
Fitting the Facts to the Narrative - aaronbrethorst
http://daringfireball.net/2013/07/fitting_the_facts
======
zmmmmm
What is actually kind of telling is that this matters _so much_ to Gruber that
he wrote a blog post about it. It is extremely important to him that there not
be any undue perception that Samsung is making more profit than Apple. Why?

Because, I think, a tremendous amount of his world view and many Apple
oriented folk like him, is bound up in the idea that Apple's business model is
infallibly better than that of the OEM model. It just _can 't_ be true that
there is more profit from making "crap" things than making "good" things can
it? That selling lower quality stuff can actually be _better_ business than
premium quality? (I am of course, taking liberties with the these words). This
possibility is deeply threatening to many people who have bound themselves up
in the Apple ecosystem. If making better things is, in fact, worse business,
what does it mean for people who care deeply about quality? There's a whole
mindset, even way of life here that is dependent on this beautiful self-
consistent, self-reinforcing ecosystem. Closed, centralized, controlled,
designed, simplified, quality AND higher profits all go together. The fact
that Apple keeps making more profits than other phone makers has been the last
metric that held together this belief system. If it goes, so too while the
whole notion that Apple has done something new, different and better. Their
rise will once again be seen as an abberration (as he himself refers to in the
post).

Of course, the fact that I felt the need to post this rant itself is also
telling about me :-)

------
CoffeeDregs
Quoting out of context:

    
    
        "that Apple’s market domination has been an aberration"
        "that the company in the midst of an inevitable decline"
    

Let me know when he gets to 2010... [I wrote an email to iOS/Android friend-
partisans in April of 2010 predicting the effects of Apple's TOS changes. From
my perspective, the TOS itself was not the issue; the orientation to
developers was the issue. Pretty much all of the predictions in that email has
been realized.]

I do agree with the point that it doesn't matter whether or not Samsung sells
more phones or makes more profit than does Apple. But that doesn't mean that
ecosystem shifts do not matter. They do and Android seems to be on the winning
side of that shift.

This is also not to discount the value of advocating for the "right" side.
Dating myself, I advocated for OS/2 in 1992 but my advocacy was drowned out by
the dominance of Windows. That said, OS/2 had technical underpinnings to
recommend it. At this point, iOS advocacy seems to be focused more on random
factors (e.g. color scheme or parallax backgrounds) and less on significant

    
    
        Another factor is the strange affliction that causes
        many to believe whatever is attributed to an “analyst”
    

I assume by "many" he means "no one" since one is either unaware of analysts
or, if aware, discounting of analysts.

I'm trying to read DF's article as something besides a partisan
apology/explanation, but [as usual] I'm having a hard time. Hints?

------
ZeroGravitas
And yet weirdly, Appleinsider, the source of the alleged debunking, regularly
publishes very similar estimates.

Obviously they started doing so when Apple was far in the lead, they'll
probably stop after the latest one, which shows that Samsung has now caught up
and is only three percentage points behind after closing a gap of 40
percentage points in the last 3 quarters:

"Apple takes 53% of smartphone profits, Samsung at 50%, remainder lose money"

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/31/apple-
takes-53-of-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/31/apple-takes-53-of-
smartphone-profits-samsung-at-50-remainder-lose-money)

Amusingly, they refer to this as "the latest data to refute a recent claim
that Samsung Electronics had dethroned Apple, Inc., in mobile profits."
because Samsing being 3, 2 or 1 percentage points behind is _so completely
different_ from them being 1, 2 or 3 ahead (and remembering we're talking
about estimates here) that it warrants not one but two rants from Appleinsider
and John Gruber questioning people's morals and professionalism.

------
jacques_chester
I think he's creating his own narrative: that news firms are out to "get"
Apple. To punish Apple's wicked ways, or something, I dunno.

The "fact" here is that news organisations _don 't care_ what the narrative
is. Journalism has two basic features:

1\. Write something people will read.

2\. By deadline.

If something is unusual, it gets published. If it is normal, it doesn't. If
there's a deadline looming, interesting or unusual stories will not be
scrutinised with any great care.

Remember: it's called "News", not "Same As Yesterdays".

Incidentally:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect)

~~~
JuDue
I think you are overlooking the fact he is focusing on the built up
"expectation".

It's perfectly obvious the media (social and news) went OTT with this story,
but the follow up reality check fell flat.

That's his angle.

~~~
jacques_chester
The reality check is boring, as it affirms the status quo. Doubly boring
because the Samsung story is _yesterday 's_ news.

It needs to overcome any number of more interesting stories that are both more
timely and more novel.

------
pinaceae
it was amazing, even here on HN, how this analyst report spread like wildfire
- while the counter analysis was ignored, both in comments as well as a
separate posting.

the global reach of these things is amazing, all tech "reporters" worldwide
seem to copypaste in realtime, this piece popped up in germany, etc. right
after it hit the US. all the webfrontends for traditional newspapers have
separate, lower payed staff that often is nerd-heavy, so more web/tech news
make it on their frontpages. and none of them, ever, seem to check facts.

it is an amazing time to manipulate the stock market.

