Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Gruber jumps the shark

whydoeseverythingsuck.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 120 posts

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#111

Post by foljs »

jdminhbg wrote: post #40
pohl wrote: post #8

iPhone critics have seldom let facts get in their way. Essentially, anyone who has criticized the iPhone, or presumably Apple is just someone not dealing with the facts. Hank, your critique falls apart when you switch what should be an existential quantifier with a universal quantifier.

No, the error there is Gruber's. "Americans rarely get any exercise." "French people rarely bathe." If Gruber doesn't want it to be taken as "all iPhone critics," he should specify.

No, the error is people not understanding "generalization", a very useful tool in any conversation and one of the pillars of logic itself.

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#112

Post by foljs »

watty wrote: post #17

One Apple blogger accusing another Apple blogger of being a fanboi? Does this really need to be top of HN? Edit: Can you at least reply when you down vote? I know this was voted to the top of HN so it deserves to be there.

no, we can't.

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#113

Post by tomica »

(all from gruber in 2007) http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote

Web Apps as the Route for iPhone Development

[...]

It’s insulting, because it’s not a way to write iPhone apps, and you can’t bullshit developers. It’s a matter of spin.

[..]

If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it. Don’t tell us how lucky we are and that it’s going to taste delicious.

(compare to anything from gruber on web apps in 2010) http://daringfireball.net/

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#114

Post by kscaldef »

KirinDave wrote: post #104
kscaldef wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the gay community has a monopoly on the use of the misspelling "boi", if that's what you're trying to suggest. It's certainly not the context in which I first saw it commonly used.

I don't think you understand what fanboi originally meant. Go read the definition and think about it. "Mac Fanboi" was originally part of the "Macs are for fags" school of insults.

No, I guess I don't. Could you provide a link to the definition you have in mind or some discussion of the etymology of the term?

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#115

Post by col_kurtz »

sirsean wrote: post #87
col_kurtz wrote: post #80

Gruber continually comments about topics unrelated to why people are reading his blog. It's like, great dude, you like Stanley Kubrick. Great dude, you're a liberal. Great dude, you like baseball. No one gives a fuck! Write about apple and tech. DF is too popular to digress and distract into a personal blog like it still has only a few thousand hits a day.

Yeah, what a waste. You should cancel your subscription to save all the money you wasted by reading those 20-word snippets of text. What? It's still free? And people are still allowed to write about what they want to, and not what YOU want them to? That IS weird.

Because staying on point isn't a civil rights issue, jackass. This is why most blogs aren't considered real journalism and require, as Jobs said this week, "oversight" to be considered fully legit.

If Walt Mossberg suddenly digressed into his favorite movie or what he likes for dinner while he's reviewing a product, I would call that unprofessional.

So what it means is people like Gruber are pseudo-professional journalists who are mixing amateurish diary entries about their personal life and topics they don't know about along with the commentary that actually brought them alot of hits in the first place.

And don't even get started about "free". Because it's not subscription but he gets paid thousands through advertising, but I'm not "paying for it"? Just like more legit journalists do. And if something's free I can't complain I suppose...

case closed.

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#116

Post by jacobolus »

tomica wrote: post #109
jacobolus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, well even if you think that having a customizable search-engine backdrop picture is a killer feature, can’t we at least agree that Gruber’s snarky joke implying it’s just as gimmicky as Bing’s non-customizable search-engine backdrop picture is still just a joke, and not really proof that he’s biased against Google in general?

have you seen him doing those kind of snarky jokes about apple? ever? what about (back in the day) microsoft, (recently) adobe and (since the january battle call) google? all the time?

> have you seen him doing those kind of snarky jokes about apple? ever?

Yes. Numerous times. I’m not really in the mood to go skimming through the several months of archives it would take to find a good example.

To be honest though, Microsoft is much easier to ridicule, because they have much looser control over their messaging, and so it’s not terribly surprising that a generally Apple-oriented commentator could consistently poke fun at them.

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#117

Post by EpiStemIc »

col_kurtz wrote: post #115
sirsean wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what a waste. You should cancel your subscription to save all the money you wasted by reading those 20-word snippets of text. What? It's still free? And people are still allowed to write about what they want to, and not what YOU want them to? That IS weird.

