indefensible: john gruber

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/11/cameron

asshole

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/11/green-day-rip-this-joint

yuppie

(PEDANTIC NOTE: House style here at Daring Fireball is to capitalize the second words in “iPod Mini” and “iPod Photo”, on the basis that they’re proper names, despite the fact that Apple’s marketing style is to use lowercase.)

you write a blog

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/08/campus

lol

Really beginning to think that Gruber needs his own thread, but I don't want to be the one to start it.

The latest Talk Show podcast, 35-ish minutes in. They're discussing the new iPad cover and he's practically on some kind of nerd interpretation of the old "Magnets? How the fuck do they work?" routine.

So I dare to visit his website today because of his verbal spastic attack, and one of the links is to a news story about the actress from The Wire with his heartfelt and not at all patronisingly semi-racist comment of "That’s a shame, but I’m glad to see her alive."

― James Mitchell, Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:36 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/08/campus

he is a champ at this glib commencement speech bullshit

arsehole

The rate card for his weekly sponsorship is now $5,500 -- $286,000 a year if it sells out at full price.

http://www.businessinsider.com/daring-fireball-2011-3#ixzz1OltvorIZ

not bad considering he just lazily throws up links most of the time.

Don't think of iCloud as the new MobileMe; think of iCloud as the new iTunes.

It also means iPhone users with iPhone-using friends and family no longer need SMS. I’ll cancel my SMS plan as soon as this ships.

I don’t think over-the-air backups or media syncing are coming soon. Wireless networking just isn’t fast enough. I’m not talking about Wi-Fi syncing over a local network to iTunes running on your Mac or PC — that may well be coming soon, but it wouldn’t solve the “how can these devices be ‘post-PC’ if they require a PC?” problem. We’re not talking about why the iPad needs a USB cable; we’re talking about why it needs a PC, period.

haha, i'd forgotten that. glad that there is a place to document gruber's predictions with the same mixture of obsessiveness and gloating that he reserves for everyone else.

"we’re talking about why it needs a PC, period"

http://daringfireball.net/2005/06/shuffling

The music on FM radio pretty much totally sucks

where did you read that? in a rolling stone you bought at an airport?

I’m biased, insofar as I consider Apple’s strategy more appealing than Google’s. But that’s because my interest lies in having the best possible user experience — the best-looking UIs, the lowest-latency responses, the smoothest animation, the most elegant designs. I share that interest with Apple. Google’s interest is in reaching the largest possible audience. That’s why I chose, at the outset of this paragraph, to say that I find Apple’s strategy “more appealing than”, rather than, say, “superior to”, Google’s. Apple’s strategy is correct for optimizing the quality of the user experience. Google’s strategy is correct for maximizing the number of users for its apps.

haha liking this thread no matter how redundant it is - keep em coming

Will be interesting to see how this pans out. Not sure what it means if it’s true that their initial target is Mobile Safari specifically, not mobile WebKit in general. My guess is that it’s simply a result of Mobile Safari being so far ahead of the Android WebKit engine.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/17/apple-buy-phone-industry

yes, but it would be illegal under US, UK and EU law, so what's your point?

Has he always been so mean-spirited? I don't remember him being so spiteful just a few years ago.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2011/06/17/come-on-gruber-youre-better-than-this

url a bit generous but otherwise, oh snap

Gruber seems to be right about things a lot of the time, though that's easy when the people he disagrees with are prone to willfully ignoring the fact that Apple is making hundreds of millions of dollars doing what it's doing and is preposterously unlikely to make any sudden changes in strategy. Also less of a raging, belligerent asshole than you might expect.

Also wrt the "buy whole cell phone industry" post that is sort of following up on an earlier link about how Apple could easily have enough cash in a few years to take itself private. That is, in an industry where firms are frequently assessed by their market cap or their VC funding or what have you, Apple actually has HUMONGOUS FAT STACKS OF CASH.

agreed that this guy is a bit of a dick, he has unsavory triumphalist tendencies, and thinks various middlebrow stuff is the height of human achievement - however as to his core competency, i do believe hes one of the best writers on design out there today

Chock full of SEO crap: My comment on Marco Arment's comment on John Gruber's comment on David Pogue's comment on Google's Chromebook.

Has anyone read the marco aren't Phish post?

Damn autocorrect: Arment

however as to his core competency, i do believe hes one of the best writers on design out there today

he doesn't really do this any more though?

Got sick of his blog a while ago - but I have to admit his comment on the Chromebook is kinda on point, why does it deserve a "good try!" sentiment?

Gruber's predictions that don't come true are still reasonable and make sense when you evaluate the facts available at the time. He can't rely on his mysterious inside sources all the time, you see.

You don't have to believe me, just ask Gruber. He's always Gruber. I mean, right.

he doesn't really do this any more though?

― caek, Sunday, June 19, 2011 6:18 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah its not most of his posts, but when he does write a long piece i feel like he really gets where design is at re todays technologies

also hes a v good clear writer

chrisdejabet Chris De Jabet by daringfireball
Just got complimented on my @daringfireball shirt at the Apple Store. Because I'm handsome.
18 hours ago

*stabs twitter in the face*

thought it was really out of line when this guy shot mr takagi

i really like gruber

which mac writers do you guys really like? i could use some more feeds in my google reader

Jean-Louis Gassee

totally forgot abt him, thanking u

feel like this post embodies many of his less good qualities

http://grab.by/cBWF

how long till some shill links him this thread and ilx gets ~fireballed~

one can dream

You are trying to view American McCarver on a shitty browser. Won't work.

Note that the UI screenshots are even set in Helvetica, not Arial. Some of the best evidence of good taste at Google I can ever recall.

duly noted.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/28/google-plus-videos

guh arial and helvetica are like exactly the same shit stfu already

A friend shared this blog post on Google Reader: http://stu.mp/2011/06/dear-yahoo-hire-me-as-your-next-ceo.html

I’d buy the NYT (for a mere $1.5bn!) and recruit John Gruber to be Editor in Chief of the “Yahoo! News” division.

I cried a little.

Oh god, until I read that blog post in full I thought that was a joke, like forcing him to cover stories about Microsoft.

Cringely's been half-nuts for years. Now I think he's full-nuts.

well, he's got a point

I guess it's not as bad as how he keeps referring to Paul Thurrott as a 'dick' purely because he writes about Microsoft.

cringelys nutsness is the best part of his shtick, guy is not afraid to think big

I don't think Cringely's being nuts there! Even if Jobs is showing pictures of full server rooms, it's not like he's shown pictures of the entire interior of the facility, and it's completely possible that it's not that densely populated.

yeah but thats not some weird conspiracy designed to intimidate rivals, its just building out future capacity

p sure this dood killed caylee http://horace.dediu.usesthis.com

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/11/cameron

asshole

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/08/murdoch

"congratulations to the tories"

wish someone would put this asshole in a room w/paul thurrott and then they can mutually annihilate each other

You are trying to view American McCarver on a shitty browser. Won't work.

maybe i've just been developing for legacy browsers too long at this point, but this kills me. laziest shit ever - you run a SPORTS BLOG ffs

actually i think i hate sub-gruber wannabe sycophant ux doods even worse than gruber proper - so much hot air about making software "empathetic," so much whining about not getting paid to be a thought leader, so much referring to "marco" by the mononym...

http://i.imgur.com/e7obs.png

Read a blog post about grids. Saw a movie about Helvetica. Short. Terse. Sentences.

TS: john gruber vs lieutenant gruber from 'allo 'allo

Note that the UI screenshots are even set in Helvetica, not Arial. Some of the best evidence of good taste at Google I can ever recall.

RAGE!

oops already posted X:

it cannot be mocked too often. the star was a nice touch.

I listened to some of his most recent podcasts during the week and was astounded by his and Dan Benjamin's claim that it gets 800,000 downloads an episode.

