Rear View: Reflecting on Two Years of McCann Tech

Originally Posted: July 31st, 2021

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My best advice is that I write for an ideal reader, and that ideal reader is me. I try to write things that I myself would love to read, and would be jealous of, thinking “Damn I wish I wrote that.”

—J.G.

Rear View: Reflecting on Two Years of McCann Tech

Two years ago I wanted a professional email address, so I bought a domain name. While setting it up, turning it into a website was easy. I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured why not? It was an impulse decision years in the making. Arbitrary anniversaries aren't something I care about, but two years seemed like a good time for some reflection. This isn’t a re-view, it’s a rear-view. ^[1]

Objects in mirror are more reflective than they appear.

Inspiration and Origins

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I hate that question for many reasons ^[2], but mainly because I never had an answer. Even by 18, I was clueless. It took a few more years and a few college major changes to figure it out. It’s only in retrospect that it was obvious.

The iPhone came out when I was in high school. I remember reading the pre-launch rumors ^[3], watching the keynote, and hating my friend who got his on day one. In the summer of 2007 I made several trips to the AT&T store just to hold it, and confirm it was real. For this particular 16 year old nerd, it was life-changing. I wanted to know everything about this magical device and the people who made it. I read everything I could find, and became familiar with the websites and writers that were worth my time. The iPhone, and technology in general, consumed my brain like nothing had before.

School and career decisions faded away, and my obsession took over. I spent my time reading the work of people like John Gruber, John Siracusa, and Walt Mossberg. I poured over the latest tech news every day, while trudging through classes that didn’t interest me. I never liked English class or writing for school, but writing about technology? That didn't sound like work. That sounded like fun.

It didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t a natural writer. I remember opening a lot of text editor windows, writing a few sentences, and deleting them. If I managed to write anything, it was terrible, cliché-filled dreck. This didn’t stop me from dreaming, though. Thanks to the magic elixir of teenage hormones, in my mind I was already one of the greats. In reality I never seriously tried. The idea of being a writer was more fun than actually doing it.

I made the common mistake of judging myself against other’s best work. I couldn’t stop thinking about all of the people doing it better. The clash between my inflated ego and my terrible first drafts left me distraught. I thought I was going to be, at best, a pale imitation of the writers I looked up to. Rather than put the time and effort in, I gave up. I was too late. I would never be good enough.

I eventually went to college for IT and networking. I didn’t have the courage to pursue writing as a career, or even as a hobby. It took me years to figure out that I should follow my interests, even if it's not all I'd dreamed it would be on my first day trying.

“Words hard. Fixing computers easy.“

-Me in my early 20s, probably

It’s Never Too Late

Years later the itch to write was still there. After setting up my website, I was faced with writing my first real post. It was hard because didn’t have any writing chops. Every word sounded wrong, and every sentence felt clunky. Creating anything seemed impossible. The doubts returned, but they didn’t bother me this time. Establishing my little corner of the Internet was the motivation I needed. I was living my dream.

At first, no one paid attention besides a few curious friends and family members. My first posts ^[4] were terrible, but I still had a bit of ego fuel left. I had a few lucky breaks, getting on the front page of Reddit or linked from a popular website, but people quickly moved on to the next piece of trending content. I was focused on getting attention rather than improving my skills. Needless to say, that wasn't a path to success.

As time went on I got a bit more confidence, and I learned an important lesson: First drafts are always terrible, and ruthless editing and revision are the only way to make something good. I don't know how other people write, but that's how it works for me. Making a first draft is torture. Editing it, improving it, and sharing it is what I enjoy. I'm lazy, but I'm also a fussy perfectionist who's never satisfied. When it goes well it's all worth it.

It took a while to realize trying to write like someone else wasn’t going to work. By then the process of writing, editing, and sharing had hooked me. I just needed to find something I could make my own.

This website in February 2020. The images, the descriptions, the logo… the horror!

