Daring Fireball blogger's Wired takedown fizzles
The latest flaming bomb from Mac blogger John Gruber: "How Leander Kahney Got Everything Wrong by Being a Fucking Jackass." Kahney's sin? Writing Wired's latest cover story, ""How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong." Kahney's thesis: Apple succeeds despite violating Google's "don't be evil" rules of business. Gruber's response? Name-calling, starting in the headline. Gruber attacks with stabbing frenzy:
The whole contrast-with-Google angle makes no sense, holds up to no scrutiny, and serves no purpose other than to reach the punchy conclusion that Apple is "irredeemably evil." By Kahney's logic, any company that is different from Google —- and clearly most companies are far more different from Google than Apple is —- is evil.
It's a dull knife. Gruber's argument, not Kahney's, founders on its specifics. When Kahney calls Jobs a "notorious micromanager," Gruber retorts that Google VP Marissa Mayer approves every minor change to the Google homepage. There's no comparison: Jobs is a screaming jerk who wouldn't last one minute in the cuddly Googleplex. Gruber's real argument, I suspect, is that he should be writing cover stories for Wired. John, why don't you just pitch Chris Anderson directly? That seems easier.
