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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

Color me surprised to read another frothing fluff piece for an Apple product from arch-apparatchik Gruber.

Doubling the display density of a laptop screen qualifies Apple for the Nobel Peace prize now, or something.

So? He likes the display. So do I. It's awesome. When you read a Gruber article you know what you're getting into before you even read it so I don't see why anyone would complain.

The difference between Gruber writing about the things he enjoys and someone else who say, loves Free Software or something or even another Apple lover, is that Gruber can write and is an excellent storyteller (the two don't always have to go together by the way).

I'm not sure what your critique is. He's not a politician or TV host getting paid by the bad Apple to write/say nice lies about them... He writes about Apple, and people visit his website to read what he writes. It's that simple.

If you disagree with any of his points, please post them in this topic. But don't go dismissing it just because it's from arch-apparatchik Gruber.

As he himself has written on his blog, in exchange for this kind of PR he gets invited to private meetings inside Apple.

Does he? What are you referring to? The Mountain Lion presentation? Apple invited loads of journalists to that, they just also included Gruber there.

http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion

And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR.

Sure. And? What’s your point? Apple met separately with loads of journalists. I don’t see anything special about how they treated Gruber.

Yeah you're right. An exclusive, face-to-face meeting with the senior vice president of marketing is nothing special. I'm sure things like that don't influence his writing about Apple at all.

That meeting happened in 2012. Gruber's been writing Daring Fireball since 2002. http://daringfireball.net/archive/

I've been reading him on and off the whole time. Once upon a time he was actually worth reading but I don't even bother now because I can practically write his tech-Pravda pieces in my head.

I agree.

Also, I wonder how many more rMBP are sold as a result of people reading this? (assuming the would-be buyer is sitting on the face between a regular non-retina vs retina macbook)

The thing reads like a praise-review hidden beneath a veneer of typography fetish.

How many of these journalists are known to be critics of Apple, or write about them in a more direct, non-ass-sucking way?

They invited correspondents from The New York Times. Don't tell me the iEconomy articles wasn't the biggest blow to Apple this year (after the ruling that they had to say Samsung wasn't cool enough to copy them, of course!).

..and from the very same article:

"It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one."

He wasn't the only one getting the special treatment, they were communicating to tech journalists.

Why the hate, dude? Can you point out anything that is actually wrong with the piece?

I could quote specific claims from the piece but it's just too annoying to enumerate all the breathless reasons he gives why this is yet another Apple product that makes everything that came before it trivial and irrelevant.

I'm fed up with this kind of PR masquerading as tech journalism. He's not a journalist. He's part of Apple's third-party marketing arm and he gets compensated for writing this kind of trash with exclusive meetings etc. at Apple.

So you can’t. Noted.

You don't even read what he writes, right?

I started reading him in the mid-2010's but his utter lack of objectivity lost him a place in my RSS aggregator long ago.

If I want to read perceptive analysis of Apple products I prefer to read real, objective journalists like John Siracusa.

You are welcome to your opinion, but on your suggestion I just went and looked at John Siracusa's blog and for this entire year we have: 1: a discussion about various ways you can read his Mountain Lion Review. 2: How to cook pasta. 3: summer movies. 4: summary of 2011. That's it.

He writes also on Ars. In 2012, he has posted a single article, his review of Mountain Lion.

Might I ask, and I am being completely sincere, what DO you read regularly for "perceptive analysis of apple products" that goes beyond once a year OS reviews?

To be honest, since I work all day writing iOS apps on a Macbook and have numerous iSquare devices I'm mostly content to form my own opinions.

John Siracusa has weekly podcast on 5by5 network, Hypercritical[1]. That's where most of his "perceptive analysis of apple products" come from.

[1] http://5by5.tv/hypercritical

So would you be willing to go back to 9 pin dot matrix for print? That's kind of Grubers point. Printer scaled from 144 dpi to 1200 dpi quickly, while displays stagnated at 72-100 for a ver long time. We're finally seeing movement on that front, and eventually it will be really hard to go back to the blocky pixelated 100-130 dpi screens. I know I can't.

How many of these blogger/journalists have broken real stories? Future of Mac Pro anybody? Sure, they like to name drop and whisper about 'informed sources' but the truth is they have nothing of substance to report. Everything is gossip, speculation, or parroting of press releases.

I don't think Gruber would ever claim that he's a journalist. Nor that he's in the business to break stories.

He brings a certain wit, and skill at writing, to observe all things Apple. His article are traditionally read by those who love the platform - it's unclear to me why people who aren't enthusiasts for the Apple platform would read his blog - as that is the audience his articles are targeted at.

Back when he started 10 years ago, he was writing about the Apple-the-underdog, and there was a certain quixotic element to his articles. Nowadays, with Apple being the 2-ton beast that it is, that sense of rooting for the challenger has gone, and with it a bit of the ideological purity that comes with being a member of the downtrodden class.

I for one, appreciated the longer essay that he wrote on the MacBook Pro. I think his essays are his greatest strength, wish he did more of them.

  Nor that he's in the business to break stories.

Indeed. I think this write is what it seems to be his review of rMBP. So he waited more than one month and half before delivering his take on the new laptop. Hardly seeking to break stories.

I would agree. He's essentially writing opinion pieces and preaching to the choir. Nothing wrong with that and his audience enjoy his work regardless of objectivity.

I think any half-decent tech blogger or journalist should be fighting for court room seats in San Jose right now. That's where the story is.

200+ DPI displays actually do make everything that came before trivial and irrelevant. So take that point and put it in your pocket and let's all move on.

Let me just be straight up.

I'm normally an Apple skeptic and I work primarily on Linux.

That said, I don't think anybody else would've bothered to make retina display available to the general public until Apple forced their hand and made it available themselves...

That said, I don't think anybody else would've bothered to make retina display available to the general public until Apple forced their hand and made it available themselves...

The technology was coming, it was just a matter of time. Apple are in the unique position of controlling both the hardware and the software, which makes it far easier for them release this in a nice way where the OS and much of the software works well as soon as they made the hardware available.

Lucky Apple, always getting there first with the inevitable.

Sure, it's always coming. Many of us were waiting for someone to make an "iPhone" for a decade. I used to explain to people at work that I shouldn't have to carry a Palm and a phone, for example. How long would we have had to wait if Apple didn't build it? Another 5 years? I'd like everything a half a decade sooner.

Apple gets ripped for not being innovative. What they really do is identify when good technology is ready for mass consumption then ship it. Remember when they went with USB? I was a PC user back then, building my own computers. I waited years before USB became widely adopted on affordable motherboards. Within 12-24 months I'd say Apple's entire product line will be Retina. Hopefully, there'll be enough buzz that it catches on with the Dell's and HP's.

"I used to explain to people at work that I shouldn't have to carry a Palm and a phone, for example."

You didn't - instead, you could have carried a Blackberry, for one.

It's been a matter of time for 10 years now.

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