[trezor]

I must admit I'm not really surprised to see Gruber suddenly claim non-uniform application design is a good thing when everyone starts critizing Apple for 1. inconsistent UIs and 2. bad design. Also note how he completely focuses on the inconsistent UI-issue and completely ignores the part about bad design in the OSX App Store, probably hoping it will go by unnoticed.

Really though. Isn't it always this way with Gruber? If Apple or OSX does something better or different than the other platforms it's not only good, it's the standard. It's the only way(tm). End of story. Whoever disagrees be uneducated and unsophistitcated.

The second Apple strays away from that, his response is always "but this isn't important any more" or "this is a good thing, really". Really, Gruber?

I must admit I'm getting fed up with his appologyism. If there is still insight and actual content to be found in his blog-posts, he is making it very, very hard to find.

[ugh]

Suddenly?!

This has been a long and gradual transition (not even all that much of a transition), what he wote shouldn’t be surprising to any longtime reader of Gruber.

This piece is also mostly about Twitter for Mac, an app that was not developed by Apple.

– edit: I found one relevant article from 2004: http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/does_brushed_metal_matter

“I’ve been thinking about brushed metal windows and Apple’s inconsistent use thereof at least since Panther shipped a year ago. So, why wait until now to write about it? Well, because I just wasn’t sure it actually mattered. And I’m still unsure.”

“This is precisely at the heart of my uncertainty as to whether these brushed metal issues really matter. Maybe it is just aesthetics — merely the color of pixels, rather than how the interface truly works — and I’m looking for serious implications that aren’t there, simply because I happen to think brushed metal windows look stupid.”

(Just as a side note, all the articles on Daring Fireball from around that time – about brushed metal, clickthrough and poofing – are in my opinion some of Gruber’s best. I would very much like him to write more about stuff like that.)

[demallien]

Wait, you can't claim that Gruber is never critical of Apple. For example, he was one of the first and most persistent critics of the iPhone App Store's submission guidelines until they were amended by Apple.

It's true that he rarely criticises Apple's design choices. But I don't think it's because of any sycophantic defence of Apple, but rather because his design aesthetic is very similar to that of the lead designers at Apple. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see him do a piece soon on the sub-par design of the Mac App Store, because it is sub-par (at least in some aspects).

[tjogin]

Here's a few links to Gruber criticizing the poor state of the HIG, and Apple's design decisions:

http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/hockenberry_hig

http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal

http://daringfireball.net/2003/05/much_ado_about_click-throu...

http://daringfireball.net/2006/08/highly_selective

http://daringfireball.net/2003/02/inconsistencies

http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/themes

http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/more_smart_cut_copy_paste

http://daringfireball.net/2003/02/when_in_rome

http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/does_brushed_metal_matter

That Gruber rarely criticizes Apple's design decisions is simply false. Apple's inconsistency in UI design and application of the HIG is a pet peeve of his, and it has been for many years.

[vamsee]

That's like 9 articles in as many years. How many did he write in support of them? Not that there's anything wrong with it - just that I don't think I can count his writing about Apple as "objective criticism".

[tjogin]

Articles I found mentioning HIG wherein Gruber praises Apple's design consistency: zero. Why don't you try finding some for yourself?

Like I said, this has been a pet peeve of his for years.

[vamsee]

Hmm, was I misunderstood? I didn't mean to ask you how many articles he did supporting Apple's HIG consistency. I was just pointing out that that it's a small minority among the total articles he writes about supporting everything Apple does. At least that's my understanding. Like I said, I wouldn't really go to Gruber's blog for objective analysis, though he does make some good points. I used to enjoy his writing about Apple quite a bit a few years back. Now the blatant fanboism kinda turns me off. FWIW.

[tjogin]

I've read Gruber since he began writing Daring Fireball, I don't think he's changed much at all. I don't see how he's turned from Apple pundit to Apple fanboy, a rather peculiar thing to happen to anyone with time, really.

What has changed is that Apple's success has accelerated, exposing Apple to more customers, press and analysis. Gruber has always covered these things, but with more of it there's more to cover, and with more clueless analysts claiming things about Apple, there's more of that to dispute and ridicule.

