Comment by engendered | Hacker News Reader

Comment by engendered | Hacker News Reader

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but because many publications took it and used it to justify the "Apple is doomed" narrative which Marco personally doesn't agree with

Show me one. Just one single example. I'll wait.

EDIT: Chuckle. A mod bomb on this benign post. Cool.

...

You're not going to find one. The hit piece/exaggerated/"doomed" noise is a defensive fiction. Nothing was taken out of context (does anyone actually disagree with the observation that Apple has lost the focus on software quality?). Nothing was exaggerated. If anything the issues with Apple software quality lately have hugely been under-stated: My children all refuse to use the Mac Mini because it is, by far, the most issue-prone device in the house. The iPad now sits on its charger all day.

Marco was sad because his words were used by "the other side". It is as simple as that (as others have said, it's a "tribal" mentality). Criticisms are okay if they're kept in house, but make sure you don't let the neighbors hear.

Which is an extraordinary situation. I can't imagine a single parallel to this where so many are so fearful of upsetting their tribe of literally tens of millions of people. Maybe in North Korea?

Computerworld http://www.computerworld.com/article/2866456/marco-arment-sp...

Fortune http://fortune.com/2015/01/05/how-bad-are-the-bugs-in-apples...

BGR http://bgr.com/2015/01/05/marco-arment-mac-ios-software-qual...

Economic times/india times http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/progra...

WSJ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/05/programmer-ignites-de...

ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-software-may-be-buggier-b...

HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/05/marco-arment_n_6416...

This is what he's talking about. He posts a "hey have you noticed apple software is buggier lately?" and loads (43, according to google news) sites post speculative articles about titled something like "have things started to go downhill for apple???" using him as a source. Sure, it's not literally "apple is doomed" right in the title, but exactly the same kind of FUD

Sure, it's not literally "apple is doomed" right in the title, but exactly the same kind of FUD

BUT IT ISN'T FUD AT ALL. To make it even more comical, several of those posts are from serious Apple boosters (Philip Elmer-DeWitt might as well wear pom-poms while he writes about Apple). Apple software has had serious quality issues, and it is "FUD" to talk about it?

This is just broken thinking. You, in this conversation, are the problem. This notion that any criticism of Apple (such as the fact that they've let quality seriously decline) becomes "FUD" because there is so much defensiveness about Apple.

Not one of those demonstrate what he is talking about. None of them are attacks on Apple. None posit that Apple is doomed. They're tech articles, appealing to a tech crowd, that note that software quality has wavered, which is something that is utterly indisputable.

It's not FUD to talk about apple's software getting buggier, it's FUD to appropriate someone's rant, sensationalise it and then put the responsibility on Arment.

It's the difference between you stating that Node.js has been forked and someone writing "The server-side Javascript community is now torn apart, according to engendered". It's technically true, but it's clear that second one has other implications.

This is Marco's post: http://www.marco.org/2015/01/05/popular-for-a-day

"This morning, my words were everywhere, chopped up and twisted by sensational opportunists to fuel the tired “Apple is doomed!” narrative with my name on them. (Or Tumblr’s name, which was even worse.) Business Insider started the party, as usual, but it spread like wildfire from there. Huffington Post. Wall Street Journal. CNN. Heise. Even a televised CNBC discussion segment."

"Instead of what was intended to be constructive criticism of the most influential company in my life, I handed the press more poorly written fuel to hamfistedly stab Apple with my name and reputation behind it. And my name will be on that forever."

Now, why do you think Marco is afraid of speaking out? Do you genuinely think that he's afraid his relationship to Apple is damaged because it might threaten future business or because he feels he's responsible for these articles?

From what I and others have experienced (and the rest of the article), there's a climate of frustration, not fear, in the Apple developer community – but even in this article, being angry at incompetence doesn't sound remotely as exciting as being afraid of a large corporation. Hence the F in FUD.

> that note that software quality has wavered, which is something that is utterly indisputable.

I would dispute this.

Having been a Mac user for over a decade now I don't feel a particular drop in software quality. The highlight of stability for me (and many others I expect) was Snow Leopard. Yosemite isn't bad — it feels about as good as Leopard, and probably in need of it's own "Snow Leopard" soon. But I don't think Apple software quality is worse than back when we used Leopard, or Tiger or Panther, and so on. Lion was probably the "low point" of OS X software for me.

The ratio of good:bad in Apple software doesn't seem to have changed much. There are plenty of examples of both and there always have been.

I still use Apple software every day for most of my day. And I feel like it's the best it has ever been.

I gave you an upvote to try and offset the flurry. I think you're both right. My sense was Marco did regret writing it not because of fear of a Black Apple planet but rather because it became a tool for people to attack Apple with "If Marco the fanboi is concerned then wow!" So the original author is misconstruing it by representing it as being fear of Apple. And I think you're right that Marco's exasperation wasn't with the "If Steve Jobs was alive" crowd. He was just taken aback because he unleashed a wave of pent up criticism against Apple from others in the tech community who like Marco are generally very positive towards Apple. It was like he signaled to others that it was time to air grievances that had been building.

(For what it's worth I've upvoted your post - not sure why it's been down-voted so much. You definitely made me think and check myself, however having considered, I still feel there's a lot of bad reporting out there. I don't think it's a tribal thing. You made good points though.)

Whilst I don't feel like digging through Twitter for links to poor reporting regarding Marco's article, it doesn't take long at all to find some examples of recent poor Apple reporting.

Here's Reuters claiming that Apple Watch is a "tough sell" because only 31% of Americans (that's 75 million adults) intend to buy it (a product that they haven't touched yet). It's based on a very small sample size, of course - completely flawed - but that apparently won't stop them writing an article about it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/13/us-apple-watch-idU...

