Anandtech closure

[Andrew Reid]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21542/end-of-the-road-an-anandtech-farewell

Very sad to see the news of Anandtech stopping.

Canary in the coal mine or what? If this can happen to a PC / tech website which is part of a thriving market compared to DPReview, then it can happen to ALL quality journalism on the world wide web.

Anandtech is owned by Future PLC, they are the British company behind some of the earliest mainstream tech journalism in the UK such as the PC and Atari magazines on shelves in the 80s and 90s.

In a nut shell smartphones are killing long form written content completely and the internet is going away as we know it.

It is turning into cable TV or sensationalised clickbait tabloid news.

Just look at the camera rumors sites and YouTube.

A big shame if you ask me and it would be great to know what to do to preserve the written word, written journalism and written knowledge outside of just books, if the internet is no longer the right medium for it.

Time for an internet 1.0... That can only be accessed via a desktop or laptop?

The problem with phones is that you just don't have the large enough screen space to do anything useful, content wise. It lends itself only to scrolling and short captions, or photos and video.

[MrSMW]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

The problem with phones is that you just don't have the large enough screen space to do anything useful, content wise. It lends itself only to scrolling and short captions, or photos and video.

And ‘we’ are pushed into vertical content.

I shoot increasingly (photo) in a vertical format at time of capture rather than cropping simply with one eye on marketing.

Video, 6k open gate so again, I can maximise how I can present to potential clients.

But I don’t much care for it…

[IronFilm]

I've often made the observation that for many years (I'd say arguably since roughly the Nikon D7100 era, and even arguably even earlier since say the D7000 or D700) that dedicated stills cameras have got "good enough" for many photography users. 

Thus even without the rise in smartphone photography capabilities, then we'd have seen a steep decline in stills camera sales due to the average consumers no longer needing to have a strong driving push to upgrade. 

The same thing has now happened with video and hybrid cameras as well, they've reached for most people "the good enough" stage, that upgrades for many people are no longer strictly necessary to do so frequently. (we can leave it to another thread to debate exactly when did that happen.... S5mk2? a7Smk2? P4K? X-T3? GH5? GH4?)

Perhaps something has similar has happened for PCs. 

Ages ago it used to be every couple of years the leap forward in computers was so huge that it made sense to consider an upgrade, even for "average joe consumers". Then PCs of the past got "good enough" that consumers might happily go a five years lifecycle with them. 

Until now these days, you could get an ancient ThinkPad T440 for next to nothing, spend a hundred bucks on an extra  stick of RAM and a new SSD, then put a fresh OS install on it, and you'll have a laptop that's perfectly fine for the needs of most average users. 

It shows that the lifecycles for PCs these days are easily over a decade plus years. 

Which is likely also linked to the big drop in interest in people building their own PCs, which is much less common these days. 

(And I haven't even touched on the massive rise in popularity of smartphones and tablets, meaning many people don't need need their desktops/laptops, or at the very least use it far less than they otherwise would have) 

[MrSMW]

Phones was one the missus and I were discussing just the other day and how, other than some photo/lens options, there hasn't been anything we have been slightly interested in with the last 3 or 4 iterations of the iPhone.

Nope, nothing, nada.

I think I have peaked for my needs on all things tech whether cameras, audio gear, laptop, phone... Now it's not even a case of 'want', but rather 'might like' at some point if it floats my boat.

I'd rather see innovation now rather than incremental steps of 'progress' of essentially 'the same thing'.

[sanveer]

Really sad.

[Andrew Reid]

2 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Perhaps something has similar has happened for PCs. 

Sorry but this doesn't explain why the longer form written journalism is going away.

The tech market that Andandtech covers might be mature but it's still absolutely huge in terms of interest and enthusiasts, and there's a wealth of discovery to be done, debate and bait online devoted to GPUs, gaming, and such like. LinusTechTips on YouTube is huge, one of the highest subscriber counts anywhere.

This is all the fault of phones, you can't READ a phone like you can a magazine due to the small screen, it's just not very nice to read long stuff on a phone and you're much better off sitting at a desk instead with a laptop.