Err, what? Maybe it was some kind of belated rip on The Daily's iPad app but I think they were being serious. There's no way it's true, though.

i think it's more like 400,000, but i could be wrong

800,000 was either the WWDC or post-WWDC download count iirc, but again, i could be wrong

It's like his amazing high trafficked and revolutionary new sports website, which is actually a fucking tumble blog about baseball where you click on the notes to find less than half a dozen people 'liked' each post and fuck-all anybody reblogged anything, because why the fuck would you.

I'd rather read David Beckham's views on fonts an touch interfaces.

are you kidding i'd TOTALLY read david beckham's views on fonts and touch interfaces

Dean Martin’s recipe for hamburgers. Sounds perfect. ★

nice commentary.

Sounds like... salted meat and a glass of bourbon

http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2008-March/001163.html

-J.G.

I give it a C-. Not up to the high standards of open source assholery established by the likes of Linus Torvalds. Canonical example http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/

Yes, in August, Apple is going to start selling Lion on USB sticks. But I think most of us really will be able to get by without them. That’s why the USB stick installers are going to cost $69, a $40 markup over the App Store download. Apple wants us to go download-only.

Rather than try to one-up their selections I’m going to one-down them. Herewith, then, are the Top Ten Worst Westerns. Observations inside.

You can tell he’s right on most of these, from the posters alone.

god what a bore.

dude is like a demigod of suburban consumerism, yelling so loudly about inane bullshit from atop a mountain of 'slightly used' apple products. good links sometimes tho.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/20/scrollvetica

Scrollvetica.

SCROLLVETICA

not to mention scroll reverser has been around since day 1 of the lion betas

does it set yr scrollbars in helvetica

Marco Arment is way worse; he's like distilled Gruber shit.

lol i like both of them

It's a beautiful, simple and clean way of moving your fat fingers along the edge of the touchpad.

"Elegant" is the term I hate most from the doucherati.

helvetigant

One of my friends followed Marco on Ping for some reason. Marco's musical tastes are something to behold.

Lotta Phish, I guess.

john gruber, newspaper pundit:

Just look at how uncluttered the print edition of The Times is, and how it’s designed to emphasize what is important.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/27/news-site-design

http://www.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/27/nytfrontpage/scan.jpg

so uncluttered.

It would be much more simpler and eleganter if they made an app to display one story at a time and enabled users to three-finger swipe between pages, and they should hand over all their ad revenue to Apple for enabling such simpleness and eleganticity.

I am trying to find a way to explain how the print version isn't really cluttered, but it's really the textbook definition of clutter

When you get paid to say things, it's hard to stop saying things.

typeset nytimes in helvetica

the essence of good taste

I dig the nytimes chrome app

the one thing that the chrome app and the ipad app do that the website does not is give me a one or two sentence blurb on what the article is about. no need to decipher what an article called 'Skin Deep: Someone Just Like Me Said, ‘Buy It’' is about

found it p janky when i tried it a while ago

maybe they dejanked it

ok yeah its def p diff than before, but w/e not enough linx per page, needs more clutter

thats cool all the diff views it gives you tho

lol @ their names

i prefer 'doric'

youre a doric

i think ur a doric

'flow' is the best, welcome this new age future of web design

serendipity is more my speed man

so sad to see one of our own get left behind in the slipstream of now-future web design RIP :(

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

past, present, and future rite there imo

indefensible: #4a525aholes

"Outlook", an email program from Microsoft.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/04/google-email-preview

Six words and one set of scare quotes, all douchey. Would he say '"Word", a word processing program'? Outlook is one of the most used apps in the world. It's even out for Mac, ffs.

And why "program"? Is his house style now to ape newspapers from 1985? It's either a client or an app, though I suspect the style guide has had a douching to ensure "app" only means something that runs on iOS devices.

that one made sense to me - infantilising to highlight how un-revolutionary the new gmail feature is.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/22/gawker

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/31/vintagezen

Pretty sure the only reason Apple may be getting out of the 100 million unit a year music player market is the fact it's not as profitable as making phones, not this guff about a "simpler product lineup".

"I concur with this logic."

It would be kind of a ballsy move. Not many people would choose to carry both a music-only device and a phone if the phone offered the same or better functionality. A phone is the thing everybody needs, and it seems like only 50% of people even really care about music at all. Why be in a market people don't care about, when you could spend your efforts dominating one that EVERYONE cares about.

It's like saying that in order to listen to music now, you have to have an iPhone, but that's what you really want anyway.

Carol Bartz, a Year Ago, on Apple’s iAd: ‘That’s Going to Fall Apart for Them’
Daring Fireball
John Gruber
I said we should check back in a year, and here we are. Bartz may well be proven right eventually — it doesn’t seem like iAd is doing great — but as of today iAd is still here and Bartz is out.

i like him, but i wish he'd stop banging on about google being a ruthless business. SHOCK! WE KNOW

i like gruber too, but i also didn't like that bartz/iad thing

(Via Mike Monteiro, whose Twitter account page background is a painting of a topless Bea Arthur.)

lmbo

Given that one of the levels involves catching suicide-jumping Foxconn factory workers, it’s more surprising that the game got into the App Store in the first place than that it was removed.

geez step off that soapbox, marco.

Please withdraw the free-update offer. We will not hold you to it.

Really. Please. [...] Please let us give you more money.

http://www.marco.org/2011/09/27/textmate-2-free-upgrade

Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales ★
Deep report by Asjylyn Loder and David Evans for Bloomberg on Koch Industries:

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries — in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East — has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Great investigative reporting.

damn what sort of inside infos u got on koch, better watch yr back grubes baby

Scaling at Instagram

Mike Krieger, Instagram co-founder, on their engineering blog:

With more than 25 photos and 90 likes every second, we store a lot of data here at Instagram.

25 photos per second is more than the 24 frames per second of a motion picture.

good eye gruber!!

maybe instagram is... MAKING A MOVIE

Yeah that was just mind-bogglingly inane

Uh-oh: Gruber reads ILX - http://americanmccarver.com/post/10741316759/rickey

the essence of good taste

― ice cr?m, Thursday, 28 July 2011 02:17 (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

metafilter's own

lol

Gruber's structurally valid Jobs obit:

After the WWDC keynote four months ago, I saw Steve, up close.

He looked old. Not old in a way that could be measured in years or even decades, but impossibly old. Not tired, but weary; not ill or unwell, but rather, somehow, ancient. But not his eyes. His eyes were young and bright, their weapons-grade intensity intact. His sweater was well-worn, his jeans frayed at the cuffs.

But the thing that struck me were his shoes, those famous gray New Balance 991s. They too were well-worn. But also this: fresh bright green grass stains all over the heels.

Those grass stains filled my mind with questions. How did he get them? When? They looked fresh, two, three days old, at the most. Apple keynote preparation is notoriously and unsurprisingly intense. But not so intense, those stains suggested, as to consume the entirety of Jobs’s days. There is no grass in Moscone West.

Surely, my mind raced, surely he has more than one pair of those shoes. He could afford to buy the factory that made them. Why wear this grass-stained pair for the keynote, a rare and immeasurably high-profile public appearance? My guess: he didn’t notice, didn’t care. One of Jobs’s many gifts was that he knew what to give a shit about. He knew how to focus and prioritize his time and attention. Grass stains on his sneakers didn’t make the cut.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Late last night, long hours after the news broke that he was gone, my thoughts returned to those grass stains on his shoes back in June. I realize only now why they caught my eye. Those grass stained sneakers were the product of limited time, well spent. And so the story I’ve told myself is this:

I like to think that in the run-up to his final keynote, Steve made time for a long, peaceful walk. Somewhere beautiful, where there are no footpaths and the grass grows thick. Hand-in-hand with his wife and family, the sun warm on their backs, smiles on their faces, love in their hearts, at peace with their fate.

