Side note
Does anyone actually visit Joshua Topolsky's new site?
Isn't it crazy how out of site out of mind he is? At one point he was THE tech guy in the world. He had exclusive interviews with everyone. He was on the tonight show ever couple of months to pimp out new tech. He got his own interview show that was like a mock version of late night.
Then he got bored, job hopped all over, and seems lost to the annals of time at his new site that nobody ever goes to or talks about.
Am I crazy?
Tech and gadgets have been incredibly boring for the last couple of years. I can't blame him for wanting to do something different. The Outline seems to focus more on internet culture, which is something he seemed to be interested in before leaving the Verge.
The new site got a somewhat weird layout but performance is more of an issue. At least on my S9 with the Samsung browser, scrolling isn't as smooth as it could be.
Anyway, they publish a couple of interesting articles every now and then but it's never a site I visit on a regular basis. What made me a fan of Engadget and the Verge after that were the various scoops and leaks they reported. Since that stopped, there was no reason to visit them anymore. But to be honest, I don't visit any tech site for news anymore, aside from Android Police because they still get scoops every now and then. But overall, it's just not interesting and hasn't been for a long time. While I listen to the Daily Tech News Show and Stacey's IoT podcast, I do it mostly for the discussions and tips rather than the news.
As for Topolsky himself, who gives a shit. He was never bigger than his products. Engadget, This is my Next and the Verge were fun because of the crew and not because of him alone. Him, Patel, Miller, Stern, Slavov and Bohn were fun to read and listen to, during a time when gadgets were still evolving at a rapid pace. Topolsky, for example, had a close connection to Mattias Durante, which got them scoops and good insights. Patel was able to put his lawyer degree to use and tried to make sense of the patent war bullshit. I'll also never forget Miller's wonderful rant disguised as a hands-on article about some shitty low-effort Acer Windows Phone at IFA. The others usually published some good reviews, sometimes with a spin (like Stern's "MacBooks are the best Windows laptops you can buy" article). I'm sure that all of that is still somewhere out there, but as the news got more boring, so did the people reporting on it.
