Interestingly thread with a lot of different points of view. I don’t usually comment on the less technical threads, but here I go on this one… Just a few thoughts running through my head on this.
— I repeat the near-OP’s point of view that he is moving on from MPU. I have stopped listening to padcasts in the past when I found the contact focus had shifted outside my interest zone or when I found that new ground was not being covered. I also respect his concerns re Fujitsu sponsorship and failure to call them out regarding their software/hardware obsolescence policy.
— However, I plan to continue to be a constant listener to MPU, as I continue to find the content relevant and useful (not to mention entertaining), and while I join everyone else in sadness that Katie is leaving and wish her the best in her new endeavors, I am hoping change in leadership will lead to a new era for MPU.
— That said, I do wish that Katie and David had taken a more supportive role in the Fujitsu situation. As a longtime user of Fujitsu scanners (that predates my discovery of MPU), I am very disappointed int he company’s decision to obsolete a unit that so many of us still use regularly. I do NOT expect Fujitsu to make a business decision to suit our needs or wants, however, and for whatever reason, they have decided to move to a different licensing model for their software and to sunset hardware that many of us still use. In truth Apple does the same thing in its own way. Have fun loading High Sierra or Mojave on your old PPC G3! As in any other consumer circumstance, the company whose products I have used for many years happily has made a business decision that hurts my use case, and that means that I am going to have to look carefully at other vendors when it is either time to replace one of my two current ScanSnaps (ix500 at home and S1500M at work) either because they stop functioning well, or because MacOS does not support the older units and I decide to upgrade to that version of MacOS. Since Katie and David continue to accept Fujitsu as a sponsor, and continue to promote their products, I do feel that they owe listeners the courtesy of also acknowledging this major issue we are all facing, not in any sot of legal sense, but rather out of responsibility to a viewership that they know rely on their opinions to make purchasing decisions.
— There have been comments that Katie and David are not objective in their views due to sponsorships, and while I agree with others that they tend to very reasonably promote products that they use personally and less so products they have less direct experience with, I will state that I am certain that they ARE influenced by sponsorthips. I do NOT believe there is any evil intent or dishonesty on their part, but rather it is an inevitable part of human nature to be so influenced. In my own day job as a physician, there was a time when we doctors were often plyed with various trinkets and handouts such as note pads, post-it notes, pens, flashlights, etc by drug and medical equipment manufacturers. Today, with those handouts having been drummed out of the industry, many of us earn fees as consultants or speakers. As someone who is often asked to speak by various medical device manufacturers in my field, I can tell you that I and my colleagues will vigorous defend the impartiality of our medical prescribing, and while I feel strongly that my prescribing is driven by patient need and not by any affiliation with vendors, it would be naive, if not dishonest, to fail to recognize both that human nature is such that it is a rare physician who remains completely unswayed by even the smallest of corporate affiliations, and also that the companies would not be spending money if they did not have reason to believe it impacted behavior. In fact, a recent medical journal carried a report analyzing the relationship between money earned through corporate consulting and medical practice and found a clear linear, if not provably causal, relationship. As a physician, I can tell you that we medical practitioners are certainly not worse than those in any other field, but I doubt we are any better either. Therefore, I do not fault our MPU hosts for bias that may be unconsciously present as a result of sponsorships, but rather commend them for the efforts they have gone to over the years to reveal such affiliations and be as transparent as possible. That being said, I am surprised that they haven’t more aggressively reported the issue with ScanSnap, as they have always been in my opinion very fair in their product evaluations.
This has come out much longer than I intended, for which I apologize to those who have suffered through reading it.
Again, best wishes to Katie in her new endeavors, to David and Stephen in the new incarnation of MPU. I remain a loyal listener; look forward to the new shows; and of course hope that Katie will return as a guest and keep as informed as to her successes.
-)