I totally agree. And the ultra-weird "it's awesome if Apple does a thing, but completely evil if anybody else even sniffs at the idea" groupthink that permeated almost every thread on any topic seems to have abated somewhat. It's still there on occasion, but Gruber's impossibly apologist blog posts are generally off the front page and the ultra-apologists seems to have started fading after Steve Job's death.
There was definitely an almost pseudo-religious "newly converted" component to it.
These days if I see Gruber on the front page it's usually because of something genuinely interesting.
But for a couple solid years there, you couldn't say anything that might even be assumed to be critical of an Apple product without getting downvoted. I really wanted a place of smart people who could celebrate Apple's achievements and criticize their failures without descending into religious flamewars, and HN simply wasn't providing this.
Part of the change in attitude on HN is based on four years experiencing substantial shifts in the terms of the relationship between Apple and software developers since the iPad's release. The death of Jobs made criticism of Apple more acceptable of course, but not criticism of him to any significant degree.
The bigger picture is that HN [and YC] have come off the Apple App Store bubble. Mobile apps are now seen as multi-platform programs, and the center of gravity has clearly moved toward open source tool chains and back toward the core idea of Web based software.
Much! I'm surprised to see this very ancient post resurfaced here. But this is definitely one of the way in which it's changed for the better since 2010.
There was definitely an almost pseudo-religious "newly converted" component to it.
These days if I see Gruber on the front page it's usually because of something genuinely interesting.
But for a couple solid years there, you couldn't say anything that might even be assumed to be critical of an Apple product without getting downvoted. I really wanted a place of smart people who could celebrate Apple's achievements and criticize their failures without descending into religious flamewars, and HN simply wasn't providing this.
It's definitely better now.