For anyone wondering why Daring Fireball is able to garner a lot of attention (and for that matter, almost any article pertaining to Apple) I refer you to two studies:
- When, Why, and How Controversy Causes Conversation by Zoey Chen and Jonah Berger
- What Makes online Content Viral? by Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman
Results from the first study reveals that controversy significantly affects likelihood of discussion. The second study comes to a similar conclusion but fleshes it out a little more eloquently:
"Importantly, however, our findings also reveal that virality is driven by more than just valence. Sadness, anger, and anxiety are all negative emotions, but while sadder content is less viral, content that evokes more anxiety or anger is actually more viral. These findings are consistent with our hypothesis about how arousal shapes social transmission. Positive and negative emotions characterized by activation or arousal (i.e., awe, anxiety, and anger) are positively linked to virality, while emotions characterized by deactivation (i.e., sadness) are negatively linked to virality. More broadly, our results suggest that while external drivers of attention (e.g., being prominently featured) shape what becomes viral, content characteristics are of similar importance (see Figure 2). For example, a one-standard deviation increase in the amount of anger an article evokes increases the odds that it will make the most e-mailed list by 34% (Table 4, Model 4). This increase is equivalent to spending an additional 2.9 hours as the lead story on the New York Times website"
Apple is well known for controversy and Gruber is known for his snark (though I found this article to be insightful speculation) - the two seem to really complement each other and a lot of their success comes down to their behaviour. So for anyone who feels inclined to write another "Why is Gruber on HN?" post, that's why.