
The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion - iSimone
http://www.marco.org/2012/07/25/siracusa-mountain-lion-review-review
======
JonLim
> "In my testing, reading the 10.8 review took approximately 128 minutes. But
> I walked my dog briefly in the middle."

> "At medium brightness, my iPad (3rd-generation) battery fell from 73% to 56%
> while I read the review on it."

I... I think I love Marco Arment.

A great way to start my day, thanks for the chuckles, Marco.

~~~
brusch
Funny - I've stopped reading every article from the marco.org site. I can't
stand his style and I really can't stand his blind Apple - cult thinking. But
to everyone his own's.

~~~
achompas
_I can't stand his style and I really can't stand his blind Apple - cult
thinking._

He is leap years better than Gruber and Daring Fireball. His posts are witty
without being cynical, and he's frank without being rude.

He also has much more to say on entrepreneurship (given his first-hand
experience with the App Store).

~~~
wyclif
I agree; I've thought for a long time that as far as Apple Cult bloggers go,
he's better than Gruber on a number of fronts: less groupthink, less cynicism,
less David Foster Wallace fanboyism, and less irrational Google hatred. The
only thing Gruber has going for him now IMO is his continued Stanley Kubrick
advocacy.

~~~
guelo
Gruber does seem to have good inside Apple sources which makes some his
predictions worth reading. He's almost an official Apple info release channel.

~~~
toyg
"Almost"? He clearly coordinates with Apple people. He's to Apple what a
surrogate is to a presidential candidate: an attack dog free to say what the
candidate will only think.

(Note: I don't dislike it, I just take him for the biased source he is.)

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
> (Note: I don't dislike it, I just take him for the biased source he is.)

This is the way to handle it. Gruber is what he is. The fact he spends so much
time writing about Apple is both why you should read him if you're interested
in Apple (because he's got the time, the knowledge and to a degree the access
to have some genuine insight) and why you should be slightly sceptical about
what he has to say (because it's almost impossible to spend that much time
looking closely at something and not end up taking a side).

Plus he's not exactly secretive about his views. Anyone who has read more than
100 words he's written or quoted should be pretty clear about where he's
coming from.

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lukeholder
Marco has perfected the followup blog entry HN spam. Even if it is hilarious
and witty.

He jumps on a hot topic and gets the page views.

~~~
wmeredith
His site isn't ad supported–I don't think he's trolling for pageviews. Also,
if you listen to his podcast, he's stated that he doesn't much care for
hitting the front page of HN because we're such cynical dicks (paraphrased).

UPDATE: His site is ad-supported. It was just blending in a little too well.

~~~
netnichols
He's on The Deck network, so it is ad supported. That's not to say I think
he's trolling... I think he's just having fun.

~~~
wmeredith
Huh, I can't find The Deck ad on his site.

~~~
davezatch
The ads run on RSS only, I think.

~~~
hisyam
Nope, I can see it from my browser. You might have to pause adblock to see it.

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frou_dh
It's just sad that the actual review, which is tremendously interesting and
substantial, has noticeably fewer votes than this, the #1 link.

Is the oft-mentioned decline of HN a bunch of tiny cuts?

~~~
drostie
The actual review also is about half the minimum length of a novel[1], and as
this review describes, takes two hours to read. In some ways I'll agree that
it's appropriate because it "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" or so,
but it strikes me that we should amortize across the time spent on the
subject. If you compare this to, say, spending two hours watching lectures
from online courses, I am not sure the review of Mountain Lion really holds
up.

In that sense, the review-of-the-review indeed packs much more density-of-
gratification than the review did. If the gratification density is to be
reflected in the points value, then the points are justly apportioned.

[1] I am basing this purely on the word count and the fact that NaNoWriMo
requires 50,000 words to classify something as a novel; I have not checked to
see how actual novels fare against this goal.

------
bitsoda
Christ does the HN community give Marco a lot of grief. He's like the LeBron
James of this place.

~~~
brusch
If you are not really interested in Apple products - he's not a good source of
information.

And this article (without reading it) sounds really like he jumped the shark.

~~~
weiran
Why have you commented three times about an article you haven't read, won't
read, and about a topic you admit you have no interest in?

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binaryorganic
"which Apple invented completely on their own." priceless.

~~~
scorpion032
That one satirical expression was enough to get me a laugh and upvote it. I
dont see how so many people here that are calling it, dont see it.

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aw3c2
I am honest: I don't get it. Is the reviewed review focused on meaningless
metrics or why is this funny? I skimmed through a couple of pages and did not
see any of that, in fact it seemed comprehensive if a bit subjective and
fanboyish.

~~~
mdc
If you listen to Marco's podcast, he'll occasionally say something like "I
want to talk about this topic but Siracusa just talked about it on his podcast
and did a great job so I'll be quick about it."

It think this review-review is Marco's way of saying that he knows he's
expected to comment on the new OSX and everyone should just go read Siracusa's
review. Plus it was funny.

edit: typo

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unreal37
Love the graph comparing word lengths of previous OS X reviews.

~~~
cwp
Yes. But it kills me that he could present such a graph, and then fail to
comment on the peak at 10.4. That'll have to be a big issue when the reviews
of this piece come out.

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king_jester
Has anyone reviewed this review review yet? I don't want to waste my time over
here.

~~~
StavrosK
Yes: Content-free. Avoid.

~~~
nicholassmith
I'm going to review your review of Marco's review of the review. Light on
discussion.

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Killswitch
Best review of a review ever. A+++ would read again!

~~~
icebraining
Thanks for the review.

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motoford
Has anyone noticed yet in the real Siracusa review that marco.org is the first
link in a screenshot of Siracusa's reading list?

Page 8

~~~
caycep
whoa, this totally breaks the space-time continuum!

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mapgrep
"There have been a few architectural changes to John Siracusa’s OS X reviews
as well. Siracusa has detailed the process in his separate explanatory blog
post, because the review wasn’t long enough and he had more to say." HA

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stephengillie
It's highly legible!

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Cyranix
As amusing as the parody is, it's tough to beat the original. Honestly, who
cares about an update to Chess?

~~~
shinratdr
I do. Apple pulled Texas Hold 'Em from the iOS App Store some time back and
that was their only iOS game. Likewise, Chess is their only Mac game. I
expected it to be removed from the OS.

Finding out that it got Game Centre integration is actually pretty
interesting. Providing developers an example of the API in a working program
is also a nice gesture.

I bet you anything most OS X devs reading this review that plan on integrating
Game Centre in their own Mac game fired up Chess to see it in action.

------
seivan
I love the fact that his review included code, just something small and
trivial like that. Made my day more than slightly better. Can go to bed with a
giant smile on my face.

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vide0star
A review of a review?