His enduring, long-lasting legacy: that Gruber no longer has to pay for an SMS plan.

this blog is a diff color rite now

did he go to dark gray in mourning

hard to read bro

really on a roll with the glib, breathtakingly thick, arrogant posts at the moment! go john!

Most revealing line of his 4S review:

I asked for and received a Sprint model from Apple for testing, so that I could compare it against AT&T and Verizon.

I'd assume (hope) that he returned it when done?

I love how Baig, Pogue, and Mossberg get review units before everyone else, and race to publish their reviews. Where by “love” I of course mean “hate”.

I’m not sure why this has erupted into such a little blog publishing world scandal. It’s certainly wrong for someone to accept one of these machines and then write about it without disclosing that it was a gift (or a review unit, or whatever you want to call it), but I don’t get why some people are so up in arms about Microsoft giving them out in the first place.

tbf i think 'Where by “love” I of course mean “hate”.' is a horribly formed joke about jealousy, rather than him thinking it is wrong in principle to review stuff you haven't bought.

don't get me wrong though, he's still a terrible person.

Grubes has stated multiple times that he always returns his review units.

http://twitter.com/AmyJane/status/128319587161882624

haha

https://twitter.com/#!/AmyJane/status/124281963875024896

oh man

indefensible or not, the more he descends into (unintentional) self-parody, the more entertaining I find him

October 20th:

The fields aren’t new, but their usefulness for Siri is.

October 24th:

Yeah, seems like a nice idea to use these fields to aid Siri, but it’s not what they’re there for.

damning, just damning

this post i feel like is top level gruber self regard http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/human-rationality

whoa

i dont even

wait, who actually believes that humans are rational thinking machines...?

1. economists
2. other people
3. jon gruber (himself only, not the other humans)

Daniel Kahneman is p interesting, was just looking to see if he was on twitter before i found that gruber post

Think this is a good thread for these guys:

http://www.marco.org/2011/10/27/double-dipping-ads-in-ipad-magazines
http://brooksreview.net/2011/10/grannell-magazines/

Enjoy your $100 per issue magazine subscriptions, everyone.

sheesh

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/09/get-to-work

lol

yeah grubbie's on a roll with this flash news

Nothing further to say on the matter.

to be fair, they don't really use quicktime for non-video content anymore!

http://vimeo.com/31926572

YAY!!!

. . .

YAY!!!

he doesn't know what the word "disinterested" means

btw i love john siracusa

otm

people who do apple podcasts really don't know how to speak, eh

which podcasts are you referring to yo

http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42

loved that episode and he totally knows how to speak tbh!!!

Congratulations to the Tories.

lol

this is the first interesting point i've seen him make in about 6 months http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/14/microsoft-admosphere

It's like Roger Ebert posting about how he's just noticed that 20th Century Fox in is competion with Warner Bros.

i wasn't being sarcastic, i think it's actually a good observation.

May sound funny coming from a typography-obsessive whose website has

lolll armchair typographer gruber is still my favorite

Truly funny spoof from College Humor.

★

It has been approved, it is objectively funny

hahaha

the best part of his keynote video was seeing his Field Notes notebook in the back pocket of his dad jeans

http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/siri-for-android-clones.png?w=657

Nevermind the Siri rip-off, what makes this so very Android is all that junk in the status bar in the screenshots.

To be fair I think he's referring to all the icons right at the top.

um yeah

— but to me, Roboto is just the new Arial.

never change~~

rolling in the nuggets

john-gruber-closet-reader-of-pbfluids.html

http://mattgemmell.com/2012/01/03/comments-still-off/

lol how many more articles about this subject do we need from these clowns

But we’re talking about a personal blog, which isn’t a democracy - and furthermore, which amongst other things is a portfolio and a principal branding opportunity for the author.

*makes a jerking off motion with hand*

http://mattgemmell.com/images/readandtrust/badge1.png

Love all these guys who hang on Gruber's every pithy comment and link to the same shit as him.

wow. i thought they were just loosely affiliated; didnt know there was a federation. huge lols at this: http://readandtrust.com/newsletter.php

For just $5 each month, you'll get a weekly, long-form article from one of the many talented writers in the Read & Trust Network. Sign up today to make sure you don't miss one bit of exclusive, high-quality content.

Upcoming Monthly Topics:
* Favorite Tech Device
* Favorite Author
* Favorite Service
* Resolutions
* What's on My Bookshelf
* Heroes

the giveaway for these guys is if they have a page labelled "colophon".

wait for only $5 i get an atrticle on FAV TECH DEVICE omg this is unavailable on the internet anywhere

from the people who brought you "the new yorker is too expensive and shouldn't have ads on ipad": what's on my bookshelf?

Favorite Tech Device: iphone
Favorite Author: david foster wallace
Favorite Service: instapaper
Resolutions: infinite summer
What's on My Bookshelf: david foster wallace
Heroes: david foster wallace

some books about stanley kubrick and a beacon, a yardstick

you know kingsley amis categorized misusers of english of english as either berks or wankers. gruber is definitely a wanker.

edward tufte's the visual display of quantitative information, field notes notebook for each month

lol wut is read & trust idgi

read & trust is committed to gathering together the best independent writers available—the ones recommended by the writers you read and trust.

I offer the same service, except I prevaricate a little

Like, I gather the best independent writers available - in a giant basket - but I'm not totally committed to it. I might stop, I dunno

id pay like $3 a month for that

Sold

I guess

should i just wait here

vdqi is a legitimately great book, don't let the helvetica fans put you off.

otm. Tufte's sans of choice is the notoriously weird Gill Sans anyway.

totes, i have the one w/the dog on the cover too

the giveaway for these guys is if they have a page labelled "colophon".

― joe

hahahaha

otm

Can we make an ILX "Classic & Dud" readers' network?

you have to pay 51 cents a day to have access 2 it

and you need a colophon

Better title would be "Suggest & Ban".

you need to say "bullshit" at least once per newsletter too

maybe include the phrase "coffee nerd"

sorry to break the lolz momentum but "vdqi"?

edward tufte's the visual display of quantitative information, field notes notebook for each month

― jung money (diamonddave85), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 12:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

Subscribe now to the Suggest & Ban network for access to a new 90 minute documentary about the classic typography, simple lay-out and beautiful design of the timeless Style2.css.

hah

Join Dan Benjamin for our podcast, where we talk about the previous episode of our podcast!

Meanwhile:

Installs: 1 - 5

XD

Wonder if Marco's sudden anti-comments stance has anything to do with the shitty, unfriendly beautiful, simple new "blogging platform" he's developed? It doesn't yet support commenting, natch.

It's so beautiful and simple, all you have to do is download it from github, extract it to your server, edit the config.php file, and Zzzzzzz

i still haven't read most of siracusa's lion review, but hypercritical owns

This week’s episode of America’s favorite David Foster Wallace podcast, The Talk Show. Topics include their favorite tech devices, authors and services, new years resolutions, whats on their bookshelves, and heroes. Brought to you by the fine folks at Beacon Yardsticks.

xxp would be funny to fork marco's blog engine to add comment support

There was a good bit on either this week or last week's Talk Show where Gruber claims to have only ever used PayPal once.

http://daringfireball.net/members/

Oh.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/05/11-things-rim-did-right-in-2011/

http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2012/01/one_minor_point_on_the_comment.html

(bynkii also indefensible, but it's nice to see them all fighting)

Not sure if bynkii.com is a site I can read & trust.

I mean comments on blogs are also more or less indefensible imo so it's just one big indefensible charlie foxtrot

I care only about quality and control of every single beacon and yardstick.

