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>What strikes me about Thurrott’s tweet is that the two companies have attracted the writers they deserve. Me? I’d be appalled if Apple were to unveil something

>What strikes me about Thurrott’s tweet is that the two companies have attracted the writers they deserve. Me? I’d be appalled if Apple were to unveil something in the half- (if that) finished state of Windows 8 for tablets. I enjoy writing about what’s real. I can't believe that Gruber can write such self-satisfied tripe without more self-awareness. His quote is more true than he realizes - the incredible smugness of both Gruber and Apple is very striking. Rabid fanboyishness combined with pretension to some kind of superior aesthetic taste in how product announcements are handled shows that DF is reaching the point of self-parody.

josephcooney 15y ago
Yes. I guess I missed the part where all of the attendees at build received a real working windows 8 tablet, running the real windows 8 preview/alpha/beta/whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days bits. Somehow that isn't _real_ in the way apple would do real, and thus not REALLY real.
- Game_Ender 15y ago
  According to sites like Arstechnica who have got to use the build for a while it has plenty of lock ups and hard crashes. Many features you saw demoed in the keynote are also not ready for release so they are not in the preview build either. The point is, it's far being shippable, and if you can't ship it, it's not "real".
  - CJCorona 15y ago
    that's not any different from when Apple released developer previews of Lion and iOS5. Are we seriously arguing over the 'finished' state of a developer build? Really?
    - ethank 15y ago
      No, what is being discussed is using a developer build of a very alpha-state software as a comparison point against something released that has tens of millions of devices in the market.
      - pyre 15y ago
        Gruber's argument started out as a criticism of Paul Thurott's comment that Windows 8 was the death knell for the iPad, but then he goes off into comparing Microsoft's and Apple's corporate release strategies... The criticism of the "Windows 8 kills iPad" comments is fair, but trying to group these tech pundits under the 'Windows' banner and use it to criticize Microsoft as a company is faulty logic at best (and purposely deceptive at worst).
- sedev 15y ago
  Gruber gives the example of how the iPads that were available to the press at the Apple event were indistinguishable from the iPads later sold at retail. Microsoft says up front, very clearly, that the hardware they're giving away is a "reference implemenation," which means that it's unlikely to ever show up at retail in its current form, and that the software is a "developer preview," likewise. So - no, that's not the way Apple would do it, and while it's certainly a Good Thing for developers, it's not unreasonable to argue that compared to the pre-release iPads, the developer-preview Win8 tablets and software are not 'real.' Many, many things about both the hardware and the software can be expected to change. They're still being formed, and it'd be very premature to make predictions about the final user-facing experience at this point.
Lewisham 15y ago
One could reasonably argue that Lion is a half-finished state itself. It's neither here nor there; an incoherent mess of UI ideas and functions. I'm not especially happy I upgraded. I find myself working against Lion's new features more often than with.
- Steko 15y ago
  One could reasonably point out that this is a minority view and most reviews of Lion are pretty positive.
  - technoslut 15y ago
    Not to intentionally play the middle but I can see both sides of this. Lion can be considered a finished product but it feels like the OS is in the beginning of a metamorphosis and it may be vastly different 5-10 years from now.
    - Steko 15y ago
      Honestly haven't used Lion myself but this seems to be a consensus view. "Incoherent mess" does not seem to be the consensus view. That said, I hereby reserve the right to come back in a few days under the unlikely circumstance that my machine blows up and (further unlikely circumstance) that I replace with a mac and tell you that it turns out I also find it to be an "incoherent mess".
      - Lewisham 15y ago
        Honestly haven't used Lion myself but this seems to be a consensus view. Don't sing its praises until you've tried it. Knocking my opinion based on your derivation of "consensus" is pretty dishonest. Launchpad/Mission Control are simply poor implementations of some sort of iOS-type experience that simply make no sense. Full screen mode on most apps is worse than Snow Leopard, the odd movement into a new screen as a sort-of context switch is plain odd. Restoring windows on Preview/Quicktime leads to you simply having a mess of windows appear as soon as you open the apps. It is a half-way house between Mac OS X of old and iOS, and it shows. I don't often agree with Gizmodo, but their review seems most like my views on it. I wouldn't have spent the $30 if I didn't want to like it.
Steko 15y ago
I guess smugness is in the eye of the beholder. It's not smug when Thurott says "Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win."? It's not smug when Ballmer dismisses every Apple product when it's released only to watch that product become a smash hit? Don't get me wrong Gruber's smug as all hell in this piece but Apple itself? I'm not so sure that shoe fits although a couple examples come to mind (like Steve's projection of Safari browser share).
- dreww 15y ago
  they're both smug - what's confusing to me is why anyone who is not a major shareholder of these enormous corporations has feelings about these relatively boring narratives.
  - switch 15y ago
    because it's like becoming a devotee to a religion. Most people, instead of being the star of their own lives, want to follow a cult or religion or leader. That's why people get such strong illogical feelings about a brand.
  - szx 15y ago
    You could ask the same question about football fans (or any other sport for that matter).
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  >It's not smug when Thurott says "Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win."? The difference is that only Gruber's posts get highly upvoted on HN. Thurrott? No one cares.
frou_dh 15y ago
I took a look at Thurrott's site and was greeted with a big popover ad splatted across the page, so captain slate grey wins at least one point in the taste stakes.
- barista 15y ago
  Only an apple fanboy can side with an opinion based on the color scheme and visual appearance of the site. :)
  - sedev 15y ago
    That's a mischaracterization of the statement you're responding to. Gruber and Thurott's sites are actually a neat microcosm of some trends that they also come down on opposite sides of. Gruber delivers content as a product to an audience. Thurott is delivering an audience, as a product, to advertisers.
    - frou_dh 15y ago
      My comment was only on the matter of taste that the parent brought up. Take a look at Gruber's rates, he's raking in the advertising money, yet in a neatly packaged way.
      - sedev 15y ago
        I agree with that, and with the proposition that that shows that he has better taste in web design than Thurott.
        barista 15y ago
        Agree. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he has better opinion as well :)
  - deleted 15y ago
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  - 15y ago
technoslut 15y ago
I don't know what smugness you see in Apple regarding this because they haven't said anything about it. Regarding both Thurrott and Gruber, they both acted like fanboys today. There's nothing wrong with preferring a platform but it was more than a little thick. Thurrott was going back and forth with Apple fans in his tweets and Gruber made a post earlier calling the Samsung tablet an iPad 3 prototype while ragging on the fact it had a fan. Other Apple bloggers picked up on it and ran with it the whole day as a talking point. I prefer to wait and see what happens. There isn't any need for hasty judgements either way. No one knows what the final product will be like when it's actually released. The touch-centric part was amazing but there are questions of price (at least with Intel models with SSD's), weight, battery life and how well it performs under ARM processors. There are also questions of whether consumers will be interested in it.
revscat 15y ago
Smugness is confidence displayed by someone we don't like. Every word you wrote could be equally applied were you to hold up a mirror.
morisy 15y ago
That exact passage stood out to me for the precise opposite reason: For every Gruber-esque writer on Apple's side, there are hundreds of MacRumors, InfiniteLoops, etc., that predict, usually badly, future Apple visages. Good, cogent writing is the exception, not the rule, no matter the subject.

