Are Apple Fanboi's overtaking HN | Hacker News Reader

Are Apple Fanboi's overtaking HN

10 pointsthrownaway12324 comments

Over last few months I have observed a significant Apple bias on HN. and I am not alone http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/06/03/some-tips-to-improve-the-civility-on-hacker-news/ .

An ongoing weird discussion is how Apple is leading employer among CS grads. In fact Apple hardly funds any research or tries to be visible among students. Frankly most of Apple's innovation are in Design and UI and not at all in engineering. The low latency Google search infrastructure or Amazon Web Service or Facebook's Scalability are engineering marvels and not an iPad [it is a design marvel but not an engineering one], even underlying kernel for Mac is borrowed.

In reality Google, Facebook, Mature Startups[twitter, etc], Microsoft [big hit since they pay well and hire engineers as "Program Managers"], Trading firms [Black Rock, D.E. Shaw, etc.] are most popular. No engineer in his right mind cares about coolness of Apple brand. I also rarely see researchers from Apple at any CS conference (WWW, SIGIR, VLDB) while there are thousands of Citation for some of Google's prominent papers PageRank,GFS,MapReduce and countless in IR/Machine Learning.

Another funny discussion is how 150K is an unbelievable salary for mid level Google employee. Any person who has been near a good CS university [from where Google typically recruits] would know that it's a realistic figure.

Apple hardly cares about giving engineers/researchers (outside Apple) a wet dream with their contribution as much as they care about doing what matters - build stuff that people are willing to pay for. They care about that so much that it's evident with their brand realignment from Apple Computers to Apple Inc.

"No engineer in his right mind cares about coolness of Apple brand." -I am sorry, we must've missed the survey that day on HN

"I also rarely see researchers from Apple at any CS conference (WWW, SIGIR, VLDB) while there are thousands of Citation for some of Google's prominent papers PageRank,GFS,MapReduce and countless in IR/Machine Learning." -Haha, you are comparing Apple to Orange literally here. Apple completely is a consumer need (hint: people who are willing to pay money to solve their problem) driven company and it's pretty evident - just take a look at the new Apple Tv (sure it's not technically impressive, but they listen alright).

And iPad? -Show me a company from your list that has an unbelievable focus on executing something so well. There's much too fragmentation even at Google's Labs. But Apple somehow works perhaps maybe because of the sheer control of Jobs and that may be all the difference. Remember, the iPhone is no easy feat and that wouldn't have happened if Apple hadn't first started work on iPad. So, in some weird way, the iPad gave seed to iPhone which made iPad possible. And dismissing iPad outright as a design innovation alone would imply anyone could've done it (hey, remember JooJoo Pad?).

I am by no means an expert/hardcore fanboy of Apple but your thesis seems to be spread too thin - from your salary discussions, it looks like you are basing your whole line of argument based off a few TC articles. And besides - what kind of recruiters are offering 150k at universities?

A few reasons I think Apple has been on HN more:

-Apple is a very successful company. As this is a board related to startups/business it seems like we can all take a few lessons from them. (I know they are a large corporation... but they also champion a few things that many startups on HN do such as minimalism)

-Apple is starting to increase it's market share. Personally I didn't own a Mac until 2 years ago but in all honesty I enjoy it so I am more prone to read articles about Apple. (Also... is it a sin to be a fanboy of a company? I've always been confused by this mindset EDIT: I don't mean that I am blinded by some "Apple is God" mindset, but I don't see anything wrong with liking a certain companies products whether that's Google, Microsoft, Apple, or something else)

On a side note I think your view of "engineering" is a little narrow. An entire computer system inside a device 9 inches high, 8 inches wide, and half an inch deep seems like a pretty significant engineering feat to me. Why should design and ui be excluded from the category of engineering? Currently I'm a CS major at Stanford with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction which means I work a lot on user interfaces, and I would still consider myself an engineer.

I'm pretty positive about Apple from at least 3 perspectives:

1. I think Apple makes great products, and I own several of them. Apple operate in a space where making great products is pretty difficult, and great products are thus pretty unusual.

2. I develop for the iPhone, and I find the experience generally pleasant. I've developed for other platforms, and found those experiences often a lot less so.

3. I'm the informal support guy for various friends and family. In my experience, those with Apple products tend to need less support. So I'm pretty clear, if asked, that it's in my interests and theirs that these people also get Apple products.

Fanboyism suggests a degree of tribalism -- and a lack of rationality -- that I don't recognise in any of the above.

I think you're a little late on this one; PG has a few essays bordering on fanboyism.

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