A few things about this dialog bothered me, as a developer:

• The forced use of beacons and yardsticks

hahaha i have that article open in a tab right now but it's too long :-(

omg

The use of “their” to refer to the singular “publisher”.
^^ English pedants hate this but it's reasonably acceptable according to some style guides

as for the "zip code" versus "ZIP code" thing, I had no idea it was supposed to be an acronym and I don't think common usage is as such anymore? Last I checked, LASER is no longer required to be in all caps either

pretending that there is a universal style guide is disgusting savagery imo

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/09/definition-of-a-tech-migraine/

Love how Gruber has taken the @parislemon trend for referring to Google+ as "horseshit" and has brought his expertise and knowledge to the fore left his mark on technology journalism changed "horseshit" to "bullshit".

Truly a beacon, a yardstick for our times.

I honestly don’t know what’s worse: if Google is so institutionally delusional that they actually believe this isn’t giving Google Plus a tremendous advantage (fair or unfair) over every other social network in the world, or if Google thinks so poorly of everyone outside the company that they think anyone is actually going to buy this line of bullshit. The best case scenario for Google is that Eric Schmidt, in his new role as chairman, has turned into a loose cannon who should just shut the fuck up.

One idea: Apple could add a “Ping” tab to each of the store-related iOS apps — iTunes, iBooks, and App Store. Another idea: Apple could break Ping out into its own standalone app, and allow this app to make purchases of any sort of iTunes Store content. I like the second idea much better, at a glance. But perhaps it’d make sense to have dedicated Ping tabs in each app — you might want to follow different people for music recommendations than apps and books.

ha

btw gruber, sielger, 65% market share does not constitute monopoly

The best case scenario for Google is that Eric Schmidt, in his new role as chairman, has turned into a loose cannon who should just shut the fuck up.

this sentence truly serves as a beacon, a yardstick for good and reasoned writing

speaking of bullshit, i found this quote from sub-gruber read&truster to be particularly terrible writing:

It’s hard to breathe during this 20-minute interview of David Steel, Executive Vice President of Strategy for Samsung North America due to all the bullshit in the air.

people who call bullshit on everything all the time are the worst

They will never be short of work. Ah hurr hurr.

Don't ever accuse Gruber of not posting bad news about Apple five days after the rest of the internet. He's risking his iPhone 5 review unit and who wouldn't want him to lose out on such a major blogging exclusive?

@marco's beautiful, simple solution to the iPhone's mute-switch behavior:

The user told the iPhone to make noise by either scheduling an alarm or initiating an obviously noise-playing feature in an app.

The user also told the iPhone to be silent with the switch on the side.

The user has issued conflicting commands, and the iPhone can’t obey both.

It’s a typical design problem: it can’t be heavy and light and big and small. Neither decision will satisfy everyone all the time or cover every edge case: if Apple implemented Mute in Ihnatko’s preferred way, millions of people would be just as irritated when their scheduled alarms didn’t wake them up.

When implementing the Mute switch, Apple had to decide which of a user’s conflicting commands to obey, and they chose the behavior that they believed would make sense to the most people in the most situations.

That’s good design.

Nah Gruber is right, that's mish. Most of the time when I switch to mute i'm not even looking at at the screen. An alarm that can be accidentally set to silent mode is stupid.

I'm not sure I believe Mr "my alarm accidentally got set for the middle of the show".

apparently he had just been given that phone from his work a day before or something? so he probably thought mute meant mute

which apparently it doesn't on the iphone

seems dumb to me but i haven't thought it through really

this is the worst debate in the world and if you have an opinion about it then you are hurting the blogosphere

lol jokes

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/11/cameron

this is the worst debate in the world and if you have an opinion about it then you are hurting the blogosphere

What do you mean? There are pages upon pages of blog posts on iPhone mute behavior to spend hours and hours reading & trusting:

http://www.marco.org/2012/01/14/mute
http://daringfireball.net/2012/01/iphone_mute_switch_design
http://52tiger.net/on-the-behavior-of-the-iphone-mute-switch-ringing-vs-tone-alerts-and-overall-iphone-sound-design/
http://www.biancolo.com/articles/bad-ui-stops-symphony
http://brooksreview.net/2012/01/the-picture-says-it-all/
http://ihnatko.com/2012/01/14/daring-fireball-on-the-behavior-of-the-iphone-mute-switch/
http://blog.erikphansen.com/mute-switch-madness

oh lord

colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon colopohon

should've checked to see if i were spelling the word correctly before repeating it a million times, but oh well

I replaced my colopohon (so 2005) with an Instapaper reading list.

rip

i use the Mute Switch Debate as a yardstick

i use it as a dick beacon

i read u, but i don't know if i trust u

I leave my phone on mute overnight but set an alarm for the morning to wake up? Seems pretty common.

i don't have an iphone, but i live my phone on all night because i assume if someone's gonna call me really late it's an emergency and if it's not i can just tell them they're a fucking idiot

You have a phone that's not going to receive push notifications and email all night though, right?

yeah, i have some lg flip phone piece of shit from 2009. i'm sure what i do wouldn't work for everyone, but it works for me. when i get an iphone i'll probably do the same thing i do now, except i'll also shut off most of the push notifications and other annoying shit

i also shut sms off over two years ago, so i don't really have that to worry about -- no more 3 am text messages from friends who are in a bar in another country! rip

why did you shut off sms

imo if you have enough time to post on ilx then you don't really need push notifications enabled

phones are these things you do web browsing on and check apps and send text messages on, and very rarely use the antiquated "voice call" feature

hahaha

i do own an ipod touch tbh

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/22/rim-co-ceos-to-step-down/

i'm not sure you understand this thread

http://grab.by/cBWF

beyond parody

http://i.imgur.com/4C1af.png

In December, however, seven months after the blast that killed Mr. Lai, another iPad factory exploded, this one in Shanghai. Once again, aluminum dust was the cause, according to interviews and Apple’s most recent supplier responsibility report. That blast injured 59 workers, with 23 hospitalized.

“It is gross negligence, after an explosion occurs, not to realize that every factory should be inspected,” said Nicholas Ashford, the occupational safety expert, who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If it were terribly difficult to deal with aluminum dust, I would understand. But do you know how easy dust is to control? It’s called ventilation. We solved this problem over a century ago.”

4:00 – 4:50 PM: The State of Apple

Macworld’s Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, and John Gruber discuss where the new, Tim Cook-led Apple will go in 2012 and beyond.

Macworld? is that like the WWDC but also gay?

he's on http://www.macworld.com/

p bad so far

Think @marco tried explaining this to Siri and his iPhone blew up.

Marco disagreed with Ben Brooks the other day. Having read, can I now trust? Why are there no yardsticks for this sort of thing?

the internet is beaconless, rip, so inelegant

I tried searcing Duckduckgo for beacons and yardsticks, and it found nothing.

lol braces http://brooksreview.net/colophon/

More like the Brooks Brother Review amirite?

"I own stock in UPS, Microsoft, Abercrombie & Fitch, Oracle."

*Brothers*

Great ad on his site too: "This week's sponsor is Déjà Vu - Your visual memory. An iPhone app to snap pictures of things you want to remember."

Haha, poor guy couldn't even get the Deck to advertise on his site, had to settle for the cheap knockoff

I think my 2012 goal is going to be to spend a handful of hours every week trying to understand how others perceive me, so that I may not turn into these guys

http://brooksreview.s3.amazonaws.com/headshot_small.jpeg

charles in charge of our beacons and our yardsticks

Also his colophon is not even a proper colophon

needs to be screened for colophon cancer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYUOwrPxxlk

Cool Guys Today

Speaking of Ben Brooks, he has a credo.

