I never sensed that type of bias on anandtech. The present career change does seem a bit like selling out.
As the downvotes are starting, I feel like pointing out that I don't blame him for accepting the offer. My point is that it's a point that can legitimately be made, whereas claiming that he was in Apple's pocket all along seems to me baseless.
> The present career change does seem a bit like selling out.
Why? To quote wikipeida, "selling out is the compromising of integrity, morality, authenticity or principles in exchange for personal gain, such as money." That seems like an awfully strong accusation considering how little information there is on what he will be doing and what he will be getting in return for it.
I think it would be loss of authenticity, and I am sure Apple can afford to pay more than could pay himself at Anandtech. At the very least, he no longer has to worry that his paycheck might ever bounce. The concept of "selling out" has always been a murky and subjective one, and it usually has as much to do with the values of the observer as the actions of the subject. But in a case where someone had been arguably on the side of the consumer for many years and presumably turning down lucrative offers in order to tell the unbiased truth, and then suddenly accepts one of those offers, well, it looks sort of like selling out.
Now, I'd be a hypocrite if I tried to make that case myself, because I stopped reading Anandtech a couple years ago, and I couldn't with a straight face demand that Anand care more about it than I do. I stopped largely because the news got dull and repetitive once 1) Intel decisively won the CPU war, and 2) the GPU market became a permanent stalemate between AMD and nVidia (plus a little bit of Intel). If Anand basically retired because there was no longer an interesting story to tell, well, I can relate to that.
Loss of objectivity, maybe - I mean, I don't think we'll see him publicly praising Samsung smartphones any longer! But authenticity? You think he's going to be doing things he doesn't care about or believe in at Apple?
I think you may not be familiar with how "sellout" is commonly used. It's commonly said, e.g., of musicians when they make a popular song, for violating their assumed allegiance to being "true" to something other than career. It's more about an abstract idea of what someone or something "stood for" than about the actual person, and it takes place in the minds of observers more than anything.
I don't think what he does in his work for Apple has anything to do with it. If he tried to go back to the Anandtech style of journalism, I think he would lack credibility now that he has accepted a job at Apple.
> The present career change does seem a bit like selling out.
Anandtech, by all indications, seems to be continuing to grow and be very profitable. All indications are that Anand is quite financially secure.
So I can't see him making this move unless it's something he really wants to do, as opposed to being lured by the money.
Can you blame him? After writing about technology for so long, surely he's gotten the itch to play a more direct role in its creation.
Imagine if you were a fan of baseball your entire life, and had been covering it for years, and you had a chance to actually go and play for a major league team. It could be a dream come true.
As the downvotes are starting, I feel like pointing out that I don't blame him for accepting the offer. My point is that it's a point that can legitimately be made, whereas claiming that he was in Apple's pocket all along seems to me baseless.