You'll be surprised how many people use their phone as a laptop or desktop replacement now.

Also it is far too easy for social media and clickbait aggregators / rumors sites to hoover up other site's content and act as a link farm or highlights reel without attribution.

And that is how people now digest the content.

In the days when the camera rumors sites were interested in EOSHD blog posts, their link-through to the source was of no real benefit to me - they got all the views, and I had virtually nothing out of it.

Andandtech could go on publishing deep dives on Apple's architecture and such like but 90% of the delivery of this would be done by aggregators, reddit, Facebook, etc.

So the internet is truly broken with social media and it will soon die, or become too financially unrewarding to bother working with.

[Andrew Reid]

Quote

"Finally, I’d like to end this piece with a comment on the Cable TV-ification of the web. A core belief that Anand and I have held dear for years, and is still on our About page to this day, is AnandTech’s rebuke of sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o’clock-news reporting. It has been our mission over the past 27 years to inform and educate our readers by providing high-quality content — and while we’re no longer going to be able to fulfill that role, the need for quality, in-depth reporting has not changed. If anything, the need has increased as social media and changing advertising landscapes have made shallow, sensationalistic reporting all the more lucrative."

Well said.

[IronFilm]

9 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Phones was one the missus and I were discussing just the other day and how, other than some photo/lens options, there hasn't been anything we have been slightly interested in with the last 3 or 4 iterations of the iPhone.

Nope, nothing, nada.

I think I have peaked for my needs on all things tech whether cameras, audio gear, laptop, phone... Now it's not even a case of 'want', but rather 'might like' at some point if it floats my boat.

I'd rather see innovation now rather than incremental steps of 'progress' of essentially 'the same thing'.

Tue, smartphones are yet another example of what I'm talking about. 

I used to spend a lot of time talking/thinking/reading about smartphones (back in era of SymbianOS / Windows CE / Windows Mobile 6 / Blackberry / very early days of Android / etc. Nokia N82 is one of my all time favorite phones! For its time), I'd be on GSMArena and the other websites all the time. And every phone I purchased was a rather pricey $$$ purchase.

But these days? My last few phones have been around a little more than a hundred bucks ish USD each. (brand new!) And aside from when I lose/break my phone (& need to replace it, then I might spend a couple of hours very quickly comparing various $100ish models), I don't follow the news at all about new phones coming out. 

Less $$$ being spent + less eyeballs on websites = less income for those phone review websites. 

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Sorry but this doesn't explain why the longer form written journalism is going away.

I wasn't saying this was the only reason, or even the primary main reason why anandtech shut down. 

But as the number of readers go down, and as the amounts spent by consumers go down, then there is less money being spent able to support websites that are largely advertising supported such as anandtech.

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

The tech market that Andandtech covers might be mature but it's still absolutely huge in terms of interest and enthusiasts, and there's a wealth of discovery to be done, debate and bait online devoted to GPUs, gaming, and such like. LinusTechTips on YouTube is huge, one of the highest subscriber counts anywhere.

Sure, I won't deny it's a huge market, but if it's also a shrinking market then eventually and unfortunately some of those will have to shut down. 

Am curious what the results of a poll would be if you went an asked high school classrooms today how many of them had built their own PC, vs if you asked that of people in the 2000's or 1990's. (or if you just asked them basic questions about IT / PCs, such as "explain a computer's file system", doesn't even have to be complex at all like "explain the difference between northbridge vs southbridge")

If you have a much smaller pool of these people, that means a declining possible market of people who'd even read anandtech in the first place. 

 

 

[Emanuel]

On 9/1/2024 at 8:10 PM, Andrew Reid said:

You'll be surprised how many people use their phone as a laptop or desktop replacement now.

Crazy age we live all in.

[Andrew Reid]

On 9/2/2024 at 3:25 AM, IronFilm said:

Tue, smartphones are yet another example of what I'm talking about. 