And let's just face it, he's usually right about the significant things. That's not fanboyism, that's insight.

Besides, I don't think Gruber very often writes articles just to "support" anything (what would be the point?), usually he's trying to understand where Apple's motivations come from — why they're doing what they're doing — which is the part where most other analysts are fumbling in the dark.

Sometimes he agrees with them, but really, a lot of the time he doesn't (that usually makes for more interesting articles as well). Just writing support for a decision or strategy makes for a really boring read, what he usually does is explain the underlying reasons for it, whether he agrees with it or not.

[statictype]

When OS X was first released he was very critical of it's ui. Specifically how Finder worked (and the whole brush metal theme ). He even alluded to this in this post. Now he's merely observing how things have changed. He never claimed that he liked it.

[tjogin]

Apple has been straying from their own HIG for years and Gruber has been criticizing them for it every step of the way. You assume too much.

[alsomike]

Apple is obviously following the innovations of web app design here. People use web apps with wildly different designs all the time, and yes, there are some usability issues with that, but when consumer OSes were first being developed some decades ago, HCI researchers assumed that everything had to look exactly the same between applications or users would freak out. The web never had a single HIG, so we found out that users are much more tolerant of differences, or at least they are now.

As web apps become more important, the notion of an OS HIG needs to evolve. Obviously an app needs internal consistency, but how consistent do two apps need to be between each other? An apt comparison is the world of typography: the rules for good text layout don't specify one font for every single book, we can handle the fact that different books use different fonts. But there are still rules for good typography, they're just more general than "All uppercase G's should look like this: G." This is the direction that HIGs would need to go, but whether this is a good thing is debatable. For whatever reason, I have a hundred or so books on my bookshelf and basically all of them have very good to excellent typography. Web sites and apps have nowhere near that level of consistent quality. Native apps are better, but now we're going to start to see more of the web's no-rules design norms applied there, which probably means a few really gorgeous apps and a whole lot of crap.

[trotsky]

People use web apps with wildly different designs all the time because there are no UI standards and there is no basic toolkit. It's a bug, not a feature.

[glhaynes]

It's a bug, not a feature.

I'm not sure that's right... would the web have caught on and be as well-loved if everything used "system" colors and designs? Maybe you're envisioning something different, but I'm not sure where the middle ground is between the web as it exists today and a classic Windows 3.1 / Mac looking app - what would a "basic toolkit" look like beyond the HTML elements and form controls that we have?

[wtallis]

The thing is that, to the extent that it is a bug, it's a very harmless bug. The freedom to experiment and innovate with web apps has probably outweighed any harm from lack of consistency.

[martythemaniak]

It's very simple to understand - when Apple does something that's inconsistent it is bold pushing-the-envelope. When Android (to pick one of his favourite targets) is inconsistent, it's because a bunch of socially retarded engineers don't know any better and they should be more like Apple.

Really, Grubber is the tech writer equivalent of Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin - he's got so much vested in his ideology, he's gonna push it as hard as possible no matter how much mental gymnastics are needed. Amusing, but ultimately worthless.

[sudont]

No, he isn't.

"One thing I should make clear, given some of the email I’ve gotten this week, is that I’m rooting for Android, big-time." --Gruber

Personally, I'd rather not see his articles here as they never contain any discussion of the topic, rather tons of bitching about the man himself.

[martythemaniak]

Right, funny that how never manifests in his writing, no? I can point to many instances, but here is a fairly recent one: When CBS and a few other networks started banning Google TV from watching content, a lot of people thought that was a bad example of Big Content making decisions for people - ie, why can I watch online TV with my HTPC, but not a specialized HTPC like Google TV? These people criticized the networks for doing that. Grubber's take? The equivalent of a Nelson Ha-Ha. Very insightful and mature of him.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/11/22/google-tv-viacom

This characterizes most of his writing on Android, Google TV, etc etc.

[there]

Right, funny that how never manifests in his writing, no?

that's why i unsubscribed from his rss feed recently. i subscribed a long time ago because i enjoyed reading his commentary on apple-related things, but in the past few months it's been more about how much android sucks.