indefensible: john gruber

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