josephcooney 15y ago

Yes. I guess I missed the part where all of the attendees at build received a real working windows 8 tablet, running the real windows 8 preview/alpha/beta/whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days bits. Somehow that isn't _real_ in the way apple would do real, and thus not REALLY real.

Game_Ender 15y ago
According to sites like Arstechnica who have got to use the build for a while it has plenty of lock ups and hard crashes. Many features you saw demoed in the keynote are also not ready for release so they are not in the preview build either. The point is, it's far being shippable, and if you can't ship it, it's not "real".
- CJCorona 15y ago
  that's not any different from when Apple released developer previews of Lion and iOS5. Are we seriously arguing over the 'finished' state of a developer build? Really?
  - ethank 15y ago
    No, what is being discussed is using a developer build of a very alpha-state software as a comparison point against something released that has tens of millions of devices in the market.
    - pyre 15y ago
      Gruber's argument started out as a criticism of Paul Thurott's comment that Windows 8 was the death knell for the iPad, but then he goes off into comparing Microsoft's and Apple's corporate release strategies... The criticism of the "Windows 8 kills iPad" comments is fair, but trying to group these tech pundits under the 'Windows' banner and use it to criticize Microsoft as a company is faulty logic at best (and purposely deceptive at worst).
sedev 15y ago
Gruber gives the example of how the iPads that were available to the press at the Apple event were indistinguishable from the iPads later sold at retail. Microsoft says up front, very clearly, that the hardware they're giving away is a "reference implemenation," which means that it's unlikely to ever show up at retail in its current form, and that the software is a "developer preview," likewise. So - no, that's not the way Apple would do it, and while it's certainly a Good Thing for developers, it's not unreasonable to argue that compared to the pre-release iPads, the developer-preview Win8 tablets and software are not 'real.' Many, many things about both the hardware and the software can be expected to change. They're still being formed, and it'd be very premature to make predictions about the final user-facing experience at this point.

