
2013: The Year in Apple and Technology at Large - tujv
http://daringfireball.net/2013/12/the_year_in_apple_and_technology
======
jmduke
Some random (counter and otherwise) points:

\- Correctly explaining how large of an improvement the 5S is over the
original iPhone is not a valid argument for why 2013 was a "pretty good year"
for Apple. Mac Pro was the biggest move Apple made -- for better or for worse
-- and I'm surprised to see its omission.

\- _If you’re not excited by the performance of the A7 SoC or, say, the
quality of the iPhone 5S camera, why even bother writing about technology?_
This is ridiculous in a multitude of ways: the most glaring of which being
that some of the best technology writers on the web today don't concern
themselves with consumer technology.

\- You can't look at raw price point as evidence for iPhone's ability to
resist depreciation because their starting value is so much higher than other
smartphones -- though I do think Apple hardware ages better than other
hardware. To answer his question of _What other companies make cell phones
that retain any value at all after two years?_ : Samsung, Google/Motorola.

\- The whole arguments of iOS 7 spurring planned obsolescence comes from the
theory that the transitions, parallax, etc. etc. were done not only from a
design standpoint but from an inferior-hardware-can't-replicate-this
standpoint, which I believe Gruber propagated himself (though in reference to
Android, rather than older iPhone models.)

\- Everything besides the 'jetpacks' line in the final section was great.
Technology is something that should be celebrated with wary eyes, rather than
blindly castigated.

Ultimately, he seems to be dragging Mims' argument to a greater extreme than
it is and attacking it on those grounds: I encourage readers to read the
original article -- which, at the very least, is interesting and thought-
provoking -- and draw their own conclusions.

~~~
yapcguy
No, I'm not going to read his article and drive his traffic up.

What stories did Gruber break this year? What exclusives? None! He has no
special access at Apple, he has no insiders who give him the scoops, he's no
different from any other armchair blogger.

In truth, John Gruber is an Apple PR stenographer. The sad thing is, he
probably doesn't even know it, because he's so drunk on the kool-aid.

~~~
ghshephard
Okay yapcguy, I'm interested in who you think exceeds Gruber's quality,
insight, and consistency in terms of watching Apple?

The list is pretty short - maybe Philip Elmer DeWitt, Benedict Evans, Ben
Thompson and Horace Dediu - but none of them bring the deep and consistent
product insight - they are more focussed on broader reporting, strategic
assessments, or disruption/market theory.

Gruber, to the best of my knowledge, is the only writer that consistently
tracks all the major apple developments with the quality of writing that he
brings to the table.

Yes, he's a partisan, (Siracusa's term for him) - and writes for his audience,
but his words are reasonably measured, and always have a reasonably rational
basis.

I wouldn't continue following him if that weren't the case - I've dropped
dozens of other Apple observers over the year, but Gruber is still on top of
his game.

~~~
dmunoz
Perhaps not in the same area, but I would nominate Anand Shimpi from
anandtech.com. He writes in depth review of Apple hardware (currently writing
a Mac Pro review), and offers fairly deep insight into both the hardware and
what the product offers as a whole.

Gruber might do it better; I admit that I don't read any of his posts, not
being much of an Apple watcher. I have a slightly negative opinion of him
based solely on comments, on HN and elsewhere, that appear on submissions of
his articles. They seem to indicate that he has a pair of horse blinders on
when it comes to Apple. For people who don't already think what they offer is
the best, I can see why it is grating. I would have to read his articles for
some time to form an actual opinion, but as it stands I'll stick with Anand,
as he covers, in depth, other entrants as well as Apple.

~~~
sjs
Anand is excellent, but he looks at things and writes from a completely
different perspective. They are not comparable in my opinion.

------
s3r3nity
Thank you -- I wanted to write a post regarding that article for the past
week, but couldn't do it as well or as eloquently.

"The nature of progress is to move incrementally. The great leaps are
exceedingly few and far between."

I have a few buddies working on tech at Apple & MSFT that is crazy cool, but
simply because it's not a shiny new product sitting on my desk next to my
coffee cup 2013 was a lull in tech?! Give me a break.

(Sidebar: one of my favorite advances in tech this year is the new Kinect.
Seriously. Read up on its power and potential use cases sometime and it's f
__*ing mind-blowing. If MSFT only had the marketing power of Apple...)

~~~
mandeepj
If MSFT had marketing power of Apple then Zune would be surely alive today as
one of the top media players.

