When I look back on the past few months of things I’ve discussed at length on BirchTree, a few things jump out:

1. Magic Keyboard for iPad
2. What gets to call itself a podcast?
3. Stock apps vs third party options
4. Buying into a philosophy when using the iPad

The common thread between all of these is that they all address something that is causing the tech community to feel like they need to get into 2-3 unique camps, and that they don’t want to concede any points to the other camps.

For the Magic Keyboard, I voiced an opinion that the weight is not ideal, and I’d prefer it if it didn’t add so much bulk, but I understand why it’s there and love the product despite that. For podcasting, I said that while I greatly dislike podcasts going exclusive to specific apps, I thought that didn’t mean they ceased being podcasts. For stock apps, I explained the benefits of using Apple’s stock iPhone apps, despite personally not using almost any of them. And with the iPad philosophy, I agreed with the “complaint” that some voiced with needing to buy into one to use the iPad to its fullest potential, but explained how that was the case for all computing platforms, and that was kinda the whole point.

I hope that I am a sobering voice in the world of tech bloggers. I don’t try to write things that are scandalous or are just written to stir the pot of controversy, and I am not on any company’s list for getting pre-release hardware for reviews, so I don’t tend to go viral. I definitely have opinions, and I hope that if you have followed me for more than a few weeks, you have a good idea of what I think, but I try to make sure that my opinions are presented as such; they are my opinions, they are not facts.

I think we need the people who rile things up, the world is a more interesting place with them in it, but I’m just not one of those people.