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Is John Gruber ever non-biased in his pieces about Apple? Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. Every art

Is John Gruber ever non-biased in his pieces about Apple? Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. Every article on every Apple product announcement starts out feeling well-intentioned and non-objective, but then always seems to segue into a subtle praise piece. I am not hating on him, he still makes some great points and he puts considerable amounts of effort into analysis pieces. I just feel like with Gruber we would never see an article honestly telling us something Apple have released is bad. > Also, though it sounds trivial, I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match. Based on a culmination of reviews and early preview articles I have read, videos and basically everything I have read about the Apple Watch this statement seems kind of ironic. The second hand might be smooth, but the very real performance issues people have encountered with the watch mean the rest of the Apple Watch experience is anything but smooth. What's the point of a smooth second hand if the rest of the experience is somewhat crippled and unusable? I like the look of the Apple Watch and the very idea of it, but to an extent. It feels as though articles like Gruber's here are talking with reckless abandon, from the perspective that existing solutions aren't out there. From a user interface perspective the Pebble watch and Moto 360 especially are beautiful, well-crafted and smooth interfaces. Apple are not entering new territory nor are they introducing any ideas or improvements into the space (besides the physical appearance). Lets not pretend that there aren't as equally good, if not, better smart watches out there. They might not have had the same amount of design and research put into them, but I think there is such a thing as over-engineering something. I am pretty happy with my Pebble watch, the battery life is great and so too, is the battery life. I am by no means an expert, but I like nice watches and to me the Apple Watch will never match the build quality, feel and longevity of a nice traditional mechanical watch even if it is only from a battery life perspective.

