The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
marco.org
marco.org
> "At medium brightness, my iPad (3rd-generation) battery fell from 73% to 56% while I read the review on it."
I... I think I love Marco Arment.
A great way to start my day, thanks for the chuckles, Marco.
He is leap years better than Gruber and Daring Fireball. His posts are witty without being cynical, and he's frank without being rude.
He also has much more to say on entrepreneurship (given his first-hand experience with the App Store).
(Note: I don't dislike it, I just take him for the biased source he is.)
This is the way to handle it. Gruber is what he is. The fact he spends so much time writing about Apple is both why you should read him if you're interested in Apple (because he's got the time, the knowledge and to a degree the access to have some genuine insight) and why you should be slightly sceptical about what he has to say (because it's almost impossible to spend that much time looking closely at something and not end up taking a side).
Plus he's not exactly secretive about his views. Anyone who has read more than 100 words he's written or quoted should be pretty clear about where he's coming from.
Sadly, he's utterly vapid and agenda-driven when talking about Android and Google, or writing snarky one-liners responding to criticism of Apple. I'd love to get a feed of Daring Fireball with just the longer pieces.
You’re in luck: http://daringfireball.net/feeds/
> A feed containing only the longer, feature articles (like the “old” DF feed) is available as a less-frequently-updated alternative: http://daringfireball.net/feeds/articles
A big part of the element not being discussed is money. Less people who use Apple products probably means less page views for Daring Fireball. I don't think it was a coincidence that the focus of his enmity has turned from MS to Google since Android became a threat to Apple's most financially successful products.
The same goes for Marco. I expect him to have a bias towards Apple and developers because he makes his money off of Instapaper for iOS and he is a developer.
Gruber is a very talented writer but we all can be colored by how we get our paychecks. I will say that he amuses me which is rare among the blogging cynics.
Gruber was writing snarkily in a pro-Apple manner for years before it was his source of income.
Marco has written pretty intelligent posts about his decision not to pursue an Android app on his own, that would be a very good read for any entrepreneur.
I don't want to hold Apple's feet to the fire since they're not alone. Google, Apple, MS and a whole host of other companies are doing the same.
>Marco has written pretty intelligent posts about his decision not to pursue an Android app on his own, that would be a very good read for any entrepreneur.
I understand Marco's decision and I may be wrong about him. The problem for me is that everyone I know will rationalize their opinions and how they make money. I have a hard time believing that Marco is the exception to the rule after reading his blog for two years.
It's possible to think that the evaporating middle class is a bad thing, without thinking that the solution is "more tax revenue and more government {operations, spending, regulation, etc}".
Whenever you think the answer is "get the government to help fix it", you do not fully understand the question.
I'm talking about this:
Google Joins Apple In Push For Tax Holiday
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-29/google-joins-apple-...
White House Unmoved By Apple’s Offshore Cash Problem
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/white-house-unm...
It’s seems to me that this is the main driver here for Apple.
He also has an Android app for Instapaper.
He wrote the code for the API the app uses and runs the servers (or hires someone to) that API runs on, plus it was developed in partnership and with his agreement so I'm guessing he was involved in the design.
Did you even read my comment before clicking reply?
Or Jim Dalrymple, who in my opinion, took the on the role of official Apple apologist for the 5by5 Network when Gruber left.
He also has much more to say on entrepreneurship (given his first-hand experience with the App Store).
He was also the lead developer behind Tumblr during its rise, which I imagine involved some entrepreneurial thinking.
As for Tumblr, Marco was also a co-founder! I think he has much more to say about businesses than Gruber, who often analyzes businesses by comparing them to Apple.
[1] http://lee-phillips.org/music/whoIsTheDick/ [2] http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion
I wonder how Baio would feel if I downloaded Kind of Bloop and offered it here, free for the taking? Of course, I would put it through a little bit of filtering, to “transform” it first. Would that be fair?
You're using the rhetoric of a middle schooler.
(That being said, I agree with your point that someone who's unabashedly part of the Apple PR machine isn't a good source for unbiased Apple news/criticism/feedback.)
My "middle school" passage that you quote was meant as a parody of Baio's arguments that, at least in my judgement, amount to the claim that a trivial modification of someone else's original artistic work gives you the right to distribute the modified work. Out of context it might sound juvenile, but it was meant to goad people into thinking about his claims of "fair use".
