The Occasional Blargh

The last time we left John Gruber with a press release, he confused a forward looking financial statement for a mission statement. But that was back when Gruber was just a lowly blogger. Today, he is not just a simple blogger, but the head of The Daring Fireball Company LLC. With the newfound experience in running a small-business, let’s see if he has improved in his press release interpretation skill set.

One of the things I admire about Apple is their plainspokenness, both in advertising and in press releases.

plain·spo·ken. adjective. \ˈplānˈspō-kən\

Frank; straightforward; blunt; candid.

I don’t think describing Siri as magical or Maps as the most powerful mapping service ever would qualify as being plainspoken, but that’s good. Gruber is beginning to confuse hyperbole as candor. He is becoming fluent in press relation-ese.

At first glance, the headline of the press release announcing Forstall’s departure seemed to go against this: “Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services”. That was followed by a subhead: “Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Add Responsibilities to Their Roles”.

Ah, we can see young Gruber struggling. He wants to show evidence of Apple’s candor, but Apple has just spent 25 words without telling you what just happened – they just fired Scott Forstall.

Thinking about it some more, though, and considering what I know about Forstall’s reputation within the company, I think that headline, euphemistic though it is, tells the plain truth:

This is an awesome graf. He’s already resorting to doublespeak, to excuse it. “Euphemistic though it is, [it] tells the plain truth.” Of course, the truth is only revealed if you have prior knowledge of the company.

Forstall was an obstacle to collaboration within the company. Now he’s gone, and his responsibilities are being divided between four men who foster collaboration: Ive, Mansfield, Cue, and Federighi.

So truthful, it takes an outside blog to lay plain the rationale behind the changes. Also note in the actual press release, the announcement of Forstall’s departure is the last sentence of the opening paragraph. And nowhere within the actual press release does it say Forstall was an obstacle.

Of course, it’s rare for a press release to simply say that a senior-executive was fired. People high enough in the hierarchy can afford attorneys to make sure such offensive and harsh words like “fired” and “dismissed” are never uttered. They also exist to ensure that a parachute of appropriate size made of dollar bills is awarded to the ex-executive.

So, yeah, Gruber has gotten much better at reading a press release. Unfortunately, he has much worse at calling out self-serving PRese for what it is.

Above is what Daring Fireball looked like when I visited Saturday night. The only visible content was two ads, navigation, with only the hint of a blog should I choose to scroll down some more. I am the first to admit that the image above is unfair. I lucked into visiting the site at exactly the wrong time, and that the sponsorship testimonial he wrote was unusually long this week. Still, I note this because of his reaction to his discovery that some bundled apps in Windows 8 displayed ads: “Gross”, which is in line with his general distain for advertisements.

Now, I could point out the various promotional interruptions that sometimes greet your Mac or iPad-using day, but I thought it was probably already beside the point when now the major operating systems come with actual stores built into them. Windows 8 has the Store tile which loads what I guess is called “Windows Store” which is the only place to acquire and install the new ‘Metro’-style applications.  Ubuntu has reconfigured its package management application and turned it into a store. (Additionally, Canonical altered its desktop search interface to also search Amazon.com and place products it finds from that store into the search results.) And Apple, which had two stores built in since Snow Leopard, has routed its software update feature through the Mac App Store, as well as selling operating system upgrades solely through the store. Thus, you have to interact with the store to keep on top of system security updates, and to get new OS X releases. Windows system updates still come through a separate applet via the Control Panel, but ‘Metro’-app updates have to be downloaded through the store, too. It remains to be seen, though, if Windows will push new OS versions through its store. It seems a bit late to complain about ads here and there, when the OSes already direct you to exit through the gift shop.