John Gruber's stance on DXO is utterly meaningless, and it's farcical that you seriously cite it.
Measuring the technical capabilities of an imaging device is patently obvious and justifiable. From dynamic range to optical and electronic resolution, noise at different light levels, etc. You can question their methodology, but saying that it "doesn't measure anything" is nonsense, and citing a guy who laughably claims that you can't measure the "art" is uproarious.
Gruber has less than zero legitimacy in this discussion, and his sole motivating intention is defend Apple in all facets.
Gruber's conclusion is correct, even though his reasoning is not. DxO scores are crap, because they do not adequately control scenes in their comparisons.
I agree entirely -- their methodology is sloppy and what they do have is poorly documented. I certainly don't hold their scores supreme or canonical. Complaining that it can be done with more rigor and consistency, and with more objective openness, is valid. Gruber's hand-wavy art complaint is not.
Did you read that blog post? He was criticizing DXO for giving the iPhone 8 the highest score ever, not defending Apple. How do you objectively measure bokeh effects? And if you're so defensive of DXO, can you explain why their photo subscores range from 51-89 but that adds up to a 96?
Gruber had previously shat on DXO when the iPhone was bested by the Pixel. He took this opportunity to say "Oh btw the iPhone is now best...but it's still horseshit look at how unbiased I am".
And I'm not "defensive" of DXO scores any more than I'm defensive of dpreview. DXO analyzes a variety of real world technical capabilities of imaging systems -- most certainly in an imperfect way and needing more rigor -- but to call it "horseshit", or to ridiculously claim that it measures nothing, is specious.
Should we run it through a machine learning algorithm to see how the hell any of the "component" score adds up to a 96 overall score? And why only those components, but not others? I want my dog nose filter score in too.
> Measuring the technical capabilities of an imaging device is patently obvious and justifiable. From dynamic range to optical and electronic resolution, noise at different light levels, etc.
I agree completely. DPreview and other sites do that.
> but saying that it "doesn't measure anything" is nonsense
Then please tell me what that one final number measures. How do they get to it? It doesn’t seem objective at all.
Other camera review sites give a bunch of objective measurements then a subjective opinion about how the camera related to others.
DXO wants you to think their arbitrary number is scientifically rigorous.
> and citing a guy who laughably claims that you can't measure the "art" is uproarious.
Are you claiming you can measure art? That’s what DXO seems to do. Having a single number final score means that if camera A had a higher score than B then it must take objectively better pictures.
Or we have to admit their score is subjective.
> Gruber has less than zero legitimacy in this discussion
Why?
> and his sole motivating intention is defend Apple in all facets.
He’s complaining that the iPhone had the highest score ever. If you were right he would be writing about how DXO said it was the best camera ever, not that DXO is a sham.
If you can’t look past Gruber’s byline I imagine there are other articles online about DXO and their questionable practices. I’ve seen others before, this was the first Google turned up.
Because Gruber is a biased individual whose professional existence is to pander to a narrow crowd. He has nothing broadly interesting to say about cross-cutting concerns.
"He’s complaining that the iPhone had the highest score ever."
He previously dismissed DXO when the iPhone was beat. Now he wants to simultaneously crow about the iPhone taking the victory while claiming that he totally doesn't care about it anyways. People buy this teenager level nonsense?
"Are you claiming you can measure art?"
This is absurd. DXO is a broad, generalist, imperfect measure of imaging devices, and paradoxically there is broad agreement that the devices that do really well generally are capable of the best photos.
But you can take a great photo with a pinhole camera, from an artistic perspective. Does this make a pinhole camera the best? That is nonsensical.
Don't believe DXO. Don't believe Consumer Reports. Don't believe metacritic or star reviews or RT or whatever. But to claim it measures nothing, or to cite some biased player, is not credible.
> He previously dismissed DXO when the iPhone was beat. Now he wants to simultaneously crow about the iPhone taking the victory while claiming that he totally doesn't care about it anyways.
He wasn’t crowing about it. He was complaining people were taking about DXO scores at all because they’re a sham.
I mean the fact they sell cameras alone means they’re not unbiased.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/09/22/dxo-ratings-are...
Wait for real camera reviews.