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Comment by W0lf | Hacker News Reader

I still cannot fathom how one can take anything seriously when it comes to the author talking about Apple, given his biased opinion regardless. Maybe it's just this irrational and unconditional excitement. In any case my mind just has problems with this setting, every time an article from Gruber comes up here, even though I own lots of Apple products myself and quite like them. Yeah, I think it really is the lack of objectivity that just makes me feel uncomfortable reading his stuff. Your mileage may vary though.

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What exactly do you mean by bias. What makes an opinion biased, in this case, as against an opinion you simply disagree with?

I suppose uncritical support would be an indicator, maybe that's what you mean by "regardless", but Gruber has never been shy about stating very clearly and forcefully when he disagrees with or doesn't like something Apple is doing. Just recently with the Safari UI redesign for example, or the problems with some of the desktop cameras.

My point exactly was that I don't even necessarily disagree with his opinion. However, I would not trust anything he's writing either because of his bias. And with bias I mean the same bias a mother may has to her child if it's the brightest and most beautiful human being there is. Of course any good mother would think that. The same with him and the next new Apple product: Of course it's the best, most thinnest, most magical device there is. I cannot take it seriously. That's the point I was trying to make.

If he uncritically praised every Apple product without question, sure, fine, but as I and others here have pointed out that's simply, obviously, provably not the case. There are many, many examples of where he has seriously disagreed with design, commercial and technical decisions Apple has made and said so very clearly. That's a lot of why I read his stuff.

He loves Apple for sure, but he's definitely honest and calls out the problems as he sees them. E.g., he trashed the camera of the Studio Display.

And Gruber's attention to the little details is unrivaled. What other reviewer is going to notice and call out Apple's keyboard for getting shiny over time because of the particular kind of plastic they use?

I think there are no unbiased opinions. With every reviewer, you have to know that person and take that persons perspective in mind. Just depending what your typical usage szenario is, can make a huge impact on a review.

With Gruber, I do think he is honest. His strength is, that he can give a good view, what might have been the reasons for the design decisions Apple took - as any device is the consequence of design decisions. Of course, he also has a ton of experience in the Mac world, so he can very well compare to all the other Mac models.

I feel like Apple was in a different position at the point at which Gruber came about. He played this 'independent' reviewer who 'understands' Apple and explains them in a world of sleazy sensationalist tech/gadget reviewers. His minimalistic website and personal take felt appropriate and sensitive to the people who work on these devices. It felt like he was defending things that felt worth defending.

Apple has become what it is today as the years have passed though. So the background around this guy has shifted. His writing and quality has remained the same, but you're right - it has become harder and harder to take him seriously. In part that is because he's defending positions which don't need defending anymore.

People read Gruber precisely for his subjective insight, not for objective reviews.

Right, but the entropy is literally zero in my opinion.

Apple ads have always been popular. Their marketing surpasses that of fashion, cars etc.

Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of benchmarks and discussions that show that in various configurations, the M2 chip is actually slower than the M1.

Gruber, though, gleefully repeats that "Apple says it's faster".

that is a pretty broad statement that is not supported by most benchmarks. The only one I know about is the SSD speed on the base 256GB SSD. Beyond that, the M2 processor has been faster than the M1 in every test that I’ve seen. Even when throttling, the M2 is still faster than the M1 which throttled in similar situations. Perhaps there are some very specific scenarios, but how representative are those of actual scenarios?

Benchmarks are like you say - until you hit thermal throttling, which multiple reviewers have complained about:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/m2-macbook-air-revie...

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