I used to spend a lot of time talking/thinking/reading about smartphones (back in era of SymbianOS / Windows CE / Windows Mobile 6 / Blackberry / very early days of Android / etc. Nokia N82 is one of my all time favorite phones! For its time), I'd be on GSMArena and the other websites all the time. And every phone I purchased was a rather pricey $$$ purchase.

But these days? My last few phones have been around a little more than a hundred bucks ish USD each. (brand new!) And aside from when I lose/break my phone (& need to replace it, then I might spend a couple of hours very quickly comparing various $100ish models), I don't follow the news at all about new phones coming out.

Ah I see yes, I agree with that. Sometimes the customer doesn't need to go on a deep dive and upgrades become less frequent anyway.

But it doesn't change the fact that written journalism in the tech industry should not simply vanish, there is still a huge demand for it.

It is just that the way we digest content now on small screens just isn't suited to magazine style in-depth articles so it discourages us from spending time that way.

When I do try to spend time with many of these websites I am bombarded by cookie permissions, ads, bad design and clickbait anyway, whereas scrolling through apps on a phone is a much cleaner, faster experience.

On 9/2/2024 at 3:25 AM, IronFilm said:

Less $$$ being spent + less eyeballs on websites = less income for those phone review websites. 

Yeah the ad dollars have by and large been hoovered up by influencer gobshites.

Witness the last Pana launch where they outnumbered journalists by a huge margin.

And anyone who does more probing coverage isn't as useful for marketing now anyway. They are not there to sell. They're there to tell the truth in an in-depth way.

Guess which the marketing bosses prefer, them or the influencers?

And therefore they spend accordingly...

Indeed the ad industry has seen a large shift in spend to influence the influencer.... rather than to themselves directly influence the customer.

On 9/2/2024 at 3:25 AM, IronFilm said:

Am curious what the results of a poll would be if you went an asked high school classrooms today how many of them had built their own PC, vs if you asked that of people in the 2000's or 1990's. (or if you just asked them basic questions about IT / PCs, such as "explain a computer's file system", doesn't even have to be complex at all like "explain the difference between northbridge vs southbridge")

If you have a much smaller pool of these people, that means a declining possible market of people who'd even read anandtech in the first place.

Yes good point.

But wasn't it always a minority in class rooms that nerded out on stuff like this?

But yeah, times change... Today's kids are more likely to be into Telegram, Ai, social media, YouTube, console gaming and streaming.

A toxic bunch of platforms if ever I saw one.

[BTM_Pix]

This is a great ongoing project that is scanning all the major music and recording tech magazines from what I would describe as the golden era for your viewing and nostalgic pleasure.

http://www.muzines.co.uk/

I used to devour - and occasionally contribute to - these magazines when I was involved in that industry and whilst I've used the archive for research, I cannot get any kind of feeling going for reading them on a laptop let alone a phone.

Conversely, at the weekend, I was at a vintage fair and bought a bunch of football magazines (yes it was Shoot! for those of a certain age) from my youth and they just blow away reading on a Kindle.

Similarly, despite being an avid reader on the Kindle, I'm now reading a whole lot more books in paperback.

Its not just for the experience either as there has definitely been a slow boiling frog thing going on with Kindle pricing over the past few years, as there has been with all digital media once they have you in their clutches.

A shoutout to one of the magazines featured in muzines, by the way, which is Sound On Sound who have managed to have both a very healthy online presence and yet still sit on the shelves of newsagents for coming up to forty years now.

https://www.soundonsound.com/

 

[Clark Nikolai]

On 9/1/2024 at 7:25 PM, IronFilm said:

If you have a much smaller pool of these people, that means a declining possible market of people who'd even read anandtech in the first place. 

 

I've been on Internet and involved with computers since the late '80s and this is the first time I've ever heard of AnandTech. 

[MrSMW]

5 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

When I do try to spend time with many of these websites I am bombarded by cookie permissions, ads, bad design and clickbait anyway, whereas scrolling through apps on a phone is a much cleaner, faster experience.

Yep, it's a big issue for me also.

I still like to read stuff over being talked at, but some sites just do not help themselves, sometimes with multiple ad pop up shit all happening at the same time.