~~~
sjs
I had a Creative Nomad jukebox and it was so bad I went back to an MP3 discman
(all the while laughing at the $500 iPod). I had never owned an Apple product.
After trying a Mac I saw first-hand that Apples makes great products so I
tried an iPod and loved it. Not because of marketing or advertising. People
who claim that Apple is successful because of marketing – and think Apple's
millions of customers are brainwashed – are the ones who are brainwashed.

~~~
mandeepj
I would agree with you sjs. If your product is crappy then marketing can't do
anything. I tried lot of laptop but none of them worked like macbookpro. I
have tried lot of phones but none of them worked like iPhone.

------
brianwillis
I agree with Gruber's central argument that innovation happens in small
incremental steps, and I don't in any way think that 2013 was a waste of time,
but you've got to admit that this has been a light year for Apple. Between
November 2012's announcement of the iMac and June 2013's WWDC, there were no
product announcements (well, OK, they did announce that the iPad would be
available in 128Gb, but you get my meaning).

That's a very long time for them to go with nothing to say. Sure, iOS 7 must
have been a substantial amount of work, I'm really liking Mavericks, and the
new Mac Pro is an interesting piece of hardware - but it does feel like Apple
announced less this year than they have in previous years.

So it's got me speculating on reasons why. Did Forstall's exit result in a
rocky few months as jobs were reshuffled? Is there some big product that gets
announced in 2014 that's been sucking up all the engineering resources? Is
Apple under Tim Cook becoming a company that moves a little more slowly and
deliberately?

I don't know, but it's fun to think about.

~~~
demallien
No, there is no secret project sucking up the engineering resources for the
simple reason that we know where the engineering resources have been spent.
iPad Air. iPad mini retina. Ios7. Mavericks. iPhone 5s. Mac Pro.

That's a big bunch of products to roll out in one year. Which does not mean
that we won't see something different, like a 20" tablet, or Kinect style
controls on a new Apple TV, but the fact is that Apple have released a large
number of best in breed products this year, so we don't need to speculate on
where engineering resources have been spent - the answer is right in front of
us.

------
fauigerzigerk
_> He’s got it all backwards. The nature of progress is to move
incrementally._

What a strange straw man to pick. Isn't it glaringly obvious that progress
happens in leaps and then incrementally in between the leaps? The leaps create
opportunity that is exploited in the years following the leap.

If there is no leap for a while, this incremental progress starts to feel like
stagnation. Some feel it earlier, some feel it later. It seems rather
contrived to present this as some kind of fundamental contradiction.

------
bobbyi_settv
What would it take for this guy to actually admit that Apple no longer makes
the best phones?

So okay, two year old iPhones still sell for a lot. Does that really show that
Apple makes the best phones _today_? Or does it show that they _used to_ make
the best phones two years ago? If people are almost as happy with a two year
old iPhone as a new one, is that really an argument _against_ Apple having had
a "lost year"?

~~~
jmduke
Honest question: what phone do you find superior to the iPhone 5S, and why?

~~~
bobbyi_settv
Galaxy S4 for one. Between the screen size, SD card support, Google
navigation, Swype, replaceable battery, general Android advantages
(notifications, Google account integration), Chrome, hardware back button,
etc., I would pretty bummed if I were somehow forced to give it up and get an
iPhone.

Actually, the screen size and Swype would be enough since I mainly use my
phone for web browsing and composing email.

~~~
adamlett
> Between the screen size, SD card support, Google navigation, Swype,
> replaceable battery, general Android advantages (notifications, Google
> account integration), Chrome, hardware back button

While i understand and respect that for a lot of people, these are compelling
features that differentiates high end Android Phones from iPhones, it also
seems to me that most of these are simply manifestations of the different
priorities and compromises made by Apple and Google, Samsung et al. I mean,
it's not like it's not within Apple's power to add each of these to the
iPhone. It's just that they choose not to, because each of these come with
some kind of compromise that is not acceptable to Apple. Which is cool and
only goes to show that it's good that we have competition.

The reason I write though, is because I think it's disingenous to assert that
Apple has somehow fallen behind, technologically, when they are very clearly
keeping up and at the top of their game (look no further than the A7 chip).
You may prefer a Samsung to an iPhone, because you find that you prefer the
particular compromises made by Samsung/Google to those made by Apple. But
understand that this has everything to do with what subjectively appeals to
you and nothing to do with the actual technologically capabilities of each of
these companies.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
> I think it's disingenous to assert that Apple has somehow fallen behind

I didn't assert this. He asked what phone I personally prefer, so I answered.
I said that if _I_ had to use an iPhone, _I_ would be bummed.

The fact that Apple has "lost a year" (which they obviously have) doesn't
necessarily mean they've "fallen behind". It means that others have caught up.

------
radicaldreamer
Very little about "technology at large" and mostly apologetics for Apple.