"calling people names": Where in this thread did I do that?
"assuming the worst possible motivations": I'm puzzled by this; can you be specific?
"blowing off a - in my eyes - honest criticism": You actually read my piece and think that I said that Baio deserved to be sued because I don't like his music? Really? Because if you think the criticism is "honest" you must agree with this reading, which is off the wall. Since I never came close to saying that, how is the criticism "honest"?
"spamming your site here": I include a link to something I wrote instead of repeating it here to make my point. Is this against some kind of HN guideline? Is everyone who does this "spamming", or just me?
"derailing the conversation": I didn't mean to. I did not introduce these topics, but was replying to a thread started by others with something that I thought, in context, was relevant and interesting. But I can understand if it doesn't seem exactly on topic - neither was the thread, not started by me.
"reality check": Apparently your term for your opinion, in the form of a series of baseless accusations.
If you want to write about being decent online, you need to write more clearly and less muddled. And if you feel like something you've previously written is relevant, link it, but don't contort too hard for a connection, because non sequitur reasons - like the one about Apple fawning over him - read like spam rather than someone trying to be part of the conversation.
"presuming that he dug for dirt instead of maybe following conversations": I presumed nothing; he himself linked to the article that I claim he used disingenuously. He told us where he got the "dirt".
I notice that you don't seem to try to defend your other claims, but I'm having some trouble making grammatical sense out of a few of your comments. You seem to be complaining that my writing is "muddled", but I can't be sure, because the very sentence where you are trying to do that is a syntactical trainwreck.
I thought you might have had a point about me not being on topic, but the upvotes on the comments you are complaining about give me some reassurance.
Who would you choose?
Disclaimer: This is in no way meant as threat of any kind of harm to Grubber or anyone else. It is simply a hypothetical thought experiment.
It didn't bother me that he was wrong. It bothered me that he called everyone an idiot for using a stylus on an iPad. This is the kind of person who will criticize sooner than give thought. I would not want to read what he has to offer or be around him for any length of time.
This is one of many posts of his site or his Twitter account.
He treats us to this deadpan irony:
"it’s a good opportunity to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading List, which Apple invented completely on their own."
That clearly puts the lie to your assessment.
> This is not a quick read, so it’s a good opportunity
> to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading
> List, which Apple invented completely on their own.
</pedantry>
But my real problem is how he responds to his criticism. On several occasions I've challenged his arguments or asked him to elaborate via Twitter. His response is usually to get angry, make some kind of sarcastic remark at me, and treat me as if I were antagonizing him. It's an incredibly childish response. It's as if anyone who tries to debate his points is not only wrong, but a dick as well. Frankly, if his is unwilling to accept critiques and entertain a discussion, why does he even blog? More importantly, why should I read him?
Now, who reviews the reviewers reviewers reviewer?
...was what did it for me.
He jumps on a hot topic and gets the page views.
You're not from around here, are you?
UPDATE: His site is ad-supported. It was just blending in a little too well.
It's in the top banner, to the right of his header/nav. It's just that one of the current ads is a shade of brown almost identical to his own.
Is the oft-mentioned decline of HN a bunch of tiny cuts?
In that sense, the review-of-the-review indeed packs much more density-of-gratification than the review did. If the gratification density is to be reflected in the points value, then the points are justly apportioned.
[1] I am basing this purely on the word count and the fact that NaNoWriMo requires 50,000 words to classify something as a novel; I have not checked to see how actual novels fare against this goal.
Plus, comedy will almost always do better than a review.
And this article (without reading it) sounds really like he jumped the shark.
Satire and parody are generally reactionary.
Make of this what you will.
It think this review-review is Marco's way of saying that he knows he's expected to comment on the new OSX and everyone should just go read Siracusa's review. Plus it was funny.
edit: typo
> This is not a quick read, so it’s a good opportunity to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading List, which Apple invented completely on their own.
Oh so sweet.
Page 8
Finding out that it got Game Centre integration is actually pretty interesting. Providing developers an example of the API in a working program is also a nice gesture.
I bet you anything most OS X devs reading this review that plan on integrating Game Centre in their own Mac game fired up Chess to see it in action.