BOOM! For Windows IT Pro, Paul Thurrott tells it like it is, apart from the fact he doesn’t. In reality, he thinks he does, but instead fires out a whining IT’S SO UNFAIR defence of previous knee-jerk reactionism regarding his original thoughts surrounding Apple’s iPad.

Apple fan boys with fragile egos and long memories like to taunt me with some of my early quotes about the iPad—I referred to it as an “iDud” when it was announced in January 2010, for example—without respecting the fact that my writings about the devices got a lot more positive when I started using them.

Translation: I had an on-automatic, biased reaction to something I’d not even used, and now rather than say “yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done that,” I will instead brand those reminding me of this ‘fan boys’ with ‘fragile egos’. For the record, I’ve done the former, but I try hard to not do the latter. As an ex-MacUser hack reminded me, I slammed the original iPod. I also once dismissed the iPhone as a gaming platform. In both cases, I’d not when writing used the items enough, and my thoughts on them changed dramatically on doing so. Thurrott’s almost the same:

I guess it still confuses people on that partisan side of the world to realize that more experience with something can actually alter your opinion.

He’s right on experience providing the means for opinions to change, but I don’t think that really confuses anyone. What’s confusing is when you blame people for bringing up the fact you shouldn’t really have dismissed something with a smug quip without having experienced it. I’ll take my lumps on both the iPod and the iPhone. What I won’t do is brand someone a fan boy or say they’ve a fragile ego for pulling me up on writing the kind of crap that I absolutely shouldn’t be writing.

After quite a lot of “Windows got there first with tablets” and “the original iPad had lots of problems anyway,” he nonetheless concludes:

Sometimes first impressions really are wrong.

It’s a pity he didn’t also conclude that people bringing up poor writing churned out in the past aren’t necessarily fan-boys with fragile egos, but people pissed off that tech journos—and especially those with influence—too often form an opinion before experiencing what they’re writing about.