~~~
josteink
What else do you expect from gruber though?

------
stiff
_Today we have mobile phones and tablets running on a 64-bit desktop-caliber
CPU architecture._

This is so silly it reminds me of the time when XML was praised in computer
magazines as the approaching revolution in how everyone, including desktop
end-users, will work...

------
kunai
It's posts like these that make me wonder why we put Gruber at such a high
pedestal at HN and in the techno blogosphere in general.

On Sean Hollister's lament at the death of the keyboard:

    
    
      I’d say it’s not strange at all, for all of the reasons 
      Steve Jobs explained, in detail, on stage in January 2007 
      when Apple introduced the iPhone. Software keyboards are a 
      superior general purpose design. But that’s neither here
      nor there.
    

So, because Steve says so, must it be right? Jobs took issue more with the
fixed buttons than the keyboards, and just took mainly issue that the keyboard
were "there if you ended them or not." Slider keyboards are there only when
you need them and offer a significantly upgraded tactile experience over their
touch-only counterparts.

    
    
      The whole “planned obsolescence” thing — started by New
      York Times economics columnist Catherine Rampell, but
      promulgated by Mims himself after the ball got rolling –
      was a pile of horseshit. No company in the computer/mobile
      industry makes products that hold their value longer than
      Apple’s.
    

Value isn't just about resale value – it's about how long you can go with
having the same product officially supported by a company. Right now, you can
install Windows 8 on a top-spec PC from 2005, but the last OS that a 2006
MacBook Pro can run is from 2011. Tough, isn't it? I wouldn't say that the
2005 PC's experience would be better with W8 than it would with 7 or even
Linux. Nor am I saying that it would be a good experience for the 2006 Pro to
use a 2013 operating system. Still, the fact that Microsoft is going out of
their way to support such older systems speaks of _their_ commitment to value.

    
    
      Today we have mobile phones and tablets running on a 64-bit 
      desktop-caliber CPU architecture. Four months ago, we did 
      not. If you’re not excited by the performance of the A7 SoC 
      or, say, the quality of the iPhone 5S camera, why even 
      bother writing about technology?
    

64-bit ARM is a large step, yes. But, to call it a major breakthrough is
laughable. It's a natural evolution, the fact that Apple did it first does not
make it more significant if Samsung or Qualcomm created their own ARM64 SoC.
The iPhone 5s' camera quality is nothing significant either – the Lumia 1020
has a far better camera and is really true innovation – Zeiss optics, an
enormous sensor... how is that less significant than a simple sensor upgrade?
I didn't see anyone scoffing at the quality of the GS4 either.

    
    
      No one could argue that iOS 7 wasn’t a major update, so 
      instead Mims takes to disparaging it. Is iOS 7 an 
      improvement in every single regard? Certainly not. But on
      the whole, it’s quite good, introduces some well-needed 
      conceptual cohesion, and best of all, it shows that the 
      company is not afraid to boldly move forward from the
      Steve Jobs era.
    

iOS 7 is certainly... bold, if you could call it that, but what core
improvements does it hold that make it so much better than 6? On the surface,
it's a pretty UI makeover with an ugly icon makeover, and few user-facing
features such as AirDrop and Control Center. Yawn. Shiny new APIs? Nice, but,
again, there's little in the way of "bold" innovation as Gruber claims.

It's incredible how somebody with such obvious blindness and bias towards a
company he loves is heralded as a neutral reviewer. Gruber makes some
important points, such as Android's lack of support time, but he insists that
Apple is better at _everything_ that Mims criticizes Apple about than
_everybody_ else – which is ridiculous.