When he says
"Readability is of utmost importance."

do u think he means the concept or the web/app? makes u think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXvmSaE0JXA

I can't visit youtube at work, markers :(

it's kesha -- "we r who we r"

first video was 4 of these dudes @ macworld

tbh I'd probably rather watch kesha

Sweet found a message board this morning full of people hating on me. Two notes though: 1. I don't have braces. 2. A message board? Really?

o wait, the more elegant term is suspenders, right?

he thought u meant TEETH BRACES lmao

note the use of 'have' not 'wear'

and no link smh

http://i.minus.com/iqAkwkwXNI9Pb.png

https://twitter.com/#!/BenjaminBrooks/status/164029312759111681

all is forgiven

Can understand why this guy hates Google so much if he keeps checking Analytics to find people like us laughing at him.

tbf this is prob the first time anyone has bothered to lol @ him

Thought he was a leading member of the Point & Lol Network?

idk!

he has a small time vibe to him

2500 twitter followers ehhh

https://twitter.com/#!/DLin71/status/164040994055127041

https://twitter.com/#!/hrbrt/status/164029785444597761

ha!

im now referring to his orthodontix

a blog, really? etc

i bet he has purple rubber bands to match his suspenders

dear blogg bro wut is twtr ty in advance

i checked our analytics; someone said we had a "cobbled-together appearance".

win3.11 4lyfe, hater.

damn what an unchill criticism

the god gruber would never stoop to our level, this brooks guy needs to heed lessons

i don't even understand who or what this thread is about tbh

you win, mr brooks, whatever you are

^THATS how its done

hey ben brooks if 'Readability is of utmost importance' what the heck is going on here:

http://i.imgur.com/A6bLV.png

this thread is about elegance

I only found his twitter post randomly on Stellar.io. Dude is stuck in 2011.

would dearly love to read criticsm of ilx by internet tech bods tho

xps or elegance, w/e

this thread is about elegance

― stet, Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:52 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

5000%

how is this different from hoos' "thread of social media assholes"? bullet points plz

~yardsticks furiously~

• Nice to see some other major western democracy have an unusual election for once. Congratulations to the Tories.

* 1. - it's more focused on a particular subspecies of social media assholes

These are social media assholes we read & trust.

its abt the don 'daring fireball' gruber and his point n click posse

are you in stellar, JM? I had the idea to make sthing like that, so pretty glad Kottke did it and I can go back to not bothering

xp does Hoos's thread have Helvetica?

http://daringfireball.net
http://readandtrust.com

its abt elegance basically

and helvetica, the most elegant of fonts

a yardstick

a beacon

* I have a serious question. Why spell it fanboi? Is that like fanboy but also gay?

its abt a lot of things

i feel like gruber's fanboi post is too perfect, it has to be a troll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIy3n2b7V9k

is that like skater but also 8?

Can understand why this guy hates Google so much if he keeps checking Analytics to find people like us laughing at him.

― James Mitchell, Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:38 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

you could say... that google analytics... used in this way... is like ... a beacon

*bows head, ponders weightily*

Stellar is great, yes. Really needs the ability to find your friends, though. I'm just following a bunch of randoms and it's worrying how often people favorite Gruber's stuff.

well they prob just read and then trusted him

Can I hav an invite? Will pay in trinkets and gewgaws

jm, what are they favoriting? his tweets?

can you favorite a blog post? idk the internet is complicated

Can send an invite to the email on your user profile. Only got one left, though.

Gruber's page is here: http://stellar.io/gruber/bestof

would also love stellar invite if anyone has any spare left

Yes please, thx! I will give it back to you when I get some.

where would i find the invites if i had any on my acct?

http://stellar.io/x/invite/friends ?

i guess i dont have any invites

You don’t see many executives trading up from CEO of one company to senior vice president of another. That Browett is from Europe is a pretty good signal that international expansion is a top priority for Apple retail.

Gruber's work serves as a lone wolf, a standard bearer, for my own:

Writers like John Gruber and podcasters like Dan Benjamin have gone from being lone wolfs to standard bearers.

John Gruber, Dan Benjamin, Marco Arment, Horace Dediu, all of these people are setting a very high standard for this community, and it’s not just in the level of professionalism they show in their work: it’s also how much they care about what they do and take pride in it. If you read Daring Fireball, listen to Dan’s shows on 5by5, or use Instapaper, there’s no doubt they really love to do what they’re doing.

wolfs?

Sit & Browse vs Stand & Purchase.

In one you have the clean minimalist designs that Apple is long famous for. Whites walls, blonde wood tables all designed to accompany and highlight the brushed aluminum iDevices for sale within.

i'm sitting in a chair rite now

markers, are the walls whites

one of the terrible things about these gruber accolytes is how it takes them 2000 words to say something that deserves, at most, two tweets.

xpost yes!

maybe microsoft just wants you to be comfortable and apple wants you to buy stuff and gtfo

maybe i'll bring my own chair to the apple store next time i go

All my trendo programmer friends are changing to standing desks, perhaps Apple is just anticipating this trend

Why by the laptop when you can have the surfing for free?

^ readability

brodie edited the article

A review from the Prog & Rock Network.

Progressive rock rose to prominence in the 1960s and 70s as a way of elevating rock music to a new level of artistic merit.

http://whowritesforyou.com/category/writing/writingassignment/

Writing assignment: read all the fucking time you fucking fuck.

I’ve been following the recent articles and reports on Apple and manufacturing in China. I’ve heard some ugly terms thrown about, including “slavery.” If true, it’s shocking and disappointing. But I fear that it is a mix of hyperbole, cultural differences, and yes, some worker abuses. Apple appears to be doing the right things to [...]

lot of these dudes have real sticks up their asses about being "professional writers" eh

its funny because they just have blogs

http://vimeo.com/36051004

``standing here at my standing desk''

Do workers in Foxconn factories who build products for Apple, Dell, HP, and others, work long hours at tedious tasks? Yes they do. Do they work for a fraction of what a worker in the US, Japan, or even Korea would? Yes they do?

Are they being enslaved? Clearly, they are not.

welp, glad we cleared that up!

its not slavery guys, keep downloading!

Since a grandmother at home dealt with child rearing and the household management, the workers didn’t seem stressed by the work requirements or complain.

keep downloading those iphones guys!

u need to read&trust bro

it is only by completing writing assignments that you can become a beacon, a yardstick

http://twitter.com/#!/Digeratii/status/165324320179109888/photo/1/large

"disappointing" is the professional's choice of words to describe slavery

what is this thread even about any more

reading&trusting

bullshit

beacons&yardsticks

kubrick&stones

steve&jobs

fugees&funyons

braces&suspenders

helvetica

colophons!

Marco & Path: not entirely sure what the difference is, except that we all read & trust @marco.

this is actually real talk:
http://www.marco.org/2012/02/04/fixing-previous-track

still have a lot of time for marco and his quietly unassuming proggy nerdiness

My favorite iPhone Twitter client is now available for the iPad too. I’ve been using for a few weeks and it’s just terrific. I love it.

every single time there's a big new ios app release, he makes sure to let everyone know that he's already been using it for weeks

hey guys did you know that I run a popular apple-centric blog, and that application developers find me to be a good target for promotional beta releases? now you do!

I remember being young and thinking that it'd be cool to be in a position where people would send me unreleased products to review. Then I got old and realized that beta testing other people's shit is horrible.

I love Tweetbot and iOs for the simplicity and beautifulness of the triple-tap gesture.

I wonder if Gruber is beta testing the version with quadruple-taps.

lol

I have two twitter apps on iPhone and I've been swapping between them with no clear fave. tweetbot 2.0 is kinda nice, though

i caved and got tweetbot when it went on sale and i like it so much more than any other one i've used, it's just like... enjoyable

i just wish the interface was more elegant

twittelator neue is pretty but is still a lil buggy and feature incomplete

not empathetic enough

"twittelator neue"

lol

can't believe you guys aren't using twilvetica!

nm it's not out yet

speaking of fonts: http://www.marco.org/2012/01/13/helvetica-kettle

shows disturbing signs of self awareness

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9627011/photos/facepalm.gif

How did I miss Gruber posting this on his blog?

