The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

http://www.marco.org/2012/07/25/siracusa-mountain-lion-review-review

by iSimone • 14 years ago

641 118 14 years ago

marco.org

stephengillie• 14 years ago

It's highly legible!

binaryorganic• 14 years ago

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

scorpion032• 14 years ago

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.

JonLim• 14 years ago

> "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.

brusch3• 14 years ago

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.

achompas2• 14 years ago

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).

technoslut5• 14 years ago

I expect him to have certain biases but I don't find it unbearable like I do with Benjamin Brooks and Matt Gemmell where I always get a sense of anger, contempt and general negativity in their writing.

da_n• 14 years ago

Hey, Engadget comments called, they want you back.

leephillips5• 14 years ago

"blind Apple - cult thinking"

He treats us to this deadpan irony:

"it’s a good opportunity to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading List, which Apple invented completely on their own."

That clearly puts the lie to your assessment.

pyre• 14 years ago

  > This is not a quick read, so it’s a good opportunity
  > to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading
  > List, which Apple invented completely on their own.

This bit of sarcasm is definitely not towing the Apple Groupthink line.

ruswick2• 14 years ago

I've done the same. It's more so because he seems very passive -aggressive and often offers no support for his views. It's not that his views are necessarily wrong, but most everything he writes is an assertion with no evidence or something that he has determined intuitively. I care about people who are able to give insights through logic and data. That's why I read Asymco and listen to Hypercritical with John Siracusa. Those are both very logical, very objective people. Marco usually just throws out opinions and rarely offers real insight. There's just no reason for me to respect his writing when he offers nothing but his own thoughts and no support. This is especially true because the things he writes are often pseudo-correct or highly debatable.

But my real problem is how he responds to his criticism. On several occasions I've challenged his arguments or asked him to elaborate via Twitter. His response is usually to get angry, make some kind of sarcastic remark at me, and treat me as if I were antagonizing him. It's an incredibly childish response. It's as if anyone who tries to debate his points is not only wrong, but a dick as well. Frankly, if his is unwilling to accept critiques and entertain a discussion, why does he even blog? More importantly, why should I read him?

smackfu• 14 years ago

I like his Apple stuff, but on his podcast sometimes he wanders into Windows territory, despite basically not knowing any Windows users, and not using Windows since XP. Not surprisingly, he ends up sounding pretty ignorant and I just fast forward.

epo• 14 years ago

"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." So why even bother commenting? And if this is typical of your comments then I'm going to stop reading them because they are self-serving and content-free.

deltasquared• 14 years ago

Wow, a Review-Reviewer-Review ^_^

Now, who reviews the reviewers reviewers reviewer?

gwern• 14 years ago

I started laughing at the first graph of wordcounts, as I realized what he was doing.

brianwillis• 14 years ago

>This is not a quick read, so it’s a good opportunity to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading List, which Apple invented completely on their own.

...was what did it for me.

vl• 14 years ago

Yes, very pleasant surprise, completely unexpected humorous side of Marco. Wonderfully dry humor.

Killswitch• 14 years ago

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

icebraining• 14 years ago

Thanks for the review.

unreal37• 14 years ago

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

cwp• 14 years ago

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.

bjcy• 14 years ago

I love the text right below it.

> This is not a quick read, so it’s a good opportunity to try a read-later method such as Safari’s Reading List, which Apple invented completely on their own.

Oh so sweet.

king_jester• 14 years ago

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

StavrosK• 14 years ago

Yes: Content-free. Avoid.

nicholassmith4• 14 years ago

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

nathell• 14 years ago

"'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?", anyone?

gerrit• 14 years ago

“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful: http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html

Graham24• 14 years ago

meta-meta hey.

vide0star• 14 years ago

A review of a review?

lukeholder2• 14 years ago

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.

pgrote• 14 years ago

How is it spam? A relevant developer writing something humorous and pretty insightful.

dfc• 14 years ago

I agree it was funny but insightful?

fredley2• 14 years ago

If it really bothers you that much filter it out. I enjoyed the article, I'm glad HN directed me to it.

lukeholder2• 14 years ago

I loved the article. Spam was probably a strong word. He has perfected the art of getting his blog to the top of HN by writing a meta article.

aprendo3• 14 years ago

Not everything is about HN. It seems to me that he is just having fun.

mcguire2• 14 years ago

"Not everything is about HN."

You're not from around here, are you?

wmeredith2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

boristhespider• 14 years ago

Ad-supported, but not pay-per-pageview advertising, and not as a full-time job.

Argorak• 14 years ago

I would hate running a blog where every time I hit the "publish" button I have to think "someone might put this on Hacker News and some Hacker News guy will complain about me spamming". I don't think that this is "news"-worthy, but its the hacker news community that posted it here and upvoted it.

epaga• 14 years ago

Right...HN spam, even though he doesn't even have an HN account? http://www.twitter.com/marcoarment/status/228137545396019200

mcguire2• 14 years ago

lukeholder has perfected the HN spam complaint spam. Someone makes a blog entry that gets posted to HN and he calls it spam and gets...something. No idea what. Sorry.

michaelkscott• 14 years ago

A lot of reddit-style comments on this post, too.

aw3c2• 14 years ago

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.

fredley2• 14 years ago

I don't think it's parodying the use of metrics, it's parodying the extreme attention to detail.

aprendo3• 14 years ago

No, it's a quite serious (and quite good) review. Marco Arment is only teasing Siracusa.

mdc• 14 years ago

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

loire280• 14 years ago

It's also self-parody of Marco's exhaustively researched reviews - which are often focused on relatively mundane things like LED light bulbs, thermostats, and coffee gadgets.

bitsoda• 14 years ago

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

brusch3• 14 years ago

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.

booticon• 14 years ago

You're taking this way too seriously. Please, read the review. My interpretation is that it's Marco poking fun at Siracusa.

weiran• 14 years ago

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?

nicholassmith4• 14 years ago

Unless you've read the article how would you know whether he's jumped the shark?

keithpeter• 14 years ago

I thought it was a rather funny post, but that is because I know and appreciate the Siracusa reviews, and I understand the references.

Satire and parody are generally reactionary.

masklinn2• 14 years ago

Which does not stop the HN community from voting it to the top, this is currently sitting at #2 with 473 points and 89 comments where the actual Siracusa review thread is #4 with 327 points and 74 comments.

Make of this what you will.

motoford• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

whoa, this totally breaks the space-time continuum!

Cyranix• 14 years ago

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

shinratdr• 14 years ago

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.

frou_dh• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

pflats• 14 years ago

Siracusa's review is expected, and I'm sure a lot of HN folks saw it coming. Despite the fact that it's new and comprehensive, it's not nearly as new and exciting as Marco's blog post.

Plus, comedy will almost always do better than a review.

seivan• 14 years ago

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.

mapgrep• 14 years ago

"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

The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

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