Just a disclaimer – I am not an MS lover. Neither do I hate Apple. But I have
become more friendly with Microsoft, and less with Apple, just because of my
own personal experiences.

I had been a die-hard Apple lover for _years_. Since I saw my first modern
Macintosh in 2006, I've lusted after one. I finally got my wish granted in
2011 when I bought my MacBook Air.

For about a year, I was ecstatic. I bought an iPhone and bought completely
into the Apple ecosystem. It was a big mistake, for several reasons. Let's
start from the top:

1\. Apple now makes no effort to ensure that its users have a good long-term
experience with their product. It used to be that once you bought Apple, you
could expect a lengthy time of ownership and support, partly because of the
machines' ease of access, repair, and maintainability. In the fall of 2012, I
became unhappy with my Air's performance. My needs had changed, and running
several Windows and Linux VMs quickly bogged down my system with its paltry
four gigabytes of RAM. Initially, I thought I wouldn't need any upgrades to
this system, because Apple's software optimizations and the SSD would make
swapping faster and more seamless (how stupid of me). No problem, I thought. I
bought a 15" MacBook Pro and didn't look back.

Initially, when the Retina Display MacBook came around, I saw it as a middle-
of-the-road product for Apple – not an Air, not a Pro, more of a premium
flagship "halo." I had no idea at the time of initial release that everything
including the battery, was soldered/glued to the main board/case and what
little was replaceable was all proprietary. When I came upon this information,
I was shocked. Didn't think much of it, but my past experiences with the Air
made me leery of it, so I stayed away from the rMBP.

Come 2013. The classic unibody Pros are all but dead, and the MacBook Pros
have become more proprietary. People will defend this in the name of thinness,
but I call bullshit, because the Dell XPS 15 is nearly as thin but contains
DIMM slots. It's just a ploy to move more units, and I'm not pleased in the
slightest.

2\. Apple provides no more useful features in their products that would
interest anyone beyond the average consumer. Whaaaaat?! How dare somebody
speaketh this heathenous, trite, vile, garbage! BURN HIM!!1

In all seriousness, this is now true. When I look at Mavericks' feature list,
it's pretty weak. Multiple display support is something that should have been
addressed in a point release. Timer Coalescing is something Windows and Linux
have had for ages[1], and compressed memory is something we saw years ago.[2]
There has been no new replacement for the aging and outdated HFS+ filesystem.
There has been no integration for UNIX protocols like X11, and Applescript has
been left out to rot.

Apple is now squarely focused on the iOS segment of their business. I don't
mind it for them, but I can't help but miss my pre-2011 Macs.

3\. This is probably the most important: they pride aesthetics over true
usability. This philosophy of Apple's has always been somewhat prevalent, but
it's been irking me more than ever post-2011. Thin aluminum bezels that cut
into my hand. Sharp laptop edges that are hazardous to health. Keyboards that
feel like you're banging your fingers against a packet of Dentyne. This ties
into complaint #1 as well: the fact that form-over-function results in a loss
of self-maintainability is no secret either. No Ethernet on a professional
machine? I can understand getting rid of it on the ultraportable, but if you
want something to be used as a heavy-duty appliance, it needs to have the
necessary connectivity options out of box. If you're going to make users
depend on an inconvenient dongle, at least _include_ the damn thing inside the
package.

This is going to be anecdotal and completely unrelated to what I'm talking
about, but I was in Atlanta last weekend and decided to check out the Apple
and Microsoft stores. The Apple store left me with a cold, decoherent vibe.
Nothing seemed interesting. iOS 7 was underwhelming, and the iPads were just
iPads. They didn't have anything new. Everything was whitewashed and covered
in super-thin Myriad. Shades of grey prevailed throughout, and the staff,
while helpful, didn't seem to have much interest in the _user_ so much as
heralding the merits of the _product_. Enter the MS store. Everything felt...
so new. Inviting. There was a real sense of warmth in the store. I hadn't
tried a Surface before, so I picked it up and started using it. Boy, was I
blown away – the entire experience was incredibly different from what I had
used. I had dismissed touch screens with a desktop OS as simply gimmickry, but
the Surface integrated the two exceptionally well, especially with the Type
Cover adding significant functionality. I perused through the other
paraphernalia and I really felt a sense of innovation and creation that I
never did in the Apple store. Unlike the iPad, the Surface was productive! It
ran a real operating system! It came with a ton of memory and could be used as
a _full replacement for a laptop_! The ultrabooks I saw had neat form factors,
and although I couldn't find myself using the other modes much, the addition
of touch screens made Windows 8.1 make a whole lot more sense. I came through
to the Windows Phones, and the live tile approach to a home screen is just
perfect: it affords a significant degree of customizability while retaining
user interface consistency across devices, something neither iOS nor Android
have managed to nail.

