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Comment by pixelbath | Hacker News Reader

I was reading this, thinking, "wow, this guy sure seems to love Apple."

Then I read this: "As a pundit, I'm supposed to explain how the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. But I can't. The iPad really is The Big One: Apple's reconception of personal computing." To which I thought, "translation: 'my fanboyism gets in the way of rational thought.'"

THEN, I hit the bottom of the article, and realized what I was reading. John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Apple's unofficial mouthpiece, writing another fluff piece for Apple.

This is how Apple fanboys roll.

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Pretty defensive response. It's hard to see how you could interpret the evolution of Apple's products since Jobs and OS X and the iPod and the iPhone and now the iPad have taken root as anything but extraordinary. You kind of sound like a hater.

Nah, I think the devices are great. Apple's got a solid OS platform on three different types of devices.

I see how it changes personal computing, in that it turns users into pure consumers of content. I mean, that's it. You can use a few apps to do this or that, but the iPad is primarily about consumption. I don't know that this is a "revolution," but it is certainly a step.

It doesn't change personal computing for me, but I don't passively consume content all that often (being a designer and developer).

So, maybe John Gruber pinned me right on thinking it's a glorified iPod Touch, and I'm not a hater; I just don't see what the big deal is. Maybe I've never found a device that made me breathlessly extol its virtues?

Depending on how you count it, it's the 2nd computing platform where "pure consumption" is slick and worry free. The Web may have been the first. (Though popups were no picnic at first.) There is no reason that content creation isn't possible -- Apple's just not doing that right now.

Check out music related apps. There's a lot of possible use of the iPad for content creation there.

I bet that the mobile device landscape will have a lot of parallels to the early web.

Another fluff comment about "apple fanboys". If you want to refute fluff, use substance. I thought it was less adoration than it was exploration of process -- and context for where the iPad is now.

The conclusion is not really valid though, given the rest of the article, because it is really a big iPod Touch. It's got all of the iterations of the iPhone OS (including app store and 3g) baked in from the start. It's hard to argue they started with some minimal core when it's got a 3 year old OS.

This time Apple "rolled" (what a hipster dufus term btw) much differently.

John Gruber is an interesting writer. He seems to have access to sources and facts that most people don't. He actually is a reasonably decent writer. Yet his conclusions come out of left field, and always in favor of Apple.

The sad thing is I think Gruber would be a good writer for all things not Apple. But his ridiculously strong Apple bias makes it hard to stomach. After reading Gruber, Paul Thurrott seems like a bonafide Microsoft hater.

> He seems to have access to sources and facts that most people don't. He actually is a reasonably decent writer. Yet his conclusions come out of left field, and always in favor of Apple.

This supports the theory that "Jon Gruber" is a pen name for Steve Jobs. Have the two ever been seen in the same room together?

All the time.

He's writing for Macworld.com. He didn't ask to get posted here. What do you want him to do?

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