threeseed 12y ago
It is ridiculous to say that Apple hasn't introduced any new ideas or improvements to the smartwatch space.
- DigitalSea 12y ago
  What new ideas and improvements would those be? Honest and non-argumentative question. I mean of course besides the beautiful engineering (I like the appearance of the Apple Watch) and digital crown.
  - calvin_c 12y ago
    Moving the space app centric is a pretty big deal for me at least. Even if it requires teathering to a phone, and with the performance issues, it's a big step above the notification centric nature of Android Wear. Plus the ability to run on wifi and stay connected with the phone. Not saying the device isn't worthy of most of its criticisms, but let's not pretend this is and iOS-ified version of Android Wear.
    - nickonline 12y ago
      What do you mean by app centric being a new feature? The pebble watch had a whole store that would work either with android or iOS (some limitations here).
  - threeseed 12y ago
    Taptic feedback. Diversity in product design. Digital touch. Architecture of Apps. Those are all unique to Apple's Watch as is pretty much every aspect of the look & feel. You can argue different watches having the same features but Apple's implementation will always be quite unique.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      I don't know if diversity in product design is valid for the watch. There was a UI side-by-side with Android Watch UI products at the reveal of the Apple Watch, and they're pretty much identical (save for the top-level app view)
      - verisimilidude 12y ago
bane 12y ago
He's definitely a shill. Imagine a couple years ago, when Gruber couldn't even bring himself to pretend to provide critical analysis of Apple products. I used to just flag daringfireball posts as soon as I saw them. These days there's at least information content in his posts so I usually leave them alone. But Gruber also spends an extraordinary amount of time these days using framing devices to either draw false comparisons that put Apple on top, or minimize the cases where Apple clearly screwed up. You could easily cut this review down by 2/3rds just by getting rid of the superfluous framing he uses throughout and not lose any information at all. The amount of hemming and hawing in this makes me think that he's not really buying it this time. It's not a crap device, but it's not clear what it's good for and it's not strictly better than just a normal watch. He didn't really effuse about Apple's stated use-cases for the device. His hope throughout is that maybe it'll appeal to non-watch wearers? You'll also notice that he carefully doesn't compare it to all the other smart watches in the growing segment. He pretends like it only is comparable to regular watches, like the Apple watch was introduced into a market vacuum, cut from whole cloth (Apple's magical genius cloth), and completely uninformed by the three decades of smartwatch development.
- clarky07 12y ago
  lucky for gruber, Apple has released an awful lot of good products recently. iPhones have stupid customer satisfaction numbers. They aren't the most valuable company in the world by a mile because everything they release is crap. Obviously Gruber is a big fan of Apple, but your criticism of him is a bit harsh. I assume he didn't spend a lot of time comparing it to Android wear because he hasn't spent a ton of time using Android wear. I'm a little afraid of the first gen bugs, and some of the reviews I read today weren't completely sold, but pretty much every single one that I read said it was far and away the best smartwatch they've used, even if they still weren't completely sold and gave it meh reviews overall.
  - bane 12y ago
    Gruber is terrible. I'm completely unapologetic about my opinion about him. He's everything that's wrong in tech news today. He's been able to carve a niche for himself preaching to a choir of folks with large disposable incomes by providing unashamed regurgitation of Apple's marketing bullet points so that people can reinforce their beliefs by having another bullet point that they made the right technology purchase. If his recent posts continued his tradition of information free praise, I'd still be flagging them off the front-page. I can think of very few tech writers as well known as him who offer less useful information than he does on any topic. You are right, Apple didn't get where they are by producing crap, but they also didn't get where they are without getting it wrong sometimes, and it's really hard to find cases where Gruber recognizes that without bookending and drowning issues in a thousand words of qualification. Sure, he gets to point to the sentence among dozens where he mentions something that might, just maybe, be wrong, but the context he places issues in minimize and excuse these issues away. The question he needs to be answering is not if the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch on the market, I don't doubt that it is. But it's, "are smartwatches a good idea?". He's not capable of answering that question honestly because to Gruber, anything Apple does is a good idea, Apple is doing a smartwatch, therefore it must be a good idea. He waits till Apple tells him how to think, then he write a post recycling and expanding on their marketing direction -- and he does this completely unironically. If you read his review with a critical eye it boils down to this: - It's a terrible watch (there's about 1,000 words trying to weazel around what a shitty watch it is) - The industrial design is nice - He hasn't found much value in the expressed use-cases it shipped with - If you don't wear watches, you'll probably be more interested in it than people who already wear watches There, almost 6,000 words boiled down to the 4 main bullet points, and only the hardware received any real praise. I think it's interesting that these 4 bullet points are echoed in most of the early reviews I've seen. The problems he mentions, then tries to bury, are expanded on in more honest reviews. They aren't really problems with Apple's version of the Smart Watch per se, but with the idea of Smart Watches as a class of product. It's really hard to come up with a Smart Watch that makes any kind of sense, and it's pretty clear that Apple hasn't been able to justify it (and if Apple can't crack that nut who can?) Will Apple sell millions of them? Yeah probably. I wonder how many will be to people who made their purchase decision after reading daringfireball?
gurkendoktor 12y ago
> Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. You should try listening to his podcast(s). Just like pre-Functional-High-Ground-Marco, I find Gruber to be a lot more realistic and balanced when he is talking, not writing.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  This is the same Marco Arment who just came out and wrote an essay basically saying the iPhone 6/6+ is poorly designed, and he's hoping Apple will stop with the "thinner, thinner, thinner but sucky experience for the user" design process?
  - eropple 12y ago
    Yeah - I used to feel like Arment was in he bag for Apple (and I say this as a hardcore Mac guy, though I use Android phones), but these days I find myself respecting his take a lot more. Gruber...no. He is a very good writer who uses that skill effectively, but he's so far in the bag it's not even funny.
    - ghshephard 12y ago
      I think Arment has realized he really has nothing to lose, and everything to gain by just speaking the truth. A number of times he's been hosed by Apple sitting on an patch release for overcast, he's not invited to any events, and doesn't get embargoed gear. As a result, telling the truth improves his braaannnd (read that with a zombie like braiiiinnsss sound), with very little downside. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll continue to see more honesty from Arment - I think he's realized that it only did Siracusa good. Gruber, who I love his reading, is in a tough position - he has to tow the company line in order to get the invites and gear from Apple, which are somewhat important to DF.
  - gurkendoktor 12y ago
    Yep. I don't think he has been writing essays as these before his infamous blog post[1]. He has, however, been criticising Apple for a while (forever?) on podcasts. On a recent episode of ATP.fm, he even mentioned that the blog post did not come out of nowhere, but was simply a write-up of things that have been discussed on the podcast for a long time. [1] http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-g...
ghshephard 12y ago
Ironically, Gruber's review is perhaps one of the more critical one that I've read so far of the Apple watch. My takeaway was that he didn't think, as a life-time watch wearer, that it wasn't as good a time piece as any of his watches, that the battery life didn't meet almost any watch in existence, that the delay in looking at the watch was annoying. Gruber care's about design, quality, and fit/finish, and from that perspective, the Apple watch is significantly more advanced than watches like the Pebble, and so he spent a bit of time talking about it. Here's the thing - John Gruber is a partisan (to quote Siracusa), but so is his audience - so it's entirely reasonable that he would offer a partisan's analysis of the Apple Watch. Even so - I thought he was more critical of the watch than most other Apple products - and perhaps it's because he does wear a watch, and was trying to decide whether he was interested in wearing an Apple watch instead. His conclusion seemed to be that it wasn't clear he would. Put another way, of the four reviews that I've read so far (NYT, Recode, The Verge) - Gruber's was the first one that made me think that buying a version 1 Apple Watch wasn't such a great idea - simply because it was a partisans review that was clearly calling out disclaimers.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pareidolia 12y ago
Unfortunately Mr. Gruber isn't aware of the Seiko Spring Drive movement which exhibits perfectly smooth movements of hands and gears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwK51jnBtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwK51jnBtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUxjF7QrIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUxjF7QrIc But then again, he probably isn't a watch enthusiast.
- kbutler 12y ago
  He tries to position himself as a "serious watch person", but even I knew of the smooth movement, and I'm anything but a serious watch person...