I sold my 4s and bought a Lumia, and while I'm typing this on that Air I
talked about earlier, I can't see myself using it for much longer, and neither
do I my MacBook Pro. Because when it dies in another several years...

...I won't be buying a new one.

–––––––––––––––––––––

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timer_coalescing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timer_coalescing)

[2]
[https://code.google.com/p/compcache/w/list](https://code.google.com/p/compcache/w/list)

~~~
interpol_p
> _64-bit ARM is a large step, yes. But, to call it a major breakthrough is
> laughable. It 's a natural evolution, the fact that Apple did it first does
> not make it more significant if Samsung or Qualcomm created their own ARM64
> SoC. The iPhone 5s' camera quality is nothing significant either – the Lumia
> 1020 has a far better camera and is really true innovation – Zeiss optics,
> an enormous sensor... how is that less significant than a simple sensor
> upgrade? I didn't see anyone scoffing at the quality of the GS4 either._

I see Apple's A7 as a breakthrough. They went from having nothing to having
the best mobile SoC design and implementation in the industry in three years.

I really don't get your statement about the Lumia 1020. Who is arguing that it
is "less significant" than the sensor upgrade in the 5S? Why can't people
respect both technologies? You come across as incredibly defensive when no one
is attacking your favourite product or making any claims like the ones you are
defending against.

> _People will defend this in the name of thinness, but I call bullshit,
> because the Dell XPS 15 is nearly as thin but contains DIMM slots. It 's
> just a ploy to move more units, and I'm not pleased in the slightest._

It's not a "ploy". It is very obviously the computer that Apple wants to make.
They tend to build for themselves, not for their customers (which seems to
make a lot of people angry). I have no idea how you can begin to think this is
a ploy to "move more units." If Apple were into money-making ploys they would
have put stickers all over their laptops, bundled them with bloatware and
other anti-consumer additions.

> _In all seriousness, this is now true. When I look at Mavericks ' feature
> list, it's pretty weak. Multiple display support is something that should
> have been addressed in a point release. Timer Coalescing is something
> Windows and Linux have had for ages[1], and compressed memory is something
> we saw years ago.[2] There has been no new replacement for the aging and
> outdated HFS+ filesystem. There has been no integration for UNIX protocols
> like X11, and Applescript has been left out to rot._

So it's a problem when Apple adds a software feature that is already present
in another operating system? What a weird thing to write. It's good that they
improved OS X and provided it as a free update. You are trying to spin this as
a negative for some reason.

There are genuine improvements in Mavericks, the energy usage improvements
alone have extended the time I can use my laptop without power by a
significant amount. The scroll view content area caching is also very nice in
practice, and the new frameworks like SpriteKit have been great fun to play
with.

On a side note, multiple display support was never an issue under OS X and I
fail to understand how Mavericks "fixed" anything in this regard — multiple
displays have always worked better under OS X than under Windows.

> _No Ethernet on a professional machine? I can understand getting rid of it
> on the ultraportable, but if you want something to be used as a heavy-duty
> appliance, it needs to have the necessary connectivity options out of box._

I use my retina MBP professionally every single day and have not once needed
ethernet. It is simply not an issue for me, if it is an issue for you then
that is why the adapter is available.

> _iOS 7 is certainly... bold, if you could call it that, but what core
> improvements does it hold that make it so much better than 6? On the
> surface, it 's a pretty UI makeover with an ugly icon makeover, and few
> user-facing features such as AirDrop and Control Center. Yawn. Shiny new
> APIs? Nice, but, again, there's little in the way of "bold" innovation as
> Gruber claims._

Gruber didn't claim it was "bold innovation," he claimed it was a "bold move,"
and it's hard to argue with that. It was a move that caused a lot of friction
and controversy because many people did not like the change. This is a
suitably bold move, especially relative to past updates.

You simply write a list of some of the changes and then "Yawn" at the end.
It's easy to be dismissive and to play down the improvements, but the
improvements were on par with most other major software releases. The
frameworks have always been the best part of iOS updates, and that continues
to be the case with iOS 7.

> _The Apple store left me with a cold, decoherent vibe. Nothing seemed
> interesting. iOS 7 was underwhelming, and the iPads were just iPads. They
> didn 't have anything new. Everything was whitewashed and covered in super-
> thin Myriad. Shades of grey prevailed throughout, and the staff, while
> helpful, didn't seem to have much interest in the user so much as heralding
> the merits of the product. Enter the MS store. Everything felt... so new.
> Inviting._

It sounds like you're simply bored with the Apple aesthetic and want to try
something new. That's great, you should do that.

