Wherein Stu Compares Gruber to Homeopaths
Max Jacobson, the author of Reactions to my Reactions, brings up a few decent points about today’s angry missive “Meh”. First off, I admit I wrote it on a particularly vitriolic tear, and was even doing so as kind of an exit from this blog, ‘cause really, it’s ridiculous. I also cut between topics like a crazy person, so that should have been a clue.
Nice disclaimer.
But, anyway, Max still manages to miss several of my points in weird ways.
Who cares if Gruber makes a good living?
Gruber makes a good living the same way people like Jenny McCarthy make a good living telling people vaccinations give children autism. He panders ignorance and bias. There’s nothing wrong with making a good living, you’re right, except Gruber isn’t. If you think Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are making a “good living” then, fine, Gruber is flawless. So are all the people who sell homeopathic medicine and diet remedies to people who are dying of cancer. (Hmm…)
Really? First of all, Jenny McCarthy made her money from Playboy and Jim Carrey. Secondly, comparing Gruber’s opinions on tech to those who peddle certain death to cancer patients is a stupid, hyperbolic and unnecessary argument, even for you.
My attack is not on capitalism, and it’s not even on selfishness, it’s on selling ignorance. It’s especially on selling ignorance by creating a polarizing moral/personal conflict where normal people shouldn’t even see one. Apple vs Google/Microsoft definitely falls into this category.
Oh, so it’s about ignorance. Stu, an ignorant consumption of an (a|A)pple is forbidden and sinful only in folklore and religion.
Some people are more dramatic or emotionally invested than others, but c’mon: are Apple fans any worse than Android die-hards? I don’t think so. Obnoxious people are obnoxious, all over the map. Gruber’s not, even if some of his readers are.
Name the Android/Google equivalent of John Gruber. I’d like to write about him, too.
It’s a personal vendetta against people who espouse views that Stu finds loud and ignorant, because only he can see the light and set them straight.
Gruber not being obnoxious is definitely a matter of taste.
Yes. I guess your taste is refined, then? Yeah?
That was a low-blow.
How swept up do we need to get in these terms though? Are “netbooks” an interesting thing to talk about? Are “ultrabooks” then also interesting? If “ultrabooks” are a thing, then the Air is an ultrabook and not a netbook.
“Netbook” and “ultrabook” are marketing terms created to make it sound like there is something new where there isn’t in reality. In actuality, a “netbook” is simply a small laptop, powered according to its sub-laptop price point. A “ultrabook” is simply a small laptop, powered according to it’s laptop pricing. These are marketing terms that people have decided to cling to, to the point of acting like an “ultrabook” and a “netbook” are two different things and that the difference between them is important.
It’s just funny to me that marketing has dictated that there can’t be a “high end netbook”. No, a high-end netbook is an “ultrabook”! That marketing lingo is important, especially to people who keep arguing with me on Twitter as if “netbook” is a heinous insult.
I agree that they’re just marketing lingo. I’d argue that it’s more difficult to define a netbook than you make it out to be, but this fits nicely with their reputation for being promo-speak. Likewise for ultrabooks.
The same person willing to believe that the distinction between netbook and ultrabook is important is the same kind of person who says “Fuck you mom, I wanted an iPhone for Christmas!” Yup, we’re still talking about the Lowest Common Denominator here.
Herein lies a hasty generalisation, as is typical of your writing. You present no evidence and no proof, yet you assert it as fact. To be fair, you’re still (as far as I’m aware) on your “vitriolic tear”.
It doesn’t bother me if some people reject Apple, though. We’ll see if it happens on a mass scale.
You read the rest of my site? You see any of the graphs on it recently? Based on the total amount of people buying smart phones and the percentage of those that are ending up Android, I’d say it’s already happening.
Except not really. At all (ignore the headline because it says the opposite of the numbers). See also.
If you’re talking about Gruber, then I dunno, you must be reading a different site than I am.
You’re trying to tell me you don’t think Gruber comes up as overly defensive when it comes to Apple, especially versus Android? The whole “tapering off” thing is proof that Gruber is constantly on the defensive, trying to find ways to paint the narrative that Android is somehow slowing.