That 'study' was then published in many other publications:

http://business.financialpost.com/2015/03/16/apple-watch-may...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2993902/Apple-Watch-...

But that's not all, how about this article from ReadWrite. Apple Watch will disappoint users apparently - not that the author has used one yet. That didn't stop the author from claiming that it's hard to launch apps, unintuitive, etc. http://readwrite.com/2015/03/19/apple-watch-expectations-dis...

If that's not enough, how about the NYTimes reckoning that Apple Watch (and other wearables, too, although Apple Watch is mentioned the most frequently) could cause cancer (original headline: "Could wearable computers be as harmful as cigarettes"). http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/style/could-wearable-compu...

This isn't a conspiracy. Anti-Apple reporting gets a lot of page views. People click on articles claiming that a massive company is failing more than articles about how a massive company is continuing to do well.

"it doesn't take long at all to find some examples of recent poor Apple reporting"

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked. Apple is an enormous company. They have enormous influence, and their products are used by the majority of Americans, if not world citizens. Is it really notable that there are negative stories? Is it not exactly that sort of tribal mentality that makes one react to such banal noise? I see a stupid story and move on, but some seem to really hang onto it and see it as some grievous injustice.

The other poster is dead on when they say that Marco's words were amplified because he is typically so strongly pro-Apple. But from an outsider that is a problem with Marco's words, not with the perception of them. If indeed you have nothing but praise, you do naturally lose the rational actor perspective.

"This isn't a conspiracy. Anti-Apple reporting gets a lot of page views."

And so does pro-Apple reporting. We all have a confirmation bias though, so if you're sure everyone is against you, it's going to seem like it is. There are thousands (millions?) of news reports published every single day, and some cynical take on watches, or profit margins, or ipads or bendgate or whatever are in strong competition with stories about Apple taking over the living room (new Apple TV coming out soon!), building cars, taking on Google, releasing the next greatest thing, putting the Swiss all out of work, making more profit than the rest of the universe combined, etc.

The problem is that the poor reporting does have an effect. Such as my partner's sister deciding not to get an Apple Watch because it needs to be charged multiple times a day. Or my parents refusing to use Apple Pay because their details can apparently be stolen. Or people disabling Touch ID because it can be broken into. Or people disabling iCloud backups because of some privacy article they read (and then losing all of their photos of their children). Or, frankly, people staying on a crappy Windows laptop because they read something about Apple's software quality declining.

I don't care about Apple's bank balance or stock price. But as someone who loves tech, and thinks that tech can improve people's day-to-day lives, I want my family and friends to make informed decisions about which tech to buy and whether it'll help them. Not worrying that their Apple Watch will give them cancer.

Why is the post downvoted to hell?

I have had this happen numerous times, and the rapidity of the downvotes really makes me think it's an automated system -- that now that slowbans and hellbans are pretty widely known and rightly reviled, the mods just flag you and periodically you get a rapid downvote barrage. I guess it is supposed to make me feel insecure about my opinion or something.

I've been much happier with lobste.rs' voting system than HN's. On Lobsters:

1. All moderation is public information.

2. Who invited who is public information.

3. You need to pick a reason for downvoting something.

4. You can undo a downvote or an upvote.

Perhaps because of these properties (or something else), I also enjoy the conversations and community there better.

Frankly, I am annoyed that I can't read what your post said without copy/pasting it into a text document. WTH HN? Don't treat us like children.

It's obvious his post was downvoted for no good reason (as many posts on HN are). By making them difficult to read you're just making it difficult for others to evaluate even what reason it might have been downvoted for was.

(P.S. If you want a Lobsters invite, see my profile.)

Yeah it's fking annoying having the comments go to light gray, ESPECIALLY when downvotes are commonly used as a sign of disagreement rather than "this comment is a troll / abusive". I don't understand the rationale for this at all - just make the title of the comment red or something. I'm an adult and mature enough to actually want to read things I might disagree with.

For anyone using Firefox with Greasemonkey installed, here's a small userscript that will undo some of HN's passive aggressive BS: https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/5b5e413220afb93c9c93

This just dropped by -4 in a ten second span (edit: moments after another -4), essentially confirming the suspicion.

Do the moderators of HN have any comprehension of how completely incompetent they are at what they're doing? HN today is the perfect example of a profoundly squandered opportunity, and it literally gets worse by the day. It has gone from must-visit to "meh...everything else is exhausted".

But I get a little bit of delight imagining these -- and I apologize, but it is the only word that fits -- hacks conjecturing up some philosophy that makes them productive and useful, instead of destructive and futile.

> This just dropped by -4 in a ten second span (edit: moments after another -4), essentially confirming the suspicion.

If I made a comment along the lines of "I think the HN moderators hire hitmen to kill commenters they don't like," that would probably get downvoted very quickly and very harshly. This would not be proof that the moderators put hits on commenters — it just shows that baseless conspiracy theories are not very popular here.

Indeed, that is one boorish tactic of making a banal, sycophantic comment. The use of a garbage strawman really put it into a higher echelon.

However I stick by my observation. The brain trust behind HN moderation, having moved on from their asinine slowbans and hellbans, have gone to something that they think is trickier. Only it's, again, hilariously naive.

Please do not meta-discuss the scoring.

People who participate in this site can discuss whatever they want. Especially when the entire conversation is being roughly, and absurdly, directed.

The fact that you would even consider such an absurd response really sets the bar for HN today.

It's usually worthwhile to read through https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to get a sense of what's appropriate to post on HN.

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