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405 points Bogdanp | 5 comments | 26 Aug 25 00:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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wk_end ◴[26 Aug 25 00:45 UTC] No.45020948[source]▶
I don't follow him closely, but I'd always thought that John Gruber - while often a very good writer - got a little too much exposure to the Reality Distortion Field. So I'm a little surprised to see him come down so hard on this.

Was I wrong about Gruber or is this a proverbial canary in the coal mine?

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1. ghqst ◴[26 Aug 25 00:55 UTC] No.45021018[source]▶
Gruber seemed like an Apple sycophant for a while because his values and tastes aligned very closely with Apple's (though he still criticized them from time to time). Now, Apple is drifting away from those values and tastes and so Gruber and others in that sphere of Apple blogs are coming down harder on Apple, especially after Alan Dye made such a mess with "Liquid Glass".
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2. nozzlegear ◴[26 Aug 25 02:01 UTC] No.45021436[source]▶
> especially after Alan Dye made such a mess with "Liquid Glass".

Your comment makes it seem like Gruber is a big critic of Liquid Glass like many commenters on HN are, but that's not the case. He's certainly critical of some of the execution details like icons or translucency that can hinder reading, but his stance on it is pretty nuanced leaning toward cautiously optimistic.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/09/apple-intro-liq...

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3. jdelman ◴[26 Aug 25 02:10 UTC] No.45021510[source]▶
Listen to the episode of The Talk Show with Louie Mantia. They really rip on Alan Dye and Liquid Glass. Not so much the _idea_ of Liquid Glass, which I think they appreciate, but its execution, which is shoddy, inconsistent, and reveals a dearth of holistic thinking about UI design.
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4. nickm12 ◴[26 Aug 25 08:03 UTC] No.45023619[source]▶
This is the answer. Gruber has and will continue to criticize Apple, but there has generally been very little room for daylight between his values and those of the company (either as expressed in their products or by their leadership). Also, while he doesn't say it, but I suspect that there has long been a feedback loop where his articles defending the company line are well-received internally and have helped him get press access to executives (for his WWDC live show) and preview hardware.

All that said, there has been a marked change since John's "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino". Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that Apple leadership did not like this article and snubbed him for his liveshow. Since then, there have been many more articles critical of Apple on daringfireball.net.

5. TheOtherHobbes ◴[26 Aug 25 10:01 UTC] No.45024451{3}[source]▶
This is revealingly cringe and shows an almost complete absence of self awareness.

https://www.printmag.com/podcasts/2025/design-matters-craig-...

I suppose life is very different inside the citadel. You get curated and triaged feedback from users, Tim Cook doesn't really have opinions about usability and design choices, so there's no one in charge of the classroom.

The reality is in spite of nice touches like call filtering, software quality and usability are both clearly going down.

And Apple's moat, which is a combination of ecosystem lock-in and graphic design, is threatened from one side by AI and from the other by whatever Liquid Glass is supposed to be.