~~~
collyw
>If Apple were into money-making ploys they would have put stickers all over
their laptops, bundled them with bloatware and other anti-consumer additions.

Huh? Most bloatware / crapware seems to be added by the manufacturers as a way
to differentiate from each other. It usually has the effect of lowering the
overall experience, but it doesn´t cost anything and it´s hardly anti-
consumer.

And stickers? Makes it look a bit cheaper, but pull them off. It serves as a
way of seeing which chipsets the computer comes with when siting on a store
shelf. Hardly anti-consumer or money making ploy. q

~~~
interpol_p
My understanding of some bloatware is that manufacturers are paid to ship
certain product with their computers. The same way the "Ask Jeeves" toolbar
might pay to be bundled with the Adobe Flash installer. For example, trial-
versions of Anti-Virus software are likely paid for by the software developer.

Same thing with the stickers, for example AMD runs a "sticker program" where
they pay manufacturers to include their marketing stickers on new laptops [1].
Back in 2010 AMD changed this program so that they paid manufacturers
regardless of whether they wanted to use the stickers (a good move).

Edit: Intel also runs an "Intel Inside" sticker program. I found many articles
implying that they pay manufacturers to feature their stickers. The Intel
Inside partner program website also suggests this [2]

> _The Intel Inside Program is a cutting-edge ingredient branding program that
> works hand-in-hand with your own branding efforts. The Intel Inside Program
> 's key objectives are to:_

> _Reimburse you for advertisements that feature qualified products and Intel
> Inside Logos._

So yes, these are short term money making ploys that manufacturers have
commonly engaged in.

[1]: [http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2010/09/notebook-stickers-
phy...](http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2010/09/notebook-stickers-physical-
crapware/)

[2]:
[https://intelinside.intel.com/content/dam/iip/us/en/shared/m...](https://intelinside.intel.com/content/dam/iip/us/en/shared/main/learn_more.htm)

------
acchow
Did anyone notice that there's an Android phone with a 2/3" camera sensor?
That's larger than in the PowerShot S110.

[http://connect.dpreview.com/post/9705313773/sony-
xperia-z1-c...](http://connect.dpreview.com/post/9705313773/sony-
xperia-z1-camera-review)

Hardly a lost year in smartphones.

~~~
pavlov
The Xperia Z1's sensor is actually 1/2.3", so it's smaller than that.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 does have a 2/3" sensor however.

------
mikerg87
Planned obsolescence. How many HP printers are sold simply beacause of a lack
of drivers in the new release of Windows.

~~~
X-Istence
Meh, these days it is cheaper to buy a new printer than ink for the damn thing
(unless we are talking about laser printers)...

------
pearjuice
I am still wondering how much Gruber gets paid by Apple for all the viral
marketing he does for them. Or is he truly that passionate about Apple that it
is out of free will?

~~~
chavesn
Paid by Apple? He doesn't need to be paid by Apple. Have you seen his
sponsorship prices[1]?

Of course part of the reason he does what he does is because it's paid off so
well for him through blogging as a business. His business has been his own
creation, though, and that in and of itself is quite impressive.

I don't know if every word is genuine, but one doesn't have to be on an
official corporate payroll to make money through coverage/praise of a popular
subject.

To answer your question seriously, he has mentioned getting early demo devices
by Apple (for a couple years, he's been in the in-crowd of journalists to do
so) but I sincerely doubt he's a puppet paid under the table.

[1] :
[http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/](http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/)

