sexist? Lmfao Gizmodo please! FOH. A secretary doesn't = female. Yes there are a lot of secretaries that are female just like many nurses that are female. But that doesn't make the word female. Could be either. They just exposed themselves to be sexist, if they assume or think only women are secretaries lol. God I just wanna throw my shoe at them. Idk why my shoe. But just something lol. 

The rose gold point was silly, but the sexism accusation gets on the unethical side. I can forgive them for being stupid, but not for being malicious douchebags.