[engendered]

Sure, it's not literally "apple is doomed" right in the title, but exactly the same kind of FUD

BUT IT ISN'T FUD AT ALL. To make it even more comical, several of those posts are from serious Apple boosters (Philip Elmer-DeWitt might as well wear pom-poms while he writes about Apple). Apple software has had serious quality issues, and it is "FUD" to talk about it?

This is just broken thinking. You, in this conversation, are the problem. This notion that any criticism of Apple (such as the fact that they've let quality seriously decline) becomes "FUD" because there is so much defensiveness about Apple.

Not one of those demonstrate what he is talking about. None of them are attacks on Apple. None posit that Apple is doomed. They're tech articles, appealing to a tech crowd, that note that software quality has wavered, which is something that is utterly indisputable.

[gbanfalvi]

It's not FUD to talk about apple's software getting buggier, it's FUD to appropriate someone's rant, sensationalise it and then put the responsibility on Arment.

It's the difference between you stating that Node.js has been forked and someone writing "The server-side Javascript community is now torn apart, according to engendered". It's technically true, but it's clear that second one has other implications.

This is Marco's post: http://www.marco.org/2015/01/05/popular-for-a-day

"This morning, my words were everywhere, chopped up and twisted by sensational opportunists to fuel the tired “Apple is doomed!” narrative with my name on them. (Or Tumblr’s name, which was even worse.) Business Insider started the party, as usual, but it spread like wildfire from there. Huffington Post. Wall Street Journal. CNN. Heise. Even a televised CNBC discussion segment."

"Instead of what was intended to be constructive criticism of the most influential company in my life, I handed the press more poorly written fuel to hamfistedly stab Apple with my name and reputation behind it. And my name will be on that forever."

Now, why do you think Marco is afraid of speaking out? Do you genuinely think that he's afraid his relationship to Apple is damaged because it might threaten future business or because he feels he's responsible for these articles?

From what I and others have experienced (and the rest of the article), there's a climate of frustration, not fear, in the Apple developer community – but even in this article, being angry at incompetence doesn't sound remotely as exciting as being afraid of a large corporation. Hence the F in FUD.

[interpol_p]

> that note that software quality has wavered, which is something that is utterly indisputable.

I would dispute this.

Having been a Mac user for over a decade now I don't feel a particular drop in software quality. The highlight of stability for me (and many others I expect) was Snow Leopard. Yosemite isn't bad — it feels about as good as Leopard, and probably in need of it's own "Snow Leopard" soon. But I don't think Apple software quality is worse than back when we used Leopard, or Tiger or Panther, and so on. Lion was probably the "low point" of OS X software for me.

The ratio of good:bad in Apple software doesn't seem to have changed much. There are plenty of examples of both and there always have been.

I still use Apple software every day for most of my day. And I feel like it's the best it has ever been.