IPhone
5: The wait is over
By: Doug Gross
A quick summary of the
article - as you can gather from the title the long awaited IPhone 5 is out and
many people have waited all night to get it. Some people have showed genuine excitement while others are
less thrilled with the new product.
- Details
This
article is supposed to be very objective but there are some quips, and details
in here that show some biases on the subject of the new IPhone. While talking about the new phone Gross
says, "the new phone has had a few problems, as tech
innovations sometimes tend to do." I believe this statement has a sarcastic undertone, and Gross
is trying to say all new products have the new and improved features, but
people are just going crazy over the IPhone because Apple is a well known name
and they have the "pretty packaging". Details like that make me as a reader feel like Gross is not
a huge fan of the new phone and it fells like he's convincing us not to get
hooked with Apple's scheme. The
other detail that caught my eye was the people Gross chose to interview,
interestingly they had a negative tone towards the phone as well, "you've
got to be patient with Apple, and they'll get it right" said Justin
Henderson. It doesn't take a
rocket scientist to figure out that he has a similar opinion as Gross, because Henderson
believes Apple products don't function very well, instead people just by their
products for the brand name that comes with it. These details definitely push a reader to have a negative
opinion of Apple and the new phone.
- Diction
Since
this isn't a novel or poem the diction isn't very symbolic or have many layers,
but it's still important to the article.
The first thing that caught my eye was that the people who were waiting
in line all night for the new phone were called "fanboys" and
"fangirls". Normally
when talking about a fan you think of people who love pop stars and the people
who know the lyrics to all their songs, but there is also the negative
connotation on the extreme side.
Sometimes fans are thought of as crazy, obsessed, stalkers who are so in
love with somebody it's borderline crazy and over the top. I believe the negative connotation is
being used in this article because they talk about how people waited in line
all night in awful weather, without food, and without sleep. This diction made me realize that this
article was probably not going to shed the best light on this new technological
innovation.
This article is more of a telling/reporting piece
than an influencial piece, although Gross definitely gets his opinion across,
because of this we don't see many small fragments or strong repetition. Instead we see longer sentences, which
are easy to read and they flow well, and this is a good thing for an article
because it appeals to all audiences since it's and easy read. Gross also manages to slip in countless
quotes and moves around talking about multiple countries while still maintaining
a smooth sound. Even though the
article is simple to read, Gross adds captivating information and puts in
regular people's views so it pulls in the average people since they feel like
part of the story.
Neha, the article you found was very interesting because I am actually thinking of buying an iPhone. It is interesting to read the perspective by Gross and his opinions on the iPhone 5. For the article you chose details as one of the things to write about and I am a little bit confused. When you used the detail "you've got to be patient with Apple, and they'll get it right," I don't really know if this is an actual detail in the article. I might be totally off base here, but I thought details were suppose to be like events or locations. What do you think? I feel like you are talking about more of the tone that Gross sets for this detail instead of the actual detail too.
ReplyDeleteHowever, on your other topic for diction, I thought you did a fantastic job of talking about "fangirls" and "fanboys." I liked how you thought about the negative connotation and it is very interesting to read!
I really found the article you chose great. I like finding hidden meaning in articles that are supposed to be objective, so this was really interesting to me. The first quote you pulled out,"the new phone has had a few problems, as tech innovations sometimes tend to do," didn't really give me the same impression it gave you. I felt more that it was talking about tech products in general, the latest and greatest gadget, not apple products. The people he interviewed did seem to have a negative skew, though. I especially liked your "fanboy" and "fanboy" observation. It almost sounds like Apple has groupies. As for syntax, I found your observations sort of weak. You didn't pull out any examples, so it seemed kind of meaningless to talk about.
ReplyDeleteI really like the details section. Mostly because I can relate to the part in the article where he talks about being patient because they don't always get it right. Which is funny, because the new Iphone 5 has some major glitches, one being that light turns purple when taking a picture. I think that he wanted the readers to be able to relate to problems like this, so he added that little tid-bit in. I too, think there should be a little more on syntax. While you did mention sentence length, I think there might be other ways to expand on that.
ReplyDelete