threeseed 12y ago

It is ridiculous to say that Apple hasn't introduced any new ideas or improvements to the smartwatch space.

DigitalSea 12y ago
What new ideas and improvements would those be? Honest and non-argumentative question. I mean of course besides the beautiful engineering (I like the appearance of the Apple Watch) and digital crown.
- calvin_c 12y ago
  Moving the space app centric is a pretty big deal for me at least. Even if it requires teathering to a phone, and with the performance issues, it's a big step above the notification centric nature of Android Wear. Plus the ability to run on wifi and stay connected with the phone. Not saying the device isn't worthy of most of its criticisms, but let's not pretend this is and iOS-ified version of Android Wear.
  - nickonline 12y ago
    What do you mean by app centric being a new feature? The pebble watch had a whole store that would work either with android or iOS (some limitations here).
- threeseed 12y ago
  Taptic feedback. Diversity in product design. Digital touch. Architecture of Apps. Those are all unique to Apple's Watch as is pretty much every aspect of the look & feel. You can argue different watches having the same features but Apple's implementation will always be quite unique.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    I don't know if diversity in product design is valid for the watch. There was a UI side-by-side with Android Watch UI products at the reveal of the Apple Watch, and they're pretty much identical (save for the top-level app view)
    - verisimilidude 12y ago

bane 12y ago

He's definitely a shill. Imagine a couple years ago, when Gruber couldn't even bring himself to pretend to provide critical analysis of Apple products. I used to just flag daringfireball posts as soon as I saw them. These days there's at least information content in his posts so I usually leave them alone. But Gruber also spends an extraordinary amount of time these days using framing devices to either draw false comparisons that put Apple on top, or minimize the cases where Apple clearly screwed up. You could easily cut this review down by 2/3rds just by getting rid of the superfluous framing he uses throughout and not lose any information at all. The amount of hemming and hawing in this makes me think that he's not really buying it this time. It's not a crap device, but it's not clear what it's good for and it's not strictly better than just a normal watch. He didn't really effuse about Apple's stated use-cases for the device. His hope throughout is that maybe it'll appeal to non-watch wearers? You'll also notice that he carefully doesn't compare it to all the other smart watches in the growing segment. He pretends like it only is comparable to regular watches, like the Apple watch was introduced into a market vacuum, cut from whole cloth (Apple's magical genius cloth), and completely uninformed by the three decades of smartwatch development.

