[socratic]

Does Gruber ever add any real information in an information theoretic sense? He seems to be on Apple's side 100% of the time. (I guess he suggested that the App Store approval process was broken at some point...)

He mostly just appears to be a pro-Apple pundit who has a popular blog that gets a lot of revenue in advertising. But I never see Cringely or Dvorak posts upvoted. What gives?

This does not seem to be very reasoned analysis. He calls the CEO childish and Android (the largest smartphone OS in the US?) desperate. This feels like a hyperbolic opinion piece. What should I be getting out of this article?

[orangecat]

Does Gruber ever add any real information in an information theoretic sense?

I'd say the main information content is in who he attacks in the process of boosting Apple. Microsoft and Windows barely get mentioned these days; it's all Google and Android all the time.

[recoiledsnake]

I think Gruber, Asymco, et al. have been taken aback by Android's year over year ascendancy. They were certainly predicting gloom and doom of Android, so patents are their last resort to reign in Android now.

See units and marketshare of Android for 2nd quarter 2010 vs. 2011.

http://wmpoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/image66.pn...

Asymco failing at analysis and predictions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887430

[guywithabike]

Units and market share don't mean much if your margins are razor thin (or, worse, nonexistent).

[ZeroGravitas]

People only believe that to be true because Asymco keeps repeating it and getting quoted widely by people like Gruber in the Apple echo-chamber (and because they desperately want it to be true).

A key diversionary tactic Asymco uses is to combine dumbphone and smartphone sales, so companies like Samsung that are transitioning customers from genuinely low-margin, low-cost, end-of-lifecycle products onto relatively much higher margin Android phones are presented as if they are not doing very well, when in fact they have two seperate business: a rapidly growing and profitable Android business, and a break-even or loss-making dumbphone business that they're winding down.

Notice how much "better" HTC is doing in his stats (despite regular doom'n'gloom predictions from him about them in the last year) because they don't have a dumbphone business.

[cageface]

They do if selling phones is a means to a greater end, which it is for Google.