Why don't we have reviews for Apple products?

This being a *Mac* forum, I was wondering, why are there no actual review threads? I would rather trust the review of someone who is in the business to keep the system that they are reviewing rather than trust someone who's job it is to test something for the sake of reviewing it.

I started thinking this when I got the itch today with the new 15" MBP with the 330m 516mb graphics card. All the reviews on line are dumb and pointless.
My local apple store has gone through a completely new hiring process and literally, only a few of the workers there knew that the new mbp's have dual graphics cards that automatically chooses the right card for whatever job. I was about to slap them all to oblivion!

I think it would be absolutely awesome if a review section was started.

That would definitely be a great resource ... I would love to be able to review all of the new systems as they come out... but alas .. the only systems I get to review are the older ones that I have to repair.. (every thing I do comes straight out of Pocket $$$) and have yet to find a money tree growing in the back yard.

If you search hard enough you could find some decent reviews and/or first impression but I agree a dedicated review section would be interesting.

I would definitely participate.

TomTom is correct. There actually have been quite a few reviews given by members. You have to dig thru the forums to find them and they don't always have a review title. However, don't expect to see a "MacWorld" type of review though.

Yes there is a lot of Apple product reviews on this site. I even did one for the Apple Battery Charger just recently. But having all these reviews collated into one nice little area would be nice I guess.

I thought this was what the Blog was for.

TomTomTuning said:

If you search hard enough you could find some decent reviews and/or first impression but I agree a dedicated review section would be interesting.

I would definitely participate.

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That's the thing, you are searching for something somewhere where you don't even know it exists. Obviously I know to search for it...it's how I've been doing it for...EVER, but I believe there should be a section for it somewhere.

Chris H. said:

I thought this was what the Blog was for.

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No, it's not the same. You have to wait for a review from a blogger there. I was kind of suggesting sectioned reviews by the whole community.

You need a review for an Apple product? Silly poster everything Apple makes is perfect.

-Nate

Dr. Nate said:

You need a review for an Apple product? Silly poster everything Apple makes is perfect.

-Nate

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I wouldn't go that far...

I have already had to have my Mac repaired and have had constant issues with Internet connection/ safari.

Dr. Nate said:

You need a review for an Apple product? Silly poster everything Apple makes is perfect.

-Nate

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LOL ... Oh My .. had to pick myself up off the floor ... fell out of my chair laughing...

Ummmm Hate to put a damper on it .. but just check the web to BGA issues with the G3 iBooks... Cold solder Joints on the G4 iBooks.. Video issues with the PowerBooks, MacBooks, and MacBook Pro's, High Speed fan issues with no boot on the PowerMac G5's ... iMac G5 series capacitor issues.... and their Power supplies.... the list goes on and on and on....

No Computer Corporation is with out its issues... Granted Mac's just work.. cause they build the OS around the hardware and do not have to worry about 3rd party hardware (drivers, incompatibilities... ect.) but they all have their problems.

I won't comment on the implementation or plans of the forum administrators so I'll speak to the practicality of such a section. Having a review section would require a fair number of reviews to be successful and at the same time, for the sake of consistency and quality, a review section should be largely controlled by a small group of individuals with exemplary writing skills and extensive knowledge of the technology. That said, I think it would be hard to find a small group of people who can both afford new technology or attain review copies while also doing this on a regular basis. Many of us have jobs, school or other regular commitments that would preclude us from doing this effectively.

Now, you could have a section where anyone could contribute reviews but I am inclined to believe that the reviews that garner respect would only be those written by established members. On top of that, I have to honestly say that I think the majority of the reviews would only focus on that which was good. I think there would be a considerable dearth of critical reviews especially if you consider the largely uncritical views a significant proportion of the community has of Apple.

Well said Van. Also, there are plenty of on line reviews done by professional writers that can be accessed by anyone who is willing to take the time and energy to read through them.

Well said Vansmith.
And I agree there is little bad to say about Apple and it's products. That does not mean they are all perfect. And I'm not sure there would be enough unbiased articles to make this worthwhile. Oh sure I'd love to see a reviews section here. Making it work - I dunno if that's possible.

