On overstating
Steve Jobs' reality distortion takes its toll on truth, on Fortune Tech.
I hate when hyperbole overshadows fact. (It's one of the reasons I have never gotten deeply into following politics.) This article posits to fact-check Steve Jobs' iPad 2 keynote, but Seth Weintraub's corrections are surrounded in so much arm-waving frustration that they undermine the root arguments behind them. They also overstate the corrections.
To wit: Jobs included a bullet point that said the iPad has greater than 90% market share. Weintraub wrote in response, "'>90% market share'. OMG Math," then asserted, "Apple would have needed to sell 3.2 million more to reach 90% of 2010's tablet market share." Which, in itself, isn't accurate either. If the market is essentially the 14.8 million-sold-in iPad and the 2 million-sold-in Galaxy Tab, then Apple's sales in 2010 weren't 90% of the market, they were actually (wait for it) 88.1%. OMG Math.
Then, in trying to compare apples to apples on component pricing, Weintraub starts with, "The XOOM's are simply better." He then chooses to pick at various items on the iPad's spec sheet which don't match up to the Xoom's, and says Apple doesn't measure up. But in doing so, he's playing the same game in reverse: focusing on factors where his preferred device is stronger (RAM, storage, speakers) and ignoring the ones where his is not (processor, size, cameras). It's a winless argument.
Thinly veiled disdain is good for speaking to a base of like-minded individuals. But it won't win any broader discussions.