Oh, he didn't.

Hear that noise? That’s Violet Blue backpedalling… ★

oh jesus

The overreacting/woman-protection racket going on from Gruber's corner, masquerading as being in-touch with feminist concerns or being somehow more sympathetic, is gross. Someone found the name of a woman at the company and he ran with it, which is... what, all women are the same and you found the name of the one woman who worked for them, no way are there two of them?

There are, after all, too many millions of different models of woman. The development team should take a leaf out of Apple's book and slim down the product line offering to perhaps only two or three designs, each to fulfill the varying functions as needed by the user. This approach could soon see a rapid change in the market, with the adoption rate of women (in my suggested wifi, 8gb and 16gb variations) bringing women to the forefront of the post-PC world.

on the contrary, that woman is a beacon, a yardstick for all other women

http://www.70decibels.com/thepenaddict/

defensible in concept, jus guys bein nerdy baout pens

Almost before you could stop throwing up in your mouth at the idea of Michael Arrington accusing a Times journalist of being less than noble, Arrington’s partner at CrunchFund, MG Siegler, weighed in with his own attack in which he basically said Bilton is a nice guy who was either too lazy or too busy to do a good job. From this Siegler leaps off into a long diatribe about how most tech reporting is utter bullshit written by idiots who are all in a hurry to chase page views.

So: Path comes under fire, and straight away, the paid hit men – Arrington and his sidekick, Matty the Angry Chihuahua — spring into action to smear Bilton and try to discredit him.

I’ll give them this much. They’re good at what they do. Siegler especially is a nasty little ankle-biter who has developed some level of expertise in launching ad hominem attacks. He did one on me a while back. Then he did one on Josh Topolsky at The Verge.

Now it’s Nick Bilton’s turn.

Great response here from the man who's not afraid to type the word 'bullshit':

Looks like someone woke up from his nap of the last three years and is hungry. Sadly, I don’t have much food for him. I’ll keep this as brief as possible — and I promise this will be the last thing I ever say about Dan Lyons, as he’s clearly done.

Feel free not to read. Or read Michael Arrington’s post on the matter. He takes a higher road than I’m about to. I’m just sick of Lyons’ bullshit.

i have lost all ability to discern sarcasm in this thread. That wasn't a great response to me, just point-avoiding ad homs from a corrupt would-be hack.

Definitely sarcasm.

Big fan of http://mgsieglermeme.tumblr.com, though.

yeah anyone who defends siegler or arrington on this should be banned from ilx and thrown into the ocean

But she’s not a very good writer in the pure sense of the word. Both she and Lyons rely on cutesy gimmicks.

http://i.imgur.com/nXhCV.png

m.g. siegler offering a beacon, a yardstick of good tech writing

#1 pet peeve: people who read 'on writing well' or some other chestnut and the only thing they take away is that all. of their sentences. must. be. very. short. that's. what good. writing. is.

Some WSJ claim chowder.

http://i.imgur.com/zEOaD.png

Times when it's OK to alter your site template: Christmas, Valentine's Day, the death of a multinational CEO.

must have ignored her in favor of the ipad 2 for the last time

how long did it take him to pick what shade of red to use?

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/14/fla

"This is the biggest challenge facing Apple today."

★

has he actually written anything longer than glib link commentary? guess he's been busy with long form claim chowder : (

yeah anyone who defends siegler or arrington on this anything should be banned from ilx and thrown into the ocean

Times when it's OK to alter your site template: Christmas, Valentine's Day, the death of a multinational CEO.

― James Mitchell, Tuesday, February 14, 2012 12:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

I, Too, Love Amy Jane

fuckin guy lovin his fuckin wife...

i wonder if she checks the site everyday or maybe he had to send her a link

if she's anything like dh she's an rss/instapaper kinda lady. inbox zero. no time to type in urls

has he actually written anything longer than glib link commentary? guess he's been busy with long form claim chowder : (

Saving it all up to complain about NeXT not being given its due, it looks like!

His wife's twitter account is many times more entertaining than his own.

You can get fired up that way, and see my criticism here as condemning Isaacson’s book as total shit, zero stars. That would be a mistake. Steve Jobs is not literature, but it is a good book, but alas with several holes and egregious errors.

um, that piece is probably the best thing he's written in a year or two.

Except his whole premise of "Steve Jobs thought software is more important than hardware" is completely a total shit, zero stars Jobsian-style binary view.

and "Apple is an experience company" made me boak, versus something like "Apple is a product company" which is the truth

like, made me think of Apple iBalloon Rides With Your Fiancee

Apple uses experiences to sell products, as any Mad Men watcher could tell you.

that's a diff thing from being an experience company, tho

"apple is an experience company" is his turgid writing style, yes.

but i am a good-faith zinger, and that was a good piece.

basically slocki otm

Agreed. Was def a way better demolition of the Isaacson book than Siracusa managed.

I want to put NextSTEP on my old Thinkpad now, except the guy who installed it for Jobs says it was a total nightmare http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2209

the siracusa thing was just a long, boring list of tiny errors and a couple of unsupported larger, vague arguments

i recently tried installing OPENSTEP in a VM and couldn't get past the driver selection stuff ):

lol this guy has a hard time enjoying himself, lil uptight http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/15/ios-86

As soon as Schiller told me the name, I silently cursed myself for not having predicted it. Apple is a company of patterns. iPhone 3G, followed by a same-form-factor-but-faster 3GS; iPhone 4 followed by a same-form-factor-but-faster 4S. Leopard followed by Snow Leopard; so, of course: Lion followed by Mountain Lion.

I wonder immediately about that “now”. I don’t press, because I find the question that immediately sprang to mind uncomfortable. And some things remain unchanged: Apple executives explain what they want to explain, and they explain nothing more.

this guy is v strange

I’ve been using Mountain Lion for a week, preinstalled on a MacBook Air loaned to me by Apple.

oh my god

THIS is your FAVORITE FEATURE??

My favorite Mountain Lion feature, though, is one that hardly even has a visible interface. Apple is calling it “Gatekeeper”. It’s a system whereby developers can sign up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to cryptographically sign their applications. If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed. In effect, it offers all the security benefits of the App Store, except for the process of approving apps by Apple. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion:

* Only those from the App Store
* Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID
* Any app, whether signed or unsigned

The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps. This default setting benefits users by increasing practical security, and also benefits developers, preserving the freedom to ship whatever software they want for the Mac, with no approval process.

lol

Sadly, the punning possibilities of 'mac-gruber' have only just now suggested themselves to me, when surely that meme wave was beaten into the ground by now.

THIS is your FAVORITE FEATURE??

loool

software signing is actually not a terrible idea; in fact many linux distributions have cryptographically signed packages using keys that are signed by the distributors. And groobs is on point with his hope that package-signing will make it onto iOS as the platform opens up.

All the work I do on my mac is in the terminal or a web browser anyway so new OS X features rarely mean much to me.

me too. the last time i upgraded OS X for some reason other than "it came with the new computer" was 10.4.

And groobs is on point with his hope that package-signing will make it onto iOS as the platform opens up.

I really, really hope that transpires

I knew the Dow was imprecise and rather arbitrary compared to something like the S&P 500, but the more I learn about the Dow the more nonsensical I realize it is.

find a new zing james

found one

https://twitter.com/#!/totallyslutsky/status/171666559666888705

:D

http://twitter.com/#!/jdalrymple/status/170699109177634816

http://twitter.com/#!/gruber/status/172054760323690497

o dammmn

a signpost in life

he linked to The Oatmeal today, pretty indefensible imo

ppl on the internet hate everything eh

If your interested in a deep, thoughtful take on the problems Mac developers are running into with sandboxing...

