Comment by trotsky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trotsky | Hacker News Reader

Interesting blog, every entry appears to be a substantial jab at the platform itself... not really just "gripes" as I see them. I am impressed with how dedicated he is to the pursuit, not only does he have a blog solely for his android gripes, but he's also made an androidgripes gmail account as well as a twitter account and a facebook page to promote the blog. It doesn't seem to be possible to find the blogger's name, however, though as an anonymous figure he certainly is quite prolific [1].

I also note that the HN account that submitted this link was created immediately before submitting it, and that's their only activity.

I was considering responding to the flame bait in his closing paragraph ("Is it because iPhone developers are better at user interface design?" etc.) until I realized what I was looking seemed to have about a 99% chance of being corporate sponsored astroturfing. FTC disclosure, Apple?

[1] "Want to install "open" apps on Android? Think twice", "Is Samsung’s New Galaxy Tab Fibbing About Its Figure?", "J-P Teti: The iPad is 99% more open than any other computer", "'openness' considered harmful, said by Google on Honeycomb source code", "Everything that can go wrong with Motorola Android tablet does", "Android is sure a Wi-Fi connection dropper", etc.

Although the blog makes legitimate individual points (apart from the flamebait closer), I think you're 100% right that the overall motivation is a thinly disguised fanboi polemic.

* a 99% chance of being corporate sponsored astroturfing*

This is an interesting possibility, but at the same time have you ever read the comments on gizmodo?

Apple doesn't need to astroturf when there are fanbois just -dying- to tell everyone how good their platform is and how poor the competition does. This blog could just easily be the product of such a fanboi, just with a bit more promotion, money, time & writing ability than the average gizmodo commenter.

While I do agree that many Apple fans are quite eager to score points in favor of their preferred platform (just as many Android fans are as well), I still stand by my theory. Have you read the text of the rest of the articles, gone to the twitter and facebook pages and read the postings? In my opinion both the tone and volume is highly unusual, and to my ears the arguments sound exceedingly carefully framed in a way that is unusual outside of guerilla PR.

Obviously I can't say for sure, readers need to make up their own minds.

Maybe. There's certainly a lot of FUD there.

A lot of it still seems pretty adolescent though, like the post wholly about the "Gmail" icon or throwaway lines about "14 years old’s feeling".

The Twitter account looks like someone is curating it but the facebook page just looks they enabled Tumblr's "Post to Facebook" feature and walked away.

I guess there's no way to be sure.

"FTC disclosure, Apple?"

Paranoid, much? Even if you believe Apple has any need to do something like this, I think we can agree it would probably be done in a more subtle and effective manner than sponsoring an "Android gripes" blog that essentially nobody reads.

>Implying that AAPL could only operate a single astroturf site, instead of legions.

This is pure tin-hat thinking.

Given the number of Apple fan boys out there, and how friendly the media as a whole is to their cause, do you really think they would view the potential benefits of astroturfing as greater than the potential damage it would do to their brand?

It's not a matter of good or evil. It's a matter of smart vs. dumb.

Astroturfing is almost always found out, and usually quickly, and comes with a very nasty backlash. See, for instance, the recent fuss over the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 astroturfing.

To me, the most jaw-dropping post was about WiFi notifications. Android is perfectly capable of doing what he wants, it just seems whatever phone he was looking at didn't have that feature enabled at that time. That "gripe" is pure troll.

It would be like me complaining that an iPhone kept annoying me by showing me nearby WiFi networks everywhere I went. You can flip the switch on that, too (and with the exact same level of effort). Complaining is just being willfully obtuse and insisting the rest of the world should set their defaults the way you want them.

Gruber's just picked it up with no comment other than a strange piece of snide: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/04/07/android-apps-loo...

(What is he implying? Assuming sarcasm - he is saying that it's not a coincidence but that some unnamed other parties claim it is. I don't really get it but it seems like he's getting too lazy to actually offer an extended argument these days)

Gruber picked it up because he recognized a kindred spirit. As for the snark, it was just today's way of saying that Apple and iOS are overwhelmingly better than Google and Android. I don't read anything else into that.

His column is barely readable nowadays. He picks all the stories and "small" snippets that try to position android and google as a failure. No explanation. No argument. Nothing at all.

And since there are no comments, he totally paints a one-sided story.

This is super paranoid and somewhat disappointing. Occam's razor says that it's just an opinionated blogger. Apple has a huge marketing budget and no known history of astroturfing (unlike, for example, Sony). They don't need to do it, it's not their style.

Anyway, the author of the blog has a response: http://android-gripes.tumblr.com/why

Edit: Imagine this blog was titled "iOS gripes" and talked about unjust bannings from the App Store. Would you suggest that Google was astroturfing?

I'm not saying he's an astroturfer, but if I were to run an astroturfing campaing, this is pretty much exactly how I would do it.

Not commenting on the blog's choice of subject matter:

Making a Gmail / Twitter / Fb / Tumblr / etc. is standard for any website. There's nothing unusual about creating accounts on these other services as it's arguably an essential part of 'doing business' online.

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