
Why you should take everything Mike Arrington says with a grain of salt. - bjclark
In talking about the Flip Ultra (video camera:)<p>"And I just can’t figure out why people like this thing."
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/05/the-flip-v-my-cheap-canon-camera-flip-loses-across-the-board/<p>That single sentence discredits quite a few things he says for me since it's really simple why people like it. It's simple! Duh!
======
rewind
I can understand someone posting an article then other people commenting on
why they disagree, but to start a thread just to say "here's another reason I
disagree"? I don't get it. Not only that, but saying one sentence (minor at
that, in my opinion) discredits "quite a few other things" but not listing
them? I don't know... there's a lot of useless stuff being posted on HN
lately, but I don't waste my time (or other people's time) saying "this
doesn't belong on HN" over and over and over. This just seems to cross a line
though, so I felt the need to reply.

On top of that, what's with all the Arrington bashing lately? Some of his
stuff is good and some is questionable. If you disagree with him, great, just
put some meat into the argument. This just seems like you're going out of your
way to post something negative. If you want to lay out your arguments for the
"quite a few things", that could lead to an interesting thread, but I just
don't get what you were expecting to achieve by posting this.

~~~
bjclark
Sorry but I totally disagree. I don't need any more links to TechCrunch. I
think I can figure out how to subscribe to TC's RSS after the first 100 or so
simple links.

I tried to start a discussion instead, based on the fact that he doesn't "get"
the Flip. He's a guy that puts himself out there and implies that his opinion
is better than others.

Which gets to my point: How can he be soooo wrong here? He acknowledges that
people LOVE the flip, he acknowledges that they've been "harsh" (and really,
wrong) on the flip in the past, and he goes on to make a list of all the
reasons why it's wrong.

And it's the same reasons that people use against the iPod, iPhone, Basecamp,
and lots of other really really good products.

Lets go through them:

1\. "doesn’t play nice with Macs" - Fair point. Could be better, but macs are
what, 5% of the market. And I'm posting from a mac.

2\. "editing video requires a number of extra steps". That doesn't even mean
anything to me. Have you tried to capture video from a camera (point and shoot
or video)? The Flip's individual files are by far easier than trying to
capture from a tape.

3\. "Flip insists on encoding video in a proprietary format that iMovie can’t
handle directly". They said the same thing about aac and the iPod. People
don't care.

4\. 99.9% of people DON'T EDIT VIDEO. He's bashing a great product on a non-
issue. Has he never seen youtube? View the "most recent" posted videos, not
all the ones on the front page, and there's billions of 12 second clips of
people goofing off.

5\. MA then goes to a laundry list of features that some random camera does
better than the flip. Again, was he not around when the iPod or iPhone came
out? It's the interface stupid, people don't care about features. No one gives
a flying leap about any of that. They want to know how much video it holds,
and that they press a red button and a trash can, and a play button. Oh, and
they don't have to buy more cards, and they don't have to buy some stupid
adapter for said cards, and there's no stupid card to lose with all your video
on it.

6\. "But my Canon is pretty darn easy to use, too". Please read "The Paradox
of Choice". Does your cannon have more than 3 buttons?

7\. "There is no way I’m going to drag two devices around when I only need
one: The Flip loses." Hi. iPod. Bye.

8\. "More and more mobile phones take video now, too, and can use wifi or cell
connectivity to stream the footage to the Internet." Wow. Just wow. Why would
anyone who cares about streaming footage directly to the internet care about
the flip? Good lord. This is like saying, "No one will ever buy a VW Beetle
because they can't go 200 mph." Good lord, how wrong can you be?

9\. And now for the best part: " That means Flip is getting hit from three
competitive directions: mobile phones on the low end, decent camcorders on the
high end, and tens of millions of everyday digital cameras that outperform it
on video." Mike, have you considered there is room in the market for more than
1 type of product? That no video camera needs to rule them all. That the Flip
is in no way targeted at you? And that you don't represent the target market
in any way?

So why does this discredit him in "quite a few things"? This should be his
forte. All the time he says he rejects talking about companies because they
have "bad products" (like the guy that broke into his house this week). As
someone else points out about Ning, he's constantly spouting off his
(sometimes) terrible opinion, and then touting how much he knows about this
stuff and how influential he is (see his back patting on the TC40 stuff). So,
as I said in the title, this is precisely "Why you should take everything Mike
Arrington says with a grain of salt."

~~~
menloparkbum
I can't stand the new, delusional Arrington, but I agreed with every point in
this particular article. I have the same digital camera, and had a flip. The
canon is great, and super easy for video. It plays nice with both Macs and PCs
and... also takes great still shots. The flip sucks balls in comparison, for
all the reasons MA states.

------
mhb
This isn't a good example of Arrington being off-target. His point that you
can get a much better product for less money is well-supported in his article.
How hard is it to use a point and shoot camera exclusively for video, if
that's what someone wants to do? A crayon and paper are simple too.

------
jrockway
This is typical Arrington:

 _So I haven’t actually tried out the new Flip Mino. But I’ve spoken with
people who have, and I used the Flip Ultra, which launched late last year, for
a while before abandoning it. And I just can’t figure out why people like this
thing._

So you're reviewing something you've never used? _That's_ credible.

I assume the people he's "spoken with" here are the same people he's spoken
with about twitter being slow because of Rails. I'm starting to think that
Arrington has a lot of "imaginary friends."

------
rokhayakebe
That is his opinion, and I doubt it would stop someone from buying the
product. Mr Arrington bashed Ning on of his first reviews and said it was
headed it to the Deadpool. Well, 560M dollars later, Ning prove that Mr
Arrington opinion is just that. He can help you with a lot more traffic than
your servers can handle, but he won't stop people from hitting BUY if they
like it enough.

~~~
alaskamiller
I wouldn't exactly qualify Ning's funding as egg on Arrington's face.

~~~
ecommercematt
Neither would I, however he offered other reasons for changing his opinion on
the value and prospects of Ning well before their recent funding round.

Example: <http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/26/ning-in-full/>

------
ojbyrne
That's a pretty poor argument to support your thesis. There are plenty better
ones out there, some of them straight from Arrington's mouth, i.e. he's
basically said the key to techcrunch's success is that they don't have to go
through the whole verification process that other media outlets do - in other
words - take everything he says with a grain of salt.

------
lakeeffect
I can handle him saying this...He is a features guy, he likes a lot of
features.

I will begin to lose respect for him when a company he invest his money in
goes on stage at TechCrunch 50.

I will definitely lose all respect for him if one of the start ups he invests
in wins TechCrunch50. At some Point he needs to decide if he is his own PR
firm or a third party commentator.

------
jwesley
That's what discredits Arrington for you? How about the way he pimps the
startups he invests in a la Seesmic video comments? All the same, I still read
and enjoy his site.

------
kaens
To be fair, you should probably take everything anybody says with a grain of
salt.