2008-2010: I remember when it was unique to see people using a Mac. I remember when people thought my having an iPhone was unique..

Don't even get the point of writing that other than as a beacon, a yardstick for the guy's impeccable taste.

/tech-thoughts/

My Thoughts About Purple Suspenders Over the Years

1990-Writing this post: Was I ever capable of dressing myself?

Best part about his site: the "in partnership with mediatemple" graphic. mediatemple hosts a number of tech/design sites for free, and those sites indicate that somewhere, usually in the footer. This guy is paying for their cheapest plan and still has a big old logo conspicuously displayed at the top of the page.

^ actual good zinging

I have to hand it to mediatemple, their sponsorship has paid off so well that the cargo cult thinks they're making the next hot site just by putting the logo on the side, even if they're still paying for that "privilege"

in partnership with angelfire

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzupz2luBf1qafhi5.jpg

loooooool xp

Incisive, informed content curation.

http://twitter.com/#!/daringfireball/status/180424385470021632

i like how he arbitrarily decides to refer to the new ipad as iPad (3)

ya that's awful

Why would he not call it "the 2012 iPad"

Why I ask you

(3)

srsly that shit has to stop. he doesn't call it the MacBook Air (3) or the iMac (14), does he? ffs. I bet he'd drive a Porsche 911, but he wouldn't call it a 911 (7), either.

Porsche 911 (Never Forget)

Get the feeling he'll be eating some serious Mike Daizey claim chowder after this weekend's This American Life.

we all will be, james. we all will be.

I guess the iPad (3) is made on a production line of robots and not hand-assembled by poorly-paid Chinese slaves, right?

i guess all chinese workers are 'slaves,' right?

john gruber is awful, i mean really just terrible, worse than paedophiles, but i feel like maybe james overdoes it a bit

all im saying.

what did br00ks do to his favicon

i have hacker news in google reader and the shade of orange they use is fine but whatever shade he picked doesn't look so great

what in the hell is wrong with you?

probably should be asking yourself that question

this american life mike daisey retraction transcript, p interesting, warning PDF http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/TAL_460_Retraction_Transcript.pdf

is there a transcript of the original show

the original show is just excerpts from his stage show and apparently you can download the script of that from his website

Love how all the Read & Trust bloggers are now flying over to China to investigate Foxconn for themselves.

wanted to say something re the tendency to criticize chinese factories as sweatshops, in that its not an accurate characterization of foxconn et al, which is not to say theyre great places to work, just that theyre un great places to work in somewhat different ways than a sweatshop, i found this description from mo tkaciks steve jobs piece compelling

When imagination is off the table, you get coverage like CNN’s Foxconn series, in which CNN interviews a disgruntled Foxconn employee complaining of “dehumanization” and, lacking anything terribly sensational or sordid, asks her if she might be able to quantify that. We learn that the job entails sticking more than 4,000 stickers onto iPads each day.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/02/22/the-book-of-steve-jobs-apple

kind of amazing this is a guy who makes his living via public speaking and has no idea how poorly hes coming off

Mike Daisey: Yes. And I stand by it as a theatrical work. I stand by how it makes
people see and care about the situation that’s happening there. I stand by it in the
theater. And I regret, deeply, that it was put into this context on your show.

Ira Glass: Are you going to change the way that you label this in the theater, so
that the audience in the theater knows that this isn’t strictly speaking a work of
truth but in fact what they’re seeing really is a work of fiction that has some true
elements in it.

Mike Daisey: Well, I don’t know that I would say in a theatrical context that it
isn’t true. I believe that when I perform it in a theatrical context in the theater that
when people hear the story in those terms that we have different languages for
what the truth means.

Ira Glass: I understand that you believe that but I think you’re kidding yourself in
the way that normal people who go to see a person talk – people take it as a literal
truth. I thought that the story was literally true seeing it in the theater. Brian,
who’s seen other shows of yours, thought all of them were true. I saw your
nuclear show, I thought that was completely true. I thought it was true because
you were on stage saying ‘this happened to me.’ I took you at your word.

Mike Daisey: I think you can trust my word in the context of the theater. And how
people see it -

and these are the things he said after ira grilled him once he had a chance to think abt it then asked to come back again!

third part is p cool where they tell you what they do know abt apple chinese manufactring irl

Ira Glass: One of the most interesting things and one of the newest things, that I
think you pointed out in this series, is that the cost of labor in an iPhone, if it were
made in the United States, would be only about $65 more per phone. I mean
that’s a lot of money if you’re manufacturing stuff, um, but with iPhones selling
with hundreds of dollars of profit in each phone, Apple could still make a profit if 24
it were manufacturing in the U.S., and you have an entire article where you lay
out that is not actually the main reason these are made overseas at this point.

Charles Duhigg: That's exactly right. And, and that $65, that's the high-end
estimate. Some people told us that you could, from a labor perspective you could
build the iPhone in the United States for just ten extra dollars a phone if you're
paying American wages. But wages, labor is such an enormously small part of
any electronic device, right?
Compared to the cost of buying chips or making sure that you have a plant that
can turn out thousands of these things a day or being able to get strengthened
glass cut exactly right within, you know, two days of this thing being due, that's
what's important. Labor is almost insignificant. What is really important are
supply chains and flexibility of factories. You want to be able to be located right
next to the plant that makes the screws so that when you need a small change to
that screw factory, you can go next door and say, "Give it to me in six hours," and
they can say, "Here you go." Because if that factory was in another state or on
another continent, it would take two weeks. It’s the flexibility within the Chinese
manufacturing system, that’s what you can do in Asia that you can’t do in the
United States.

Ira Glass: There's, there's a bunch of incredible stories you tell in that article, and
one of them is you talk about the number of industrial engineers needed to
oversee 200,000 assembly line, line workers. You say there's 8,700 industrial
engineers that you need. And so to get this plant going, to get this particular
operation going that you were writing about—I can't remember which one it is—
you said it would take nine months to find those 8,700 industrial engineers in the
United States, and in China, how long it took?

Charles Duhigg: 15 days. And that 15 day figure? The guy who told me that,
also told that that’s because they kind of drug their heels on it a little bit. They
probably could’ve done it faster.

yah it's not just labor it's the whole supply chain charles dugong wrote a nyt article about it you should check it out

yah he recommends it at the end of the show too

the story was always pretty unbelievable in that he'd get that much information about that many experiences from that many ppl (especially the dissidents and organizers and whatever) just by essentially hanging around a factory gate.

this is pretty hilarious: "Cathy says she’s never seen a gun in person, only in the movies and on tv, so she’d
remember it."

ha yeah that was an excellent america shaming moment

his mike daisey scoodenfroody is gross

don't want to get all james mitchell, but gruber really is going in hard on this foxconn/daisey story now that he can talk about journalism, having basically ignored it for the past three months.

i bet the daring fireball style guide says don't lie (and capitalize "Internet")

still waiting for him to explain how Apple can buy the company from the shareholders using their own money

lool

still waiting for him to explain how Apple can buy the company from the shareholders using their own money

Seriously?

That is a pretty normal thing! Are you wondering how they kept issuing stock to employees as bonuses?

Undiluting Apple stock is pretty hilarious at this point, though

Eh? No, wait, i'm not saying they can't do stock buybacks -- what they can't do is take the company private (eg a mgment buyout) using that money. Board members can't use the company's money to buy it from itself.

I thought what they are planning is a buyback?

you obviously don't read daring fireball

Apple can’t control its stock price; that’s in the hands of investors. But it can control how much cash it keeps in reserve. If investors sour (or the market crashes) and the stock price dips, Apple could take itself private. I’m very intrigued about what they’re going to announce tomorrow.

