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The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

(daringfireball.net)
479 points jgruber | 1 comments | 27 Mar 25 00:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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robenkleene ◴[27 Mar 25 14:47 UTC] No.43494232[source]▶
The anger reading the comments here from the folks who don't like DF/Apple is practically palpable, and that's obviously the reason the articles get flagged.

I'm not sure where all that anger comes from (e.g., there isn't any company I've ever been as angry about as some of the commenters on this thread are). I suspect the response I'd get if I asked would be Apple did this or that, but personally, if I didn't like this or that I'd just buy a product from a different company and go about my day. I don't get hanging on to all that anger.

(And frankly, I'd love if someone did what DF does for other platforms, I like hearing from fans of products and platforms what they see in them.)

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spenrose ◴[27 Mar 25 15:01 UTC] No.43494379[source]▶
I suspect it's driven by the Olde School Linux / Free Software contingent of HN commenters / voters. Here is an example[1]:

"The #1 story on Hacker News at 2023:08:21T15:41Z is a 2021 discussion of Linux desktop packaging tools. Hypothesis: HN story up-voters are heavily drawn from Free / Open Source Software folks interested in issues that were broadly discussed in "tech" two decades ago (Linux for the desktop!) and are much less broadly discussed today."

That anodyne observation garnered 5 downvotes. I mean, of course it was silly to treat Linux desktop packaging tools as the most important story in tech in 2023! Overall the dynamic feels like Wikipedia: people who participate are atypical, and nothing annoys them more than one's pointing out that they are atypical.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37211129

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1. erickhill ◴[27 Mar 25 18:31 UTC] No.43496553[source]▶
There are also a lot of older Windows users, and users of failed platforms from the 80s and 90s, that absolutely hold deep seated anger at Apple and Steve Jobs. There were similar attitudes about Microsoft and Bill Gates in the 90s. After Gates left Microsoft a lot of that vitriol seemed to have dissipated, but some still aim it at Apple. The anger seems to usually be economically rooted, i.e. in terms of how Apple charges high prices for their hardware.