A few weeks after this review went up, I had an email note from T3's editor Steve Jarrat.
Subject: T3
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 18:56:46 +0000
From: Steve Jarratt <sjarratt@futurenet.co.uk>
To:
editorial@mm.com.au

Hi there. Steve Jarratt here from T3 mag. Sorry you loathed and despised the first issue. It's got better since then.
We've cut the swearing (not big or clever) and have improved the direction and focus of the mag.
Oh, and the latest issue sold well over 40,000 copies so someone out there likes us.

Steve J.

I didn't think 'loathed and despised' quite described my ambivalence in the review below, sorry Steve if it did. I prefer to think my dissapointment showed. I've looked at the 'new' T3 and it reads pretty well. If you believe new 'gadgets' can point to trends and twists in how we're developing new technology, it's worth tracking down an issue of T3.


Tomorrow's Technology Today. Yep, I'd call it T3 if I'd saddled it with that subtitle too. I saw the ads in .net and the other Future Publications and nearly sent of the subscription, sure that this was my kind of magazine. Having waited nearly four months for a newstand copy, I'm glad I saved my money. This isn't the magazine the ads promised (Fantastic hardware, great photography, best writers!) and I reckon it's an editorial stuff-up.
I've got plenty of time for irreverent cynical product writing like Richard Longford's in .net. It's clever and balanced between 'gee whiz' and scepticisim. T3 isn't clever or balanced. The technical stuff looks like it's written straight from the PR companies backgrounder material, and saying fuck in every review isn't irreverent even if it's supposed to be adolescently endearing. There's no sense that the magazine staff know what they're talking about, ("Cor, that's a big one innit guvnor!") which rubs off on the reviewers. Why would you trust them?

It must have been a concern as an editorial stance, because there's a nervous short letter, almost certainly written by someone at the mag since this is the first issue, although there was an advertising dummy put out.

Why do all you 'yoof' magazines insist on filling your pages with blasphemy and expletives? The English language has more than enough words for recommendation and criticism without resorting to base vulgarity.
Mr. N. Emerson, Co. Armagh

True, the English language is a thing of beauty: yet, somehow, when Toshiba has just delivered a 55-inch television set to the offices, we can't help but go, 'well...fuck me'.

The best bits of the magazine are the 25 or so pages at the back of the book with short reviews and big pictures called 'Objects of Desire'. The rest is pretty confused and has the feel of 'the kids let loose in the toy shop'. The approach will make it difficult to sell the magazine to the advertisers, I'd suggest that it is hardly appealing to advertisers of the high end product it features. The ads in this issue reflect that, and are are pretty 'British mag' ordinary. One though I have to mention because it's like the famous pissing baby ad spread in the first WIRED. You know that the advertising agency listened to the magazine's ad sales pitch for this one....

 

That's the kind of magazine editor Steve Jarratt is building and I'm sure Future have done their market research. So, that just means it's not my kind of magazine and given the delay in getting this 'New Technology' magazine, the gadget's aren't all that new anyway. So unless you like the approach and subscribe, my advice is to give T3 a miss. There are sample T3 pages on the website and in Adobe Acrobat format on the FutureNet site if you'd like a relatively cheap peek.

Maybe I'll buy the next one just to see if they really are that silly (or if I'm wrong). Then maybe not, which is probably what you'd expect from an indecisive aging slack-arsed gadget freakin' tosser like me.

FH.

M M

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