And the whole point of reviews to me is reading many of them. You just don't read one review on a product and then go "yep nice review I'll get the product". If you do that then you're an idiot. reading as many review articles as humanly possible to factor out the author bias every article has is the only way to go.

And again this simply comes down to we don't want to clone every other site out there. Think like Apple. Don't have a service that does everything poorly. Have a service that does a few things and does them very well. We here at M-F bring the community together for Apple and other chat very well. Also our help and switcher forums are the best I've ever seen. People's questions here are treated with respect and don't make the asker feel like an idiot and the answers to those questions are well said and come pretty quickly too.

So in short, we have excellent community spirit, are friendly people, have nice chat and are the best place to get your Apple questions/troubles/concerns fixed. Maybe we should leave the reviews to people like Ars Technica, Engadget, ifixit, Patently Apple and the others who excel at the Apple reviews.

the8thark said:

So in short, we have excellent community spirit, are friendly people, have nice chat and are the best place to get your Apple questions/troubles/concerns fixed.

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That was precisely why I thought it would be good to have it here. I would much rather take the opinion from people who use something everyday, than from someone who's job it is to review something without living with it.

I think all of you guys missed my point. There are barely any good reviewers out there who know everything about macs. I think it would be good for experienced mac users to review a mac and tell us more in depth detail about it rather than just iterating everything that almost every other reviewer out there reads from apple's own site. In-depth reviews is something that I don't see much of out there.

Maybe it's just me, but I hate almost all review sites out there. They bloat the reviews with so much garbage and stupid analogies(...engadget...)...
ehhh...whatever
we are a Mac forum, but don't have reviews/opinions/details, we do upload and share photos though...

This suggestion has been posted multiple times in the Comments/Suggestions forum. On each occasion, Schweb (one of our admins) has pointed out that this has been tried in the past with mixed success and the staff decided to close the forum and instead focus on our blog.

Keep in mind that anyone can blog here. If you want to write a review and submit it to the blog, but you don't have an account, hit me up and I'll be sure it gets posted (subject to review) and the appropriate credit given.

Chris H. said:

I thought this was what the Blog was for.

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Or Google.

idrinorbarsaku said:

This being a *Mac* forum, I was wondering, why are there no actual review threads? I would rather trust the review of someone who is in the business to keep the system that they are reviewing rather than trust someone who's job it is to test something for the sake of reviewing it.

I started thinking this when I got the itch today with the new 15" MBP with the 330m 516mb graphics card. All the reviews on line are dumb and pointless.
My local apple store has gone through a completely new hiring process and literally, only a few of the workers there knew that the new mbp's have dual graphics cards that automatically chooses the right card for whatever job. I was about to slap them all to oblivion!

I think it would be absolutely awesome if a review section was started.

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This is a mac forum, and there would be a pretty blatant bias here, also, to back up your review you would need more than "i own a mac".

also, macbook pros have 2 graphic cards? this is something I think you might be confused on.. or maybe me.
edit: just read up on it, and your wrong, in a sense.
the macbook pros have a nvidia graphics card, but they also have an intel integrated graphics, which isnt a card, more so just a little chip.

ZachUSAman said:

also, macbook pros have 2 graphic cards? this is something I think you might be confused on.. or maybe me.

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Yeah! A real MBP...ie...15" or 17" can have an integrated Intel Graphics chip as well as the Nvidia GeForce GT 330m for real performance. My current macbook pro, the 5.1 version, has the 9400m and the 9600mGT, known as "Hybrid SLI" to Nvidia.

idrinorbarsaku said:

Yeah! A real MBP...ie...15" or 17" can have an integrated Intel Graphics chip as well as the Nvidia GeForce GT 330m for real performance. My current macbook pro, the 5.1 version, has the 9400m and the 9600mGT, known as "Hybrid SLI" to Nvidia.

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my god, with an i7 and an SLI going, if you were to game on this thing, you would catch on fire.