Niche Found

My early posts about Apple didn’t catch the world on fire. I slowly realized that I wasn't Walt Mossberg, and people didn't care about the world's 8,857th-best MacBook Air review. I still wanted to be an Apple commentator, but I didn't know how to stand out in a world full of them. I had to do something different, so I decided to write about what I knew best: Wi-Fi, Ubiquiti, Eero, and other networking topics which interested me.

I also started taking the work more seriously. I spent more time researching, editing, and taking my own pictures. I made a new logo and revised the look of my website. I thought about how things should be laid out, and figured out how to make clickable table of contents and footnotes. I thought deeply about what I'd want to read, and how to make things that are useful.

I drew inspiration from John Siracusa’s OS X reviews at ArsTechnica, and Federico Viticci's iOS and iPadOS reviews at MacStories. I marveled at their depth, accuracy, and completeness. I knew I’d never be able to match their work, but it motivated me to do better. I stopped considering what other people thought, and focused on making things I could be proud of.

Articles as Software

I wanted to make something definitive. My first real attempt at this was my UniFi Wi-Fi Access Point Buyer's Guide. Planning, researching, and editing it turned into an obsession. After I posted it I kept improving things, fixing errors, and removing unnecessary parts. It dawned on me that guides like this don't have to be static. Constant iteration and improvement turn them into a kind psuedo-software. Bug fixes and feature updates can be part of the writing process.

In early 2020 as the pandemic worsened, I switched to working from home. Being forced to spend so much time at home allowed me to focus on writing more. Writing soaked up my free time, serving as a welcome distraction from the state of the world. I stopped trying to fill up my post archive, and started to get a better idea of what I wanted to make. I reviewed the UniFi Dream Machine, which was the first product review I was happy with.

I mostly gave up on my Apple commentator dreams, but I wanted to prove I could do it first. The result was my 2020 11-inch iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard Review. I was proud of how that came out, and it allowed me to move on. After that, I tried new things like product comparisons, and focused on explaining things rather than expressing my poorly-worded opinions. The peak of this wave was a post that was brewing inside for a long time, and took a lot of effort to make: How Wi-Fi Works: From Electricity to Information.

Now, I’m pretty set in my niche. It took over a decade of ignoring my interests, a lot of false starts, and one impulse decision. It took a few negative comments, a lot of bad posts, and countless iterations. I've learned to never be satisfied. I'm just now learning that I don't need to be so hard on myself. Finding a typo in an old post isn't the end of the world, even if it feels like it at the time. I'm having fun, making things I like, and that's what matters.

What's Next?

So what’s next? More Wi-Fi reviews and guides. More comparison charts. More mesh kit reviews, speed test, and FAQs. I want to make things easier to understand, and products easier to compare. I have read a lot of bad articles, and a lot of "reviews" which regurgitate specs, show some screenshots, and call it a day. I hate seeing reviews like that, especially since I've written a few myself.

I’ve seen a few people take fairly direct inspiration from my posts, and I love that. I don’t feel any sense of ownership, but it's still hard to imagine serving as inspiration for others. I’m not the end-all-be-all networking or Wi-Fi guru, but I have a better sense of how to write things that are worth reading. I’m hoping to develop that more as time goes on.

I still look up to the writers I grew up reading, and people like Tim at SmallNetBuilder. I wish there were more websites like his. The best thing about the Internet ^[5] is that nothing is stopping you from making something better. If you want good things to exist, sometimes you have to roll up your sleeves and make them yourself.

I hope that one day when I'm old and my memory is gone, I'll search for something, land on this website, and think “Damn, I wish I wrote that.”

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Footnotes

1. I do not have kids, but I do have dad jokes. ↩︎
2. The worst thing about that question is it implies the job you have is the most important part of who you are. It's a bad question, designed to make you feel bad for not having already figured it out. That's how it felt to me, at least. I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. ↩︎
3. Radu Dutzan does a good job of summarizing the pre-iPhone rumors here. What's harder to capture is the feeling I had at the time. Everything felt possible. ↩︎
4. If you want a laugh, look at my very first post: 2018 MacBook Air Review ↩︎
5. Second best thing about the Internet? No one knows that you're a dog ↩︎