From the New York Times review of the iPad 2's Smart Cover:

It takes me, on average, 5.1 seconds to start and begin using my first-generation Apple iPad. This is how I spent those 5.1 seconds: opening the cover protector, pressing the power button in the top right corner of the device and then swiping my finger across the screen to unlock the iPad.

Sure 5.1 seconds might not sound like a long period of time, even in the age of Twitter and the real time Web. But if you use your iPad on a regular basis it can quickly add up. Let’s just say you pick up your iPad 10 times a day, that’s nearly 6 minutes a week wasted through the laborious action of pressing the power button and swiping your finger across a screen. It’s exhausting.

This seems to be a problem, especially, with iPad reviews. Reviewers complain about the 1.5 pound weight of the original iPad, they talk about the lag time for websites to render ("the dreaded 'checkerboard effect'"), they bemoan the seconds-long wait to start the device up, and other petty details. Even when they're trying to be jokey about their complaints, as I believe the above writer is, they sound petulant and bourgie. I understand that the job of a tech critic is to find flaws in a product, but the complaints for general users have gotten so tiny that it's hard not to sound like spoiled princesses. (My criticism, obviously, is not original.)

I think we need a new kind of tech writing, is my point. Something that focuses less on finding flaws and more on focusing on possibilities. You don't want to do this kind of thing with arts criticism—you don't want to think about what the piece of art is not—but tech is evolving at an ever-increasing rate and it's starting to transcend our old complaints. Maybe the job of a tech reviewer now is to point the way, to shoot where the puck will be? Consumers can find rote spec information and basic thumbs-up or thumbs-down reviews on YouTube or on a ton of other sites. Professional reviewers need to ramp up their games.