[markdown]

I don't get what the significance of this post is, and why it is at the top of HN.

Company A does this and Company B does that and these two are a little similar but not really and this other Company wants this but can't get it. Only this Company. Yeah not that Company. See I figured all this out; see how smart I am?

Now and then on a lazy sunday morning with a cuppa in hand and the business news in my lap, I sink into this level of naval grazing. But I'd never have the time or motive to publish my drivel.

Thousands of hours are going to be wasted reading this shit, and to what end?

Clearly many people gained lots of value from this article, or it wouldn't be at the top of HN. Could one of you please explain what the value was? What did you gain from reading the article?

[coldtea]

>I don't get what the significance of this post is, and why it is at the top of HN.

It's a post about how companies operate, and especially about the largest companies in tech, and their methodologies and unique takes on the market.

HN is a social news site about startups and technology, built by a seed accelerator investing in tech startups. That is, by and for the very people that would be interested in the above article. You might "not get it", but all the HN readers that voted it to the top of the front page clearly do.

>Company A does this and Company B does that and these two are a little similar but not really and this other Company wants this but can't get it. Only this Company. Yeah not that Company. See I figured all this out; see how smart I am?

The same BS mocking method can be used to trivialize all topics ("Yeah, so the monkey that's better equiped to live gets to reproduce and so its genes are propagating, and future monkeys tend to have its features, big deal").

I don't get the "see I figured all this out; see how smart I am?" from the article. I do get it from your comment. There's an "I'm clearly above the herd on HN who voted for this. It's trivial, I can write 20 articles like this before breakfast" vibe.

TFA is clearly an insightful piece about how different big players operate. This "Company A does this and Company B does that and these two are a little similar but not really and this other Company wants this but can't get it", is basically high-level market analysis. And it's hard to do well.

Even if a lot of us know those things instictively, it's not easy to put it in words well. And it's amazing how many analysts and pundits get those things wrong (one can argue that this article gets the facts wrong too. But you didn't do that. You just trivialized it, as if what it says is something obvious, which is a different thing).

[Bud]

I don't feel like addressing your question directly, but it is ironic that the criticism of Gruber is coming from a user named "markdown", which is something Gruber invented. :)

[markdown]

hehe nice!

I am Mark, and any accounts I use for things I do in my downtime are called markdown. Work related accounts have the username markup.

[sscalia]

I wanted to point that out too. Heh.

hi five

[pinaceae]

because this is about competing eco-systems and if you make your living writing software that runs in those eco-systems ("apps"), the health and capabilities of said systems is critical.

iOS/OSX vs. Android/Chrome vs. Windows8/WP8

if you're just a consumer, then yes, not so interesting, but then this whole forum might not be for you.

[markdown]

Completely understandable.

My point isn't so much that the subject matter is relevant; just that his conclusions are obvious and have been for ages.

Put another way, did reading his essay cause you to change your mind about what you should be working on?

[seiji]

I don't get what the significance of this post is, and why it is at the top of HN.

It's a thoughtful and timely analysis about the most important company currently in existence which many people routinely fail to understand or simply dismiss out of hand due to preexisting prejudice or misplaced nerd allegiance.

[vacri]

"the most important company currently in existence" ... "misplaced nerd allegiance"

Having the most liquid assets does not mean that the company is the most important company. If Apple disappeared tomorrow, the world would go on without a hiccough. They are glitzy and glamourous and yes, influential, but there are more important companies out there - particularly in transport or essential services.

Edit: Updated for the benefit of eridius. The point does not change at all.

[eridius]

What op said:

> the most important company

What you said:

> the most fundamentally necessary company

You just changed the entire argument right there, and yet blithely went on as if your counterpoint had any relevance to the original assertion. "The most important company" could be taken a lot of ways, and I highly doubt op was intending that to mean "fundamentally necessary".

[vacri]

Actually, speaking of changing meanings, the OP said "the most important company in existence", which is a different claim to the one you're trimming it down to. Next time you're admonishing someone for changing the argument, don't do it yourself.

[eridius]

You're just being pedantic. Adding the words "in existence" to my quotation would have changed nothing at all about my argument. I left it off precisely because it wasn't relevant to the point I was making, which was that you were attacking a very obvious straw man.

[vacri]

Speaking of attacking very obvious straw men, you ignored that I was quoting two parts of the OP. I'm not here to rank companies in a line and award one as the winner, because that's a silly thing to do given the complexity of the human experience.

I was saying that the term "the most important company in existence" is the kind of thing that comes out of the mouth of someone with "misplaced nerd allegiance". That was the point of juxtaposing those two snippets. What makes an important company? It depends on what you're talking about, hence the reference to transport or essential services. And if we're talking 'in existence', then that really widens the field. But it's the 'misplaced allegiance' people that come up with phrases like the OP did.

Basically I was calling the OP a hypocrite, deriding others for the same thing the OP is doing. And now you've responded twice, committing the same sins as you accuse me of... changing arguments, straw men, and pedantry.

[mantrax5]

I actually upvoted the post for the comedy value.

[sscalia]

Did you really post this just now?