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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

OT, but I saw this on John Gruber’s site... Showing once again that he is capable of criticizing Apple, especially as pertains to his pet peeves of design inconsistencies and app store approval insanity...

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Gruber criticizes Apple often enough, it just doesn't make Hacker News.

(Though I don't see any criticism in this story, except that he is reporting it, but then I'm not sure what there is to criticize, I don't know how the app got into the App Store in the first place).

Well, you could criticize that the App made its way onto the AppStore in the first place as an example of how arbitrary (and possibly ineffective) the approval process is.

Can you link to the criticism? I only found a two sentence statement of fact that the app was pulled.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/29/itether

He wasn’t firing up a rant, but he mentioned that the app was only in the store for a few hours. But you’re right, it’s not nearly as pointed as quips like this:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/09/29/app-store-ninja-...

Or this skewering:

http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/diary_of_an_app_store_revi...

Herein lies the problem with Hacker News -- raganwald may be a regular, but such a completely irrelevant, bizarre reference to John Gruber has zero place in this story. I intentionally left a counterpoint that got the expected downvotes, but how about there be some consistency.

This coddling of the regular names diminishes this site.

http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

OT -> ‘Off Topic'

Yes, no kidding. Gruber is a polarizing figure on HN (largely because he is an unabashed hyper-cheerleader for Apple the corporation -- seriously, his infatuation with AAPL profit levels, margins, and P/E ratios is hilarious), and you just had to drag him into a conversation having nothing whatsoever to do with him. If the populace of HN didn't recognize your name as a guy who lives on HN, you would be living in negative double digit land.

We should test your conjecture that there's a "pro-raganwald bias." Ping me the next time there's a contentious topic like Gruber on the front page, and we could try three vaguely similar comments: one from you, one from me, and one from a throwaway.

The results may shock me and ought to make for an interesting blog post at the very least.

I suppose it is reasonable to judge such an innocuous observation as "critical" on the Gruber scale of Apple commentary.

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