Gruber has for a long time made his living off of propping up strawmen and beating them down, much to the amusement of his readers. Everyone knows that Leander Keahney and Dan Lyons are insane, only Gruber goes to the pain of proving them so, with little insight or value added to the discussion, other than to incite his audience to gleefully laugh at the stupidity of the 'other'. I can't believe it actually took me so many years to realise this, but he is off my rss now.
As you know, it's easy to get backslapped on pro-Google hn by dissing Gruber, but why not just respond to his analysis instead.
Gruber seems to be right an awful lot for someone so casually vilified. For example, he took a lot of flack here for defending Apple's move to leave flash out of mobile safari. I think enough time has passed to make clear that he and Apple were right.
The anti-Gruber hate looks more like sour grapes every day.
As you can see, I'm being downvoted, and that's fine. Gruber is a polarising topic on HN. I just find that he has long since departed from any actual insight and instead works mostly with snark and misdirection to the point where it is pointless to even discuss his opinions. Perhaps I should be downvoted for the previous post, because it is not pertinent to the discussion, but I felt it had to be said.
Is Gruber right, or has Apple made all the right moves since about 2003? I think the main complaint by people who see Gruber pieces on HN all the time is that they argue that he's just an Apple pundit and/or apologist.
Another way of asking this question is, can you name three times that Apple and Gruber differed, but Gruber was in the right?
Another example, I'm not sure it qualifies, is that Gruber never liked the brushed metal theme and the inconsistency with which Apple applied it to different applications.
Apple did eventually retire the brushed metal theme and is getting a bit more consistent in the styling of their applications. Still some way to go here, too.
Apple and Gruber has generally diverged in how they think the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) should be applied. Gruber has called them out for not applying it as consistently as they did in the past.
But regarding the HIG, it seems Gruber has resigned and is now calling the HIG basically defunct.
I think in general, Gruber is not trying to be right/wrong vs Apple, not trying to offer a strong opinion, except in some unusual cases (see: AppStore rejections). Mostly, he is just trying to understand Apple, and to offer his analysis since Apple is famously quiet and other analysts are often clueless as Apple is a bit of an oddball in the corporate world.
Well, the first and most obvious example is the inconsistency and arbitrariness with which Apple approved or rejected AppStore applications. Gruber was probably Apple's most vocal critic at the time. Apple have improved a lot since, but still have some way to go in that department.
>Another way of asking this question is, can you name three times that Apple and Gruber differed, but Gruber was in the right?
I can.
1. The App Store approval nonsense.
2. The missing white iPhone.
3. Software patents.
4. He's also picked on design choices of Apple with iBooks and believes the Kindle app is better.
These have all occurred within the past year alone. It's fine there are those that disagree with Gruber but I find it best to attack on the merit of what is written and not his bias. It is the easy way out.
> For example, he took a lot of flack here for defending Apple's move to leave flash out of mobile safari
It's been much more than a year since Steve's blog post about how Flash is unneeded because of HTML5, and I am still waiting for the improvements in Safari so that Flash like functionality can be used in web pages. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
I am not holding my breath though, Apple wants to push developers towards apps and not web pages, because they get to make money on every sale and also because it creates a lock-in for their platform.
Even the most cursory glance at real numbers establishes this as irrelevant. Apple's App Store revenues are measured in millions of dollars. Apple's revenues on hardware are measured in billions. They use the App Store to sell more hardware. It's infrastructure with next to no margin.
I think you skipped the other part of recoiledsnake's point about how app sales create lock-in. To me, that is the bigger reason for Apple's focus on apps (and on controlling the content delivered to iOS devices).
That point is a clear but unrelated piece of strategy. Apple doesn't want Flash for myriad reasons before you even get to "maybe people wouldn't build as many native apps."
I think you'd get a chuckle from the Apple brass if you asked if they were worried that people would stop building apps if only they had access to Flash. Of course they wouldn't — the UX and fiscal rewards are unbeatable.
Apple creates lock-in all on their own by providing a solid set of developer tools and APIs, along with UI/UX patterns that work really well. You get some great stuff on iOS that's tough to build, and so tough to find, elsewhere. Flash wouldn't change that — it's general purpose, not specialized to the platform.
It's a bit like saying you don't eat sewage because it's bad for your health. I mean, that's true, but the real reason you don't do it is because you find it revolting to the senses. Apple may enjoy strategic benefits from their Flash stance along the lines of what's been described here. But their opposition to it comes from much more high-level, basic concerns.
Why can't I put a web app in the app drawer on my Android phone and run it as an app without the browser chrome? For a vendor who allegedly does not care about the web and only cares about platform lock-in, Apple sure does spend a lot of resources on Webkit and making mobile Safari a best-in-class experience.
