Many shortcomings of products aren't seen with first impressions. It's only after you've used it for a while that you begin to notice little things (or big things too).
It's like watching a movie or TV show twice. Sometimes, on the second time around, you'll notice expressions or jokes that were completely missed.
Regarding reviewers, there's simply too much ass-kissing that goes on. Lord forbid that a reviewer point out an obvious problem. And it gets worse with online reviewers, who aren't trained journalists and where the writer often is the site owner and knows that a bad review is also bad for business.
Not that magazine reviewers are any better. I often detect a softening of criticism, such as the use of "little bit" or "could be better" or "slight."
Look how long the bait-and-switch advertisers continue(d) to do business in U.S. photography magazines.
I'll give the online reviewers the benefit and say that they simply were too excited to review a new product that they didn't fully flesh it out before sitting down in front of their computer and writing their review.
And I also agree that the perceived demand for a new digital device is often the cause of incomplete products. Look at Canon -- at one point, they were releasing firmware so quickly for the 10D that you couldn't keep up with it. And one firmware update disabled some user cameras, so another firmware update had to be quickly issued to undo the unintended effects of a previous release.
Well, that's the rule, not the exception, with computer devices. Get it out the door first, get the money and then fix it as problems arise.
Recently, I tried to install some utility software on my wife's PC and damaged the FAT table so severely that I had to have another hard drive mailed to me with rescue CDs.
