Hacker News Reader

Comment by leorocky | Hacker News Reader

There is always a lot of careful insight in Gruber's posts that I like but it is tainted with a type of enthusiasm that doesn't belong in journalism. Even if he is correct, being a cheerleader with liberal praise isn't analysis. It's opinion, and Gruber often reads like an opinionist. Apple is an amazing position to build all kinds of wonderful technology, and Samsung does come across as a shallow copy cat that throws shit on the wall and sees if it sticks, and it's good someone points that out, but Samsung is also really good at being a copycat, and they make amazing displays and their software is getting better even as they plaster it with more junk apps. It's just not so black and white, and to always frame it in such a way hurts credibility.

I've tried in the past to follow Gruber regularly but there is just too much defensive negativity in his posts. I can only check it off and on, reading him every day would make me unhappy.

View on HN

Can we just call a fanboy a fanboy? He'll always frame discussions of Apple in a positive way. Occasionally, he'll have an interesting insight into the Apple ecosystem, but I had to stop reading since far too often he's making little trollish jabs at everyone else.

I also still disagree with this article. This year was a surprising high note in the amount of stuff that came together assuming it all holds up well after you get past the marketing they're good at. We'll have to wait and see if this is a continuing trend for them or we just got lucky this year. I would love to see it continue.

he is an apple-centric blogger writing for his own site. where exactly does journalism ever come in play here? don't think gruber ever claimed to be a "journalist".

"Journalism is a method of inquiry and literary style that aims to provide a service to the public by the dissemination and analysis of news and other information."[1]

Is that not what he's doing? Is he just gratifying a need to be heard or something? I don't think so, it looks like he's attempting to perform journalism as described by this paragraph, and he falls short in some ways.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism

Just because "A is B" doesn't mean that "all B are A." I think it's apparent to most that Gruber isn't a journalist, nor does he pretend to be one.

I agree with you, Gruber's posts are indeed sometimes tainted, but Gruber has always claimed that DF is a column, as he explained in an article [0]:

If asked to describe Daring Fireball with just one word, I would not choose weblog. Rather, I would call it a column. Given a few more words, I would call it as a Mac column in the form of a weblog.

He stated it again in an interview[1]:

In 2002, when I started Daring Fireball, doing a sort of columnist-style weblog simply felt like something I was compelled to do. I could write whatever I wanted, however I wanted.

[0]: http://daringfireball.net/2003/07/independent_days

[1]: http://shawnblanc.net/2008/02/interview-john-gruber/

He's among the most obvious and ridiculous shills out there in the tech world. He's usually not interesting or insightful and I flag his articles 9 out of 10 times I see them. But this is above average for him and I didn't flag it.

It could be edited to half length if you cut out the apologia, but he's brought forward some interesting points that I think are the nucleus of an interesting discussion this time. I actually sort of just wish he posted the quotes from this article without any of his ridiculous commentary.

The other problem is he just doesn't know anything about the industry he's writing on, because he's been a tunnel-vision mac fan for decades.

Current example: just below this article he credits Amazon with inventing a button that connects you to live customer service. The counterexample to that claim is Bloomberg, whose terminals have a dedicated Help key. Striking this key once gets you a help screen, but if you hit it twice someone from Bloomberg calls you immediately. Bloomberg has had that for decades.

credits Amazon with inventing a button that connects you to live customer service.

oh my glob. Willfully misunderstand the world much? He's talking about consumer devices. How many devices in your home that aren't $10,000/month stock terminals have live under-5-second video support?

Maybe he should just learn to write, then, because his statement is totally unqualified. "unique" "no one" and "anything" all appear in this statement. These are words with meanings.

"That’s truly remarkable, and a unique Amazon advantage. No one else has anything like this." -- Gruber

The pumps at the local gas station also have such a button. Should he have mentioned those? A reasonable reader understands that "unique", "no one", and "anything" are referring to the market Amazon is selling the device in.

On your way to absurdism you skipped over a bunch of legitimate prior art in the consumer space, such as the OnStar roadside assistance system (press a button in your car, OnStar service rep starts talking through your radio), or even dialing zero on your phone.

Both of those things you cited are services you pay for. I was not familiar with Amazon's Mayday button (not being a Kindle Fire HDX owner I guess), but it appears to be a wholly free service you get merely by owning the device. OnStar and the phone system are both subscription services.

That doesn't seem at all relevant. That's like saying in a retail store you can ask the retail employees for assistance. The addition of a button to summon an employee does not make it special.

What interests me about this Amazon Mayday button (which I had never heard of before) and why I think Gruber talked about it, is because it's a completely free service provided to owners of a consumer device. It's basically customer service, but it's extremely fast (average of 9.75 seconds to get a response? Wow!) and apparently rather comprehensive too (e.g. helping a customer beat an Angry Birds level) as opposed to being restricted to actual tech support with the device in question. This is why Gruber is saying it's remarkable and unique, and I think he's right.

Just to be clear, I totally agree with you. I was using the gas pump as an absurd example (as your sibling comment pointed out) of another instance prior art. I don't think parent's complaint about the use of "unique", "no one", and "anything" is a valid one.

We can all play the game you're playing. It goes nowhere. Here's a statement from you, above:

"he just doesn't know anything about the industry he's writing on"

Your statement is using hyperbole for effect, but it is false if regarded in isolation as a logical proposition (which seems to be your angle). Gruber's Apple sources are gold and he's very well-connected to an influential Apple developer community. He does not "know nothing".

It's fine to critique him, but be smart about it. He is myopic (Apple, Yankees, Scotch, letterforms, etc. - it can be tiresome), he has a tendency to interpret all Apple happenings in the best light, and he's overly critical of Google.

His writing has a lot in common with sports commentary -- Apple is "his team", and he can be chauvinistic about them, but he's trying, in his own way, to understand the whole league.

That’s a completely different market and completely irrelevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com