See above.
Gruber never just objectively reports on something. He even linked to that list of spoiled brats as if there was a lesson to be learned from it. Most people saw that said, “Jesus, what vapid horrible little shits!” but Gruber managed to look at it and say, “Apple’s really nailed consumer demand and brand awareness!”
So?
Is he saying that Android is doomed because Windows Mobile failed? No! He’s saying that Windows Mobile failed, and now Android is doing the same thing.
Yes, and John Gruber is clearly pointing out this connection for no reason at all, and definitely not because he thinks it’s the reason Android is doomed. The above series of three sentences is probably the stupidest thing I have read. “He’s saying this and implying nothing by saying it, I swear!”
You should try reading some of the stuff on your site, like the fourth paragraph in this post.
Moreover, I disagree that Android is failing. I don’t think Gruber is saying it’s failing, either. He’s saying that there are aspects of Android that he sees as failed or problematic, like OS updates. He also has clearly articulated why he chose the profit share metric in “Winning”:
It’s easy to pick and choose the numbers you want to back up the theory you prefer. So if you’re rooting for Android to dominate the industry, it is tempting to focus on unit sale market share, and to attribute Windows’s historical dominance to its massive unit sale market share. But you can flip that around, and argue that because I am rooting for the iPhone, I cherry pick the data to fit the story I want to see unfold — and so I say profit share is what matters, not unit sales, only because that’s the figure that puts Apple’s position in the best light.
But I like the odds that I’ll be proven right. Money is how you keep score, because it’s the one thing whose value everyone agrees upon. That’s what money is. The Wintel platform dominated every metric — market share and profit share. That’s where almost all the hardware profits were, and it’s where almost all the software profits were. Market share without profit is a Pyrrhic victory.
Anyway…
When we’re talking about what will succeed with the mass market, that’s where normal people come in. But if we’re talking about what’sbest? I don’t know. Normal people are fine, I guess, but I’ll stick with the nerds.
Well then you probably should be using Android. Normal people are picking Android, and I’d wager that the vast majority of nerds pick Android as well, and strangely for the same reasons probably: openness, choice—things Apple will never be good at because they will never try to be.
As I’ve written before, normal people aren’t picking Android because of the same reasons, or at least not in the same context. Nerds buy Android phones because of openness and choice, because they want to hack, disassemble, modify and change the device. But these qualities are valuable to carriers and manufacturers, as they allow each to control the unique devices, and therefore the sway of the platform. From “Open”:
As far as I can surmise, Android is not winning based on some perceived merits of its usefulness, style or other subjective qualities. Rather, the reason it is (and will always be) beating iOS in market share is because it’s cheap to implement and free for third-party vendors to customise.
In other words, manufacturers implement it because it’s something that vendors can install, and it’s the OS that makes the carriers happiest. They all have their fingers in the pie. Consumers buy the devices because they’re inundated with them the moment they step into the store.
Time will tell if this fragmentation and these upgrade difficulties will hurt Android in the market.
Yeah just like how all the people using old PCs with Windows XP on them are hurting Windows in the market.
They’re not hurting Microsoft in terms of market share, but they are hurting the ability for the platform to function effectively. There are thousands of new APIs in Vista and 7 which software developers should be able to use, but they can’t because they can’t risk incompatibility with XP. Likewise for Android developers, except replace “Vista and 7” with “Ice Cream Sandwich”, and “XP” with “Gingerbread”.
I wonder if people really just don’t think history is relevant to computing. Whenever there is an apt comparison people just overlook it entirely. I’m beginning to think it’s on purpose.
Okay.
And then there’s this piece, which I won’t delve into too deeply (I’ve covered much of it here). I did like this, though:
If I have a side it’s “intelligence” and “objectivity”. Sure, my “Meh” post where I go off on an extended rant about how pissed off I am about being cockslapped constantly by nitpicky overly-defensive Apple fans dips out of “intelligence” and into “angry rambling” but I never jump outside of “objectivity” as far as I know.
“Stop picking on me while I pick on someone else.”
