Do you have a refutation for the articles's words? Or is this simply an Ad Hominem? Compare and contrast to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2370547, which is just as scornful but also logical.
Here's another post about a photo-taking application earlier this week:
Personally, I disagree with Gruber: Facebook and Foursquare seem to be evidence that people will gladly give up their personal data in exchange for a "social" experience. But whether Gruber is right or wrong is not the point I was responding to, it's whether Gruber would hypothetically like the app if it was hypothetically bought by Apple.
This is irrelevant to what he's saying now. Even if he does like everything Apple does and does hate everything Apple doesn't do, appealing to his bias is the textbook definition of an Ad Hominem:
An ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem,
is an attempt to link the validity of a premise
to a characteristic or belief of the opponent
advocating the premise.
In that case, dismissing him because of his bias might rob us of a valuable insight.
In fact, the way I read flyt's comment is that flyt actually agrees with Gruber, but is predicting that if Apple were to have something to do with Color, Gruber's cynicism would disappear.
Unless I'm misunderstanding flyt, this was in no way an ad hominem argument.
It most certainly is ad hominem. The premise of Gruber's post is approximately that, based on the latest information we're learning about it, there's something distasteful about Color or its value proposition to consumers. The original commenter seeks to discredit Gruber's implied argument by suggesting he's an Apple apologist, that his industry analysis is not based on facts at hand but by inherent biases. This is right in the sweet spot of ad hominem. Just read the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on ad hominem to confirm.
Regardless, it's certainly poor form and disappointing to see so highly upvoted.
(You really should do "Who's on first?" sometime. :-)
I wonder how much that cost them...
I'm also curious what how his response (or others') would have been changed had Lisagor shot an ad for them. But, as a data point, Gruber hasn't linked to at least one of Lisagor's ads. (The 3D one for jawbone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exm981pbrJg)
So, I guess it's like Color in that it uses pictures, except that it's different in just about every other way.
In fact, I don't think flyt is claiming that this wasn't the reason for Color's funding. flyt seems to merely be noting that, while Gruber sounds cynical and disapproving in this post, Gruber would probably approve of and attempt to justify the product if Apple were to acquire Color.
However, I assumed (possibly incorrectly) that somebody would suggest that insulting the author in a thread purportedly discussing the author's words is an indirect way of discrediting the words.
I could be wrong, in which case I would suggest that such a comment is not contributing to the discussion.
The time I question someone's reputation is when they appeal to authority themselves. For example, if I were to write "I've been in business for twenty years, take it from me that where startups are concerned, _____," then it's perfectly appropriate to point out that I haven't worked in silicon valley.
After all, my reputation is part of my argument, so questioning it is questioning my argument. Other than that, if I say something about business, arguing that I boast of being a Socialist says nothing about whether my words about business are useful. If you "take them with a grain of salt," you are the one who may be missing out.
This principle is not new to HN. Paul Graham wrote about it explicitly in his essay "How to Disagree:"
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Have a look at what he has to say about DH0, Name calling, and DH1, Ad hominem. You may not like the National Enquirer, but if they were to write about a startup, it should be possible to disagree with their suppositions without resorting to questioning the piece solely because they published it.