It just repels anyone with half a brain...

[Andrew Reid]

Yeah the design has gone really far downhill in general, when it comes to websites.

Far too much shit and clutter.

The worst examples in the UK are local newspaper websites... they are like viruses.

The EU did not think through the cookie rules. It should be a browser level setting and not popping up on every site all the time.

Also the ad industry and Google ads have not helped... Google abandoned the open web a long time ago and now makes all of its money wreaking it with ads, whilst squandering that on failed products. Google's products across the board are getting worse, including search - now run by the failed-upwards ex boss of Yahoo search! Even Google Maps has become a flawed and frustrating piece of shit too.

When the internet was in the hands of individuals and Europeans / British companies it was in a much better place.

Corporate US has a lot to answer for.

[mkabi]

On 9/1/2024 at 12:31 PM, MrSMW said:

Phones was one the missus and I were discussing just the other day and how, other than some photo/lens options, there hasn't been anything we have been slightly interested in with the last 3 or 4 iterations of the iPhone.

Nope, nothing, nada.

I think I have peaked for my needs on all things tech whether cameras, audio gear, laptop, phone... Now it's not even a case of 'want', but rather 'might like' at some point if it floats my boat.

I'd rather see innovation now rather than incremental steps of 'progress' of essentially 'the same thing'.

I'm in the same boat/wheelhouse....

In fact, I've moved on to other hobbies.... mainly watches and cars... sometime in the next 5 to 10 years.... there is going to be a used sports car in my garage, hopefully its a 911, or a 1969 Mustang.
 

Don't get me wrong, I still do photo/video... thats still my passion... but gear wise - I've topped out.

Phones, Cameras, TVs.... don't excite me anymore... I used to get excited to go into an electronics chains like Bestbuy or a camera store.... now its like... do I need anything from there? Nope? I'm going home.

I believe that most of time its about attaining the pinnacle or close to what you think is the pinnacle.... I'm sure if Hasselblad released an X3D with 8K and 4K/120p - I'd be super excited about that, but my Canon R5 is good enough.

 

 

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

On 9/1/2024 at 4:10 PM, Andrew Reid said:

Sorry but this doesn't explain why the longer form written journalism is going away.

The tech market that Andandtech covers might be mature but it's still absolutely huge in terms of interest and enthusiasts, and there's a wealth of discovery to be done, debate and bait online devoted to GPUs, gaming, and such like. LinusTechTips on YouTube is huge, one of the highest subscriber counts anywhere.

This is all the fault of phones, you can't READ a phone like you can a magazine due to the small screen, it's just not very nice to read long stuff on a phone and you're much better off sitting at a desk instead with a laptop.

You'll be surprised how many people use their phone as a laptop or desktop replacement now.

Also it is far too easy for social media and clickbait aggregators / rumors sites to hoover up other site's content and act as a link farm or highlights reel without attribution.

And that is how people now digest the content.

In the days when the camera rumors sites were interested in EOSHD blog posts, their link-through to the source was of no real benefit to me - they got all the views, and I had virtually nothing out of it.

Andandtech could go on publishing deep dives on Apple's architecture and such like but 90% of the delivery of this would be done by aggregators, reddit, Facebook, etc.

So the internet is truly broken with social media and it will soon die, or become too financially unrewarding to bother working with.

Smartphones made it worse, but people nowadays simply don't READ. Nothing. Never. In any form.

Is all video and podcasts - generally speed up by 1.5x times.

And Anantech (which is probably one of the sites that I've visited most in my life) had another problem - since the Anand's departure, it became excessively technical. It always was the most technical site, but Anand had talent to make a deeply technical review be pleasent to read. In the last years, the writing there became ONLY technical, to a point that a person that like that kind of review unpleasant to read.

(and to find a hardware test dedicated to filming software is almost impossíble - the closest is the Puget tests, which are very limited. And there goes a bunch of people spending a bunch in a top Ryzen config with a beastie RTX card only to discover that it could not decode 10bit 4:2:2 on hardware)