How I Got the Google Voice/App Store Story Wrong | Hacker News Reader

How I Got the Google Voice/App Store Story Wrong

daringfireball.net

79 pointsbarredo25 comments

That's the right way to address mistakes. Gruber could have said nothing of the error, or he could have turned on his source. Instead, he took the time to investigate the error. That's class. Journalists take note.

+1 for admitting screwed up, -10 for laying it off on his single source. Why didn't he second-source it, like real journalists do?

I can't imagine well-sourced rumors are all that commonplace about a company as secretive as Apple. Probably you have to go with what you're given on the rare occasions you get precious little anything at all.

I could live with that, if Gruber didn't make a point of serving up "claim chowder" every time someone else rushed to print a juicy tidbit without checking the facts. If you are going to throw stones...

I agree that in general Gruber has well-researched and thoughtful pieces. I would have more respect for his retraction if he didn't spend most of it telling me why it wasn't his fault.

"But, trust me, it was AT&T’s decision."

and then

"My source [...] was wrong."

You're implicitly giving a lot of credit to the stories he calls out as 'claim chowder'. They're pretty much always unsourced bs speculation from hacks and trolls who would never call attention to their own mistakes.

Not many real journalists have even one source as reliable as Gruber's has been.

Is a leak like this something that a journalist could get a second source for?

Absolutely, that's why they get a second source. But you can run with a single leak as long as it's positioned as such and you give the other party a chance to respond. I don't recall how it was mentioned in the original article.

Daring Fireball has taken a huge credibility hit in my eyes in the last couple of weeks. It's been approaching TechCrunch-style speculation and histrionics.

Yes, he deserves points for for admitting he was wrong - it takes a big person to do that. Personally, however, I would have preferred to see the articles not written in the first place until things were a bit more clear.

Perhaps this is inevitable when your blog suddenly becomes a significant source of revenue?

Suddenly? DF has been around for years, and it's been Gruber's only source of income since 2006. The irony of bitching about histrionics...

Dude, he's a single guy writing a blog, and it's still a personal blog by most standards. That is, most of his posts are just him linking to things he thinks is cool, whether or not it's Mac-related. When he blogs about things sources have told him, it's still one guy saying "Hey, my friend told me this." He's very frequently right, but he's not an Apple employee and he has to rely on people.

Approaching TechCrunch-style speculation? Seriously? He wrote two small blurbs about this Apple/AT&T thing, and beyond that left it completely alone, except to admit when he was wrong. Meanwhile, the rest of his articles/links have been as good as they were since I started reading him two years ago.

Am I the only one thinking this is all rather convenient?

As any good PR team should do (and I know Apple's are excellent), after the big backlash they experienced over the GoogleVoice debacle, they are now slowly but surely turning it around.

OK, I am cynical, but using the old "you didn't understand my inflection" to win an argument is something I used against my sister - when I was 10.

Also, "according to both Apple’s and AT&T’s responses to the FCC inquiry, AT&T in fact played no role..."

So we're just taking their word for it? Did they provide any evidence that this was the case?

Companies don't lie to the FCC. They will carefully phrase their answers, but they can't be caught telling an actual lie.

So yes, we can take their word for it.

Just keep in mind that their statements will be crafted to maximize what you think they mean and minize what they really mean.

An example I digged up recently about a privacy policy: "Examples of how we use your data: [very reasonable usage]". Doesn't say that that they don't use your data for other purposes. You just got tricked by a lawyer.

In the Apple AT&T case, they clearly say that they didn't chat about the Google Voice app directly. But they also admit that AT&T is telling Apple that in general, apps that consume bandwidth are not to be approved, and any app that does phone while using AT&T's network is no-no. So technically, they may not have discussed the particulars of Google Voice, but Apple may feel like they are doing AT&T's bidding without having to actually talk...

Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Sure, they may not have had a conference call where AT&T said "Jobs! Kill the Google Voice app!", but it's not like there aren't other ways for the message to get across. Competition with AT&T is the simplest and best explanation for why it was canned, and I would be very surprised if it was shown to be anything else.

Props to tptacek for his comment a few weeks ago, when discussing this exact issue: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779099

He nailed it.

A great example (seemingly effortless on Gruber's part) of integrity & accountability in journalism. Thank you.

I don't see why so many people congratulate him on admitting that he made a mistake.

He got it wrong. He admitted it. Congratulations in order? No. It seems to me that it's a fairly natural way to do things that doesn't require a back pat, or are we really so arrogant?

Empirically, it seems that pundits who make mistakes rarely admit it. Therefore, admitting it is evidence that he's got more integrity than most. (Or, of course, different readers, or a different mental model of what his readers care about, or something, but whatever it is it seems to produce similar results to integrity.)

Corollary: To increase the integrity of your site, all you have to do is make some mistakes, then retract them a few days later. :)

Overall the letters sent to the FCC doesn't not explain why Apple removed other Google Voice 3rd party apps from the app store around this same time. They were approved and in the store to use in the Spring, but once all this Google Voice hoopla occurred they were removed?

Still fishy to me!

Oh....so, the app isn't rejected...it just.....hasn't been approved. Ok, you've won back my trust apple!

Any chance this was Apple's way of disseminating misinformation to track down a leaker?

Sounds like he got a call from a lawyer.

So ATT don't say which apps Apple approve. It's simply that app store managers have to guess which apps would annoy their only phone connection supplier

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