@TrailEyes said:
As a journalist, I mostly wish that the reviewers, when presented with the new information about the functionality of the 4gb version, would acknowledge it. Their responses have felt too dodgy.
On the other hand, as a journalist, do you think it’s common to simply “lie” and say Suunto representative told them something if that never happened? Seems to me the Suunto person being references could easily show up, say “I never told you that,” and call them out for a blatant lie.
So I think from a simplicity point of view, “never ascribed to malice what can be explained by incompetence,” the answer here is not that reviewers are lying about things but instead there was miscommunication. Whether that originated from the Suunto rep who spoke to the reviewers, or the reviewers themselves mistranslated, I have no idea. The reason I’d personally put more “blame” on a Suunto rep (or a US representative acting on their behalf, sure) is that’s their main job to work with these people. Meanwhile, Des, Ray, Chase the Summit, etc are also reviewing Coros, Apple, Garmin, etc. and juggling a lot more things. Sure, they should get things right too, but if and when they make an error, I’d expect them to say something like “ah, I missed that,” and not “someone told me the wrong thing.”
Also, regarding the overall “conspiracy theory,” I gave about a last minute change, while that might explain a Suunto rep giving “wrong” info, I’m not even sure I buy that either. Look at the people who, when told Coros was adding maps to their 4GB model, instantly went “this is a response to the Suunto rumors, they decided to beat them to the punch” which I think is also a bit unlikely. I think feature sets and timelines are setup farther in advance, and making a change like this with a few days notice is unlikely. Instead, I expect both Coros and Suunto had “parallel development,” both independently thinking it was a good idea to “push maps down” as a competitive advantage over Garmin in particular.
On another note, I’ve noticed the Run 2 maps are like the Race S ones I have — that is, not as detailed with lack of street names, etc. that you can get on higher models. I wonder if this is the start of a “three tier system” as we’ve already had “breadcrumbs vs. maps” and now perhaps we will have “breadcaps, basic maps, advanced maps.” If so, I could see Garmin doing something like that on a 570 successor, marking a middle ground but keeping full maps on the ir 9xx line.