I mean, I get what you're saying -- buy back stock with the company's money, then give that stock to executives -- but I think what their strategy is tends to be more in the way of compensating executives or giving them stock incentives if they stick around, tying their monetary interest in the company to long-term goals rather than striving for bonuses at the end of the year and then bailing for another job.

oh jesus he really said that, I take all back, he's a moron

ha

There are many good reasons for Apple making this move, but the likelihood of it ever going private is less than zero.

I don't get how dude can post stuff like that! I mean, it's one thing to betray a complete lack of financial knowledge, but if you talk that through out loud it doesn't even make any sense.

he should go back to writing about what he knows best: mac os x 10.2-10.3 and perl

I kind of have doubts about dude's perl chops tbh

Have we addressed the controversy about the meltdown that happened when people confronted him about the fact he was refusing to allow changes to markdown, including bugfixes people submitted a year prior, and wouldn't give up control?

that was hilar. he wanted to keep it elegant, and keep focus by saying "no" to everything.

He was good at demonstrating his savvy understanding of the programming and web communities.

like the time he launched the effort to build a new Mail client? It was called Letters or something and was like the king of vaporware

omg I don't remember that, but I bet it is amazing

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/rage-against-the-mail-machine-the-genesis-of-letters.ars

http://www.quora.com/John-Gruber-1/What-is-the-status-of-Letters-the-email-client-for-Mac

The e-mail client will be called Letters, and project contributors voted Daring Fireball's John Gruber as the man to be responsible for getting version 1.0 out the door.

that stuff about him being the director

oh man

The whole $500 thing is kind of funny in view of the Mac App Store, too. What would that be today -- a $80 app like Aperture?

Meanwhile, Sparrow for iPhone launched and the reviews included "TOO COSTLY FOR A PROGRAM THAT DOESN'T HAVE PUSH" and it's friggin $3

Sparrow would be great but no push is deal breaker. And sorry, working with Boxcar just isn't the same. Urban Airship would be a better integration.

Gruber has a lot of good posts, but he gets prickly very easily.

Yeah, that wasn't the real issue there... people weren't saying "oh, I need this one feature, I will avoid it due to that"

It was "NOT WORTH $3" when it has a shitload of features!

I think what people are saying is that that $3 for an app that is missing an essential feature is too costly.

And FWIW, if Sparrow was made by Google for Android, Gruber would be shelling that corpse with glee for not having push.

(I'm too lazy to go find his post on the release of the standalone Gmail app)

(whose push feature was fooked)

eh, fair enough.

The entertaining bit is that if you set up a gmail account on an iPhone, it doesn't use gmail's exchange/push server by default so the app currently works with gmail the same way Apple's mail client does, by default. /Gruber

Yeah, I always wonder if that is Apple's middle finger at Google somehow.

eh, I think it's more the fact that Google still doesn't show it in their setup directions that clearly! You only get the directions on the mobile site, and there under "Google Sync," not under email setup. I think it's officially supported and non-beta, but maybe that's not what they tell Apple?

Imagine how frustrating this situation must be for monologists who do value the truth, who are performing true journalism.

err is journalism + stage performance a thing?

fox news, only they're about as truthy as mike daisey

imagine how frustrating it must be for fox news

right, it's frustrating for fox news like it is mike daisy.

Same package of entertainment.

*points to twitter*

SUNDAY CRAZINESS

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/30/readability

http://i.imgur.com/UiU5y.png

cf. this link to an article about human beings being abused

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/29/fla-foxconn

vs. this lengthy article about journalism

http://daringfireball.net/2012/03/baby_from_the_bath_water

i guess it's to be expected from a guy with a colophon and a house style, and maybe he honestly doesn't have much to add, but the dude is sleeping on the major apple story of a generations. i mean this post has more commentary than his post about the abc story:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/29/bezos

https://twitter.com/gruber/statuses/186571502550917120

fwiw I only use Readability when a page is so choked with ads and carousels and other dumb shit that it's actually impossible to read

i use readability a lot when a page is laid out in such a way that its hard to read, p sweet setup, dont use the whole read later aspect tho, i just keep a lot of tabs open

btw i will now admit that i find it kinda entertaining how gruber gets legitimately outraged and calls people names

oh and in Reeder when the source refuses to provide the full article via rss xxp

btw gruber must acknowledge that when apple built readability support into safari they became scumbags by extension

Readability is awesome and has almost supplanted my use of Instapaper. The linking thing, eh, probably a misstep. The whole "they are taking money given in publishers' names" is completely bullshit afaik because they take money, and offer publishers the opportunity to have some of that money, but they don't say "this money is definitely going to the publishers."

Lots of self-righteous anger going on, imo.

how do u ppl use readability?

On longer-form articles I run across either while browsing twitter or just the web or ilx or whatever I'll add them to Readability, then sit at home after work and read the articles while I'm eating lunch or having a beer after work on my iPhone or iPad.

i push the back quote button and it magically reformats a website

all you posters sleeping on my post about the major "indefensible: john gruber" story of a generations

it was a good post

"Badass."

"Filed for future claim chowder."

"Agreed."

"Hilarious."

caek, did you read the transcript of the interview with the FLA president linked from the ABC news article? It kind of twists the light the report is read in, for me, in that he paints the factory in an average-to-positive light for China and there are a number of issues with worker perception where management hasn't communicated either the right regulatory materials or detailed the safety mechanisms already in place.

I think Gruber's dropping it because he's a lazy ass and doesn't really want to contrast how factories operate in multiple countries. Most people don't, but as a beacon he's kind of dropping the ball, sure.

http://twitter.com/#!/BenjaminBrooks/status/189404356888629249

and here I thought that dude looked like a mid-80s stereotype of a "professional" in his picture, it turns out he thinks he's in Ferris Bueller

what is with these people and describing themselves as 'raconteurs'?:

http://i.imgur.com/FKqUv.png

if you took the bio lines and the twitter descriptions of these dudes you're going to find a lot of interesting words like that

to my shame I think I have a social network profile somewhere that probably still says "flâneur." urgh

u can tell by his bio line what a great storyteller he is

The Yankees have numerous rivals. The Red Sox (division). The Mets (cross-town). The Dodgers (11 World Series matchups). But these Yankees — this particular squad — have a bigger rival. Father Time.

Father Time??? r u srs

Time’s effects, even against Rivera — the most graceful and elegant ballplayer I’ve ever seen, the closest thing in sports to an ageless wonder — are ignominious. The Yankees often win, but in the end, time always wins — the one opponent against which even the Yankees will forever be underdogs. To struggle against time is to struggle against the inevitable. We all know you can’t beat time, but the joy of these aging Yankees is that sometimes you can get lucky and race ahead of it for a while. But now this.

What the fuck, what is the point of this, why not just post that insipid poem about the One Great Scorer

~time always wins ~ thinks abt it

Boom, done.

"terrific"

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/15/joe-smith-paper-towel

lmao after seeing that i was going to start a thread about TED talks that treat you like a fucking child

see also: How To Tie Your Shoes

95% of ted stuff is such glib stupid bullshit, but this is like that lifehacker article about "how to hack your mashed potato for one recipe so that it feeds two people"

confession: i was charmed by paper towel dude

if everybody didn't get gas on 05/18/12 think of how big a message we'd send to those oil companies

TED is crossing the territory into vince shlomo shamwow territory

you followin me camera guy *dries hands with only one paper towel sheet*

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3993649

i don't get it. what is this guy's shtick? he's like the internet-era's garrison keillor?

Combined with John Dvorak of PC Magazine

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/25/the-talk-show-002 can someone break down this podcast brouhaha for me?

Web standards are important, and Daring Fireball adheres to them. Specifically, Daring Fireball’s HTML markup should validate as either HTML 5 or XHTML 4.01 Transitional

there is no such thing as XHTML 4.01 Transitional

lol

http://brooksreview.net/2012/05/amazon-nerf/

...

http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/25100349521/melange

i can name six of eight

3

0

Great Cthulhu, I can name four.