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Writing about technology is a quite funny business. Not in so much that one isn't taken seriously enough, but rather in the attitudes of a lot of those who are supposedly technology journalists. I'm still undecided if I want to go as far as calling a lot of those who frequently write about technology as "journalists". Nowadays due to these people I try my best to identify myself as a "tech writer", rather than anything close to "tech journalist".

It's mainly the mentality of change that I would like to remark upon this time. A very fuzzy topic for some, it would seem. Depending on what we are talking about and often times more about which company is behind it, it's somewhere between boring and insulting.

Apple is frequently accused of not changing things up enough with pretty much each and every product update of any kind. If a product unveiling doesn't blow the proverbial socks off the tech journalists, it's an instant failure and the company is doomed. But if they do change something, as was the case in the recent dumping of the decade old 30-pin dock connector, they immediately got accused of changing too much.

Microsoft was accused of changing too much with Windows 8, and I'll admit that I was one of the skeptics when it was first unveiled, but the company also got immediate backlash when they revealed that the old style desktop would be available despite the new user interface. Yet one more company to put on the list of companies that can do no right, in the eyes of the tech journalists.

Take RIM, one famous and revered in many aspects of the tech press, now only a laughing stock of the joint corps of tech pundits and journalists. While they admittedly have not been keeping with the times, they still have some impressive technology under their belt. Anything RIM does, even remotely identifiable as "change", will be met with violent attacks from anyone who cares to write it. Yet again, they will still be accused of not changing enough.

So instead of the rampant excitement found in the tech press, we now drown in a almost constant noise where everybody is competing in giving the most contradicting statements about the latest products, desperate and tragic attempts at snark and humor, mixed in with a nearly complete lack of understanding about anything besides "where's the latest shiny?". Tech companies can really do nothing right, as far as one could discern from the articles and reviews. But still they manage to get customers and make a fair hunk of money. Funny, that.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine.

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Robert Falck

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