I was thinking similarly. The tone is incredibly casual considering the implications of the decision on both the company and society at large. There are basic spelling and grammar errors for goodness sake. I'm not criticizing, I just find that intensely interesting.

for me it was that one guy calls it "the best messaging app" , then federighi implies that it s not really and they d need a lot of effort to make a marginally better competitor.

Also how they admit that a busy messaging service "does not cost us a lot to run", but HN constantly defends the 30% tax for app store storage space

so yeah like HN, except in HN this would start an epic flamewar "how dare you say that"

I thought most of it was a little surreal to converse about innovating that way, as though innovation was specific. No one here would ever say, "what we have to do as HN members is innovate. Once we do that, we can make our comments better and draw in more users from Slashdot." I thought the whole thing was fake until I got to the end and saw what Internal Tech Emails was. Then I just thought it was all pretty phoney. That isn't how ordinary people converse. I'd almost think they can walk without their feet ever touching the ground.

What are you saying? That we aren't all super different individuals and are actually in fact a very very narrow window of a specific tech culture? Madness.