Because staying on point isn't a civil rights issue, jackass. This is why most blogs aren't considered real journalism and require, as Jobs said this week, "oversight" to be considered fully legit. If Walt Mossberg suddenly digressed into his favorite movie or what he likes for dinner while he's reviewing a product, I would call that unprofessional. So what it means is people like Gruber are pseudo-professional journ…

"Gruber continually comments about topics unrelated to why people are reading his blog. It's like, great dude, you like Stanley Kubrick. Great dude, you're a liberal. Great dude, you like baseball. No one gives a fuck! Write about apple and tech. DF is too popular to digress and distract into a personal blog like it still has only a few thousand hits a day." An epic fail col_kurtz because you were overly snide and because you failed to see the elucidation to your gripe within your own missive.

"Because staying on point isn't a civil rights issue, jackass" ... not only vapid, but again, anomalous. If staying on point is of no consequence why get soooo perturbed about it?

Does Gruber randomly digress during a product review? I personally have never noticed any such skylarking, besides, even if he has occasionally or even if he did habitually, so what? that would be his MO and thus would partially explain why you either enjoy his discourse or not, evidently you don't.

"most blogs aren't considered real journalism". "people like Gruber are pseudo-professional journalists" "legit journalists do" (as in get paid?? I think??)

It is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff, obviously, just because a writer is paid to write does not imply that that writer is good (look up the word "good" in a dictionary as it covers a lot of ground, seriously look it up) and just because a writer is not paid does not automatically deem them to be bad (see dictionary for "bad")

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#118

Post by betageek »

irons wrote: post #100
betageek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with the gist of this, but it's not just the geeks that are getting fed up with Apple. Apple's core "black t-shirt wearing design hipsters" user base are very annoyed with the Adobe/Flash situation which is causing them even more cognitive dissonance.

Can you provide a wee scintilla of evidence that the constituency upset about Apple's position on Flash overlaps meaningfully with Apple's "core user base", either for the Mac or the iPhone? I would very much like to see it, and I don't.

Apple have several core user bases, "creatives" have always been one of them - i'm not implying it's the main one in this age of plenty they're enjoying at the moment but it's seriously influential. The old cliche of hipster Mac users came about for a reason. Adobe makes many of the products these people rely on to make a living, so seeing Mum & Dad fighting is always going to be hard.

My main point is that Apple are pissing off large chunks of previously loyal customers and betting the farm on the mass market - definitely a good move if they remain king of the hill but also an opportunity for shrewd businesses to service those disillusioned communities. Ditto Gruber's blog.

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#119

Post by ahrencode »

My uninvited opinion posted on Hank's blog, and adding here (based on Gruber's recent post pointing here): Gruber is a smart, measured and often witty commentator, but if you want him at his irrational best, look not for Apple apologia, but his vacant WordPress sneers and attacks (themselves stand-ins for animus towards the GPL, I think).

(here's my comment on one such instance: http://ahren.org/code/bit/john-grubers-15-minutes-of-schaden...)

Re: John Gruber jumps the shark

#120

Post by DanShockley »

jacobolus wrote: post #116
tomica wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you seen him doing those kind of snarky jokes about apple? ever? what about (back in the day) microsoft, (recently) adobe and (since the january battle call) google? all the time?

> have you seen him doing those kind of snarky jokes about apple? ever? Yes. Numerous times. I’m not really in the mood to go skimming through the several months of archives it would take to find a good example. To be honest though, Microsoft is much easier to ridicule, because they have much looser control over their messaging, and so it’s not terribly surprising that a generally Apple-oriented commentator could con…

A recent example of snark against Apple. Gruber had generally seemed to think that has been reasonable in deal with Gizmodo and the acquired iPhone. However, when Jobs was reported to have said that Apple had to stand by it's core values in dealing withrge situation, Gruber said he wasn't sure what core value that might be, other than "don't fuck with us." ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/02/jobs-slide ). That sounds just a but snarky to me. You can read this snark againt Apple on the current front page at DaringFireball, not far from the one about Google. It's not unusual for Gruber to write snarky things about Apple. People who say otherwise: a) don't read Gruber and have no idea what he says and are thus unqualified to comment on his content, or b) do read him, but are so biased against him that their selective memory taints their ability to make objective comments.
Post reply on HN