clarky07 12y ago
lucky for gruber, Apple has released an awful lot of good products recently. iPhones have stupid customer satisfaction numbers. They aren't the most valuable company in the world by a mile because everything they release is crap. Obviously Gruber is a big fan of Apple, but your criticism of him is a bit harsh. I assume he didn't spend a lot of time comparing it to Android wear because he hasn't spent a ton of time using Android wear. I'm a little afraid of the first gen bugs, and some of the reviews I read today weren't completely sold, but pretty much every single one that I read said it was far and away the best smartwatch they've used, even if they still weren't completely sold and gave it meh reviews overall.
- bane 12y ago
  Gruber is terrible. I'm completely unapologetic about my opinion about him. He's everything that's wrong in tech news today. He's been able to carve a niche for himself preaching to a choir of folks with large disposable incomes by providing unashamed regurgitation of Apple's marketing bullet points so that people can reinforce their beliefs by having another bullet point that they made the right technology purchase. If his recent posts continued his tradition of information free praise, I'd still be flagging them off the front-page. I can think of very few tech writers as well known as him who offer less useful information than he does on any topic. You are right, Apple didn't get where they are by producing crap, but they also didn't get where they are without getting it wrong sometimes, and it's really hard to find cases where Gruber recognizes that without bookending and drowning issues in a thousand words of qualification. Sure, he gets to point to the sentence among dozens where he mentions something that might, just maybe, be wrong, but the context he places issues in minimize and excuse these issues away. The question he needs to be answering is not if the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch on the market, I don't doubt that it is. But it's, "are smartwatches a good idea?". He's not capable of answering that question honestly because to Gruber, anything Apple does is a good idea, Apple is doing a smartwatch, therefore it must be a good idea. He waits till Apple tells him how to think, then he write a post recycling and expanding on their marketing direction -- and he does this completely unironically. If you read his review with a critical eye it boils down to this: - It's a terrible watch (there's about 1,000 words trying to weazel around what a shitty watch it is) - The industrial design is nice - He hasn't found much value in the expressed use-cases it shipped with - If you don't wear watches, you'll probably be more interested in it than people who already wear watches There, almost 6,000 words boiled down to the 4 main bullet points, and only the hardware received any real praise. I think it's interesting that these 4 bullet points are echoed in most of the early reviews I've seen. The problems he mentions, then tries to bury, are expanded on in more honest reviews. They aren't really problems with Apple's version of the Smart Watch per se, but with the idea of Smart Watches as a class of product. It's really hard to come up with a Smart Watch that makes any kind of sense, and it's pretty clear that Apple hasn't been able to justify it (and if Apple can't crack that nut who can?) Will Apple sell millions of them? Yeah probably. I wonder how many will be to people who made their purchase decision after reading daringfireball?

gurkendoktor 12y ago

> Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. You should try listening to his podcast(s). Just like pre-Functional-High-Ground-Marco, I find Gruber to be a lot more realistic and balanced when he is talking, not writing.

ghshephard 12y ago
This is the same Marco Arment who just came out and wrote an essay basically saying the iPhone 6/6+ is poorly designed, and he's hoping Apple will stop with the "thinner, thinner, thinner but sucky experience for the user" design process?
- eropple 12y ago
  Yeah - I used to feel like Arment was in he bag for Apple (and I say this as a hardcore Mac guy, though I use Android phones), but these days I find myself respecting his take a lot more. Gruber...no. He is a very good writer who uses that skill effectively, but he's so far in the bag it's not even funny.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    I think Arment has realized he really has nothing to lose, and everything to gain by just speaking the truth. A number of times he's been hosed by Apple sitting on an patch release for overcast, he's not invited to any events, and doesn't get embargoed gear. As a result, telling the truth improves his braaannnd (read that with a zombie like braiiiinnsss sound), with very little downside. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll continue to see more honesty from Arment - I think he's realized that it only did Siracusa good. Gruber, who I love his reading, is in a tough position - he has to tow the company line in order to get the invites and gear from Apple, which are somewhat important to DF.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  Yep. I don't think he has been writing essays as these before his infamous blog post[1]. He has, however, been criticising Apple for a while (forever?) on podcasts. On a recent episode of ATP.fm, he even mentioned that the blog post did not come out of nowhere, but was simply a write-up of things that have been discussed on the podcast for a long time. [1] http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-g...

ghshephard 12y ago

Ironically, Gruber's review is perhaps one of the more critical one that I've read so far of the Apple watch. My takeaway was that he didn't think, as a life-time watch wearer, that it wasn't as good a time piece as any of his watches, that the battery life didn't meet almost any watch in existence, that the delay in looking at the watch was annoying. Gruber care's about design, quality, and fit/finish, and from that perspective, the Apple watch is significantly more advanced than watches like the Pebble, and so he spent a bit of time talking about it. Here's the thing - John Gruber is a partisan (to quote Siracusa), but so is his audience - so it's entirely reasonable that he would offer a partisan's analysis of the Apple Watch. Even so - I thought he was more critical of the watch than most other Apple products - and perhaps it's because he does wear a watch, and was trying to decide whether he was interested in wearing an Apple watch instead. His conclusion seemed to be that it wasn't clear he would. Put another way, of the four reviews that I've read so far (NYT, Recode, The Verge) - Gruber's was the first one that made me think that buying a version 1 Apple Watch wasn't such a great idea - simply because it was a partisans review that was clearly calling out disclaimers.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pareidolia 12y ago

Unfortunately Mr. Gruber isn't aware of the Seiko Spring Drive movement which exhibits perfectly smooth movements of hands and gears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwK51jnBtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwK51jnBtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUxjF7QrIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUxjF7QrIc But then again, he probably isn't a watch enthusiast.

kbutler 12y ago
He tries to position himself as a "serious watch person", but even I knew of the smooth movement, and I'm anything but a serious watch person...