Lewisham 15y ago

One could reasonably argue that Lion is a half-finished state itself. It's neither here nor there; an incoherent mess of UI ideas and functions. I'm not especially happy I upgraded. I find myself working against Lion's new features more often than with.

Steko 15y ago
One could reasonably point out that this is a minority view and most reviews of Lion are pretty positive.
- technoslut 15y ago
  Not to intentionally play the middle but I can see both sides of this. Lion can be considered a finished product but it feels like the OS is in the beginning of a metamorphosis and it may be vastly different 5-10 years from now.
  - Steko 15y ago
    Honestly haven't used Lion myself but this seems to be a consensus view. "Incoherent mess" does not seem to be the consensus view. That said, I hereby reserve the right to come back in a few days under the unlikely circumstance that my machine blows up and (further unlikely circumstance) that I replace with a mac and tell you that it turns out I also find it to be an "incoherent mess".
    - Lewisham 15y ago
      Honestly haven't used Lion myself but this seems to be a consensus view. Don't sing its praises until you've tried it. Knocking my opinion based on your derivation of "consensus" is pretty dishonest. Launchpad/Mission Control are simply poor implementations of some sort of iOS-type experience that simply make no sense. Full screen mode on most apps is worse than Snow Leopard, the odd movement into a new screen as a sort-of context switch is plain odd. Restoring windows on Preview/Quicktime leads to you simply having a mess of windows appear as soon as you open the apps. It is a half-way house between Mac OS X of old and iOS, and it shows. I don't often agree with Gizmodo, but their review seems most like my views on it. I wouldn't have spent the $30 if I didn't want to like it.

Steko 15y ago

I guess smugness is in the eye of the beholder. It's not smug when Thurott says "Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win."? It's not smug when Ballmer dismisses every Apple product when it's released only to watch that product become a smash hit? Don't get me wrong Gruber's smug as all hell in this piece but Apple itself? I'm not so sure that shoe fits although a couple examples come to mind (like Steve's projection of Safari browser share).

dreww 15y ago
they're both smug - what's confusing to me is why anyone who is not a major shareholder of these enormous corporations has feelings about these relatively boring narratives.
- switch 15y ago
  because it's like becoming a devotee to a religion. Most people, instead of being the star of their own lives, want to follow a cult or religion or leader. That's why people get such strong illogical feelings about a brand.
- szx 15y ago
  You could ask the same question about football fans (or any other sport for that matter).
recoiledsnake 15y ago
>It's not smug when Thurott says "Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win."? The difference is that only Gruber's posts get highly upvoted on HN. Thurrott? No one cares.

frou_dh 15y ago

I took a look at Thurrott's site and was greeted with a big popover ad splatted across the page, so captain slate grey wins at least one point in the taste stakes.

barista 15y ago
Only an apple fanboy can side with an opinion based on the color scheme and visual appearance of the site. :)
- sedev 15y ago
  That's a mischaracterization of the statement you're responding to. Gruber and Thurott's sites are actually a neat microcosm of some trends that they also come down on opposite sides of. Gruber delivers content as a product to an audience. Thurott is delivering an audience, as a product, to advertisers.
  - frou_dh 15y ago
    My comment was only on the matter of taste that the parent brought up. Take a look at Gruber's rates, he's raking in the advertising money, yet in a neatly packaged way.
    - sedev 15y ago
      I agree with that, and with the proposition that that shows that he has better taste in web design than Thurott.
      - barista 15y ago
        Agree. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he has better opinion as well :)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- 15y ago

technoslut 15y ago

I don't know what smugness you see in Apple regarding this because they haven't said anything about it. Regarding both Thurrott and Gruber, they both acted like fanboys today. There's nothing wrong with preferring a platform but it was more than a little thick. Thurrott was going back and forth with Apple fans in his tweets and Gruber made a post earlier calling the Samsung tablet an iPad 3 prototype while ragging on the fact it had a fan. Other Apple bloggers picked up on it and ran with it the whole day as a talking point. I prefer to wait and see what happens. There isn't any need for hasty judgements either way. No one knows what the final product will be like when it's actually released. The touch-centric part was amazing but there are questions of price (at least with Intel models with SSD's), weight, battery life and how well it performs under ARM processors. There are also questions of whether consumers will be interested in it.

revscat 15y ago

Smugness is confidence displayed by someone we don't like. Every word you wrote could be equally applied were you to hold up a mirror.

morisy 15y ago

That exact passage stood out to me for the precise opposite reason: For every Gruber-esque writer on Apple's side, there are hundreds of MacRumors, InfiniteLoops, etc., that predict, usually badly, future Apple visages. Good, cogent writing is the exception, not the rule, no matter the subject.