My previous post was a diversion for the usual, and this post is a continuation of the diversion, but normal topics are set to return! For now, a little more the episode of the early warning of failing journalism.
In the previous ‘canary post’ I outlined reasons why the almost universally reported ‘Microsoft will not release new Surface Devices because they have to wait for the new Intel processors’ at least from my analysis seems an example of the press simply getting in wrong, as the processors concerned are actually well know to be already available. (example of reporting here: note the words “because it’s too early to put Intel’s next-gen Kaby Lake processors and chipsets into the devices” and here and here. And this is reporting after the even has announced. Before the event was announced there was even stronger repetition of the clear error. Over and over.
If the press can get something as simple and as obvious as this wrong, what else can they get wrong? Most disconcerting in a society that requires a functioning press for the protection of democracy. After further analysis of what is misreported, I will look at just what are the possible reasons for this misreporting.
Back to the innocent little canary, the misreporting of the environment for a tech company to release new products. As of today, October 16, an actual Microsoft press event is now scheduled for October 26, and yesterday, the first signals that my analysis which just two days ago ran contrary to almost all press reports, may indeed be correct. That evidence is that Amazon now lists current surface products as ‘(OLD VERSION)’. Now finally there are journalists suggesting that this may be due to an update of current surface models to the new Kaby-Lake cpu. This is yet to be confirmed, so stay tuned for confirmation.
There is also a second part of this story. Journalist predictions were in two parts:
- current surface products cannot yet be updated as they must wait for the new CPU
- instead a new ‘all-in-one’ surface desktop will be released
It has already been discussed that in fact the currect surface products do not have to wait for the new CPU as the ‘mobile’ versions of this CPU are already released.
The important point for ‘part 2’, the release of the all in one, is that this idea is impacted by the fact that the desktop versions of this new ‘Kaby-Lake’ cpu are in fact not available. Despite the mobile new CPUs actually being available and the Desktop versions not available, all the reporting was the mobile devices cannot be released and no discussion at all on the need for the new CPU in a desktop.
Microsoft may be about to announce a new ‘all-in-one’ device, but the lack of new desktop CPU being available means either:
- the new ‘all-in-one’ device will be announced but not available until next year
- or this new ‘all-in-one’ will actually function like an ‘all-in-one’, but actuallybe something different and be more a modular system and allow a choice of using current surface devices for CPU and disk, or offering a CPU and disk drive as a separate module.
I can add more at a future date, but this is probably enough discussing of this now to illustrate the point, and refer back to in a future post it this turns out correct.
Significance?
It is only about laptop computers, and I am only interested because I wish to buy one by a specific date for a present, so just waiting is not appealing. But the significance of what is clearly an error that could be discovered with even the research available to an outsider, being reported and echoed throughout the press is a great concern. Is this also happening with respect to the war in Syria for example. Or reporting on the candidates in an election? I feel the age of the internet has eroded the business model of journalism, and we all may pay the price. More news, but the same news repeated without any fact checking.
