John Gruber:
Let me get this straight. Apple completely scrapped a superior interface to Health because Mark Gurman published screenshots back in March. That is to say, Apple cared more about the surprise of revealing a never-before-seen Health interface during the keynote than they cared about the actual design quality of an interface that will be used by hundreds of millions of iOS users for years to come.
Design and functionality trumps all at Apple.
Remember when the iPhone 5 leaked – in full – six months before it came out, looking exactly like the leaks said it would?
Get over yourself, Mark.
I, too, thought it ridiculous to suggest that Apple scrapped healthbook deisgns just because of a 9to5 leak… apparently 9to5 mac has a pretty high opinion of themselves. One of their writers was interviewed by Gruber and he came off as a slightly entitled twit. He had no responses when Gruber took him to task on linkbait headlines and phrasing. May have to drop 9to5 mac come to think of it because who needs a bunch of filler cruft such as “8 great, hidden features in iOS 8.” Barf.
9to5 may be linkbait but Gurman’s stuff is usually spot on.
Or the iPhone 4 got left in a bar. But yeah, bit easier changing software than hardware. Not that I think they did change it because of the leak..
I think we can all admit that there are a couple of sites out there that are quickly becoming the Mac Rumor site equivalent of Business Insider (or Weekly World News, you’re choice).
Honestly, while I still follow their posts (do I really need a 14 step tutorial with photos on how to turn on Bluetooth?), I find myself always going back to a couple of the original rumor sites instead.
Ah he’s only young and he gets the breaks, and it’s possible it’s all gone to his head a bit. He’s consistent in terms of breaking new stuff so I think it’s fine to cut him a little slack. I worked with him a little while and I didn’t think we really got along, but I always try to be fair to people and find their strengths. Which isn’t to say I didn’t feel a similar response when I read the report cited. Hubris isn’t sexy.
Some people just refuse to admit they got something wrong. And really there is no need to be so defensive because he may not have gotten it wrong. It’s entirely possible that was a design being worked on at Apple at the time. And they later decided to scrap it for something else.
That is my thought as well. IF it was a leak it will likely of an early idea that had already been rejected.
That the final version isn’t that different than the leak actually backs up that they just tweaked a work in progress.
I dropped them a long time ago. I actually have very few places I go to now for information. Ars Technica, Daring Fireball and a few others. It’s amazing how much cruft is out there even from supposed “legit” sites, do they actually exist anymore? Too many self important “reporters” for me. Gurman should stick to reporting facts. There is enough bullshit out there already. Not that it matters to me though, I’ll not be reading what they are shoveling and have not for a long long time now.
It’s easy to be “spot on” when you can’t admit you made a mistake.
Gurman had no response when any of us took him to task over this last week when it first happened.
I’m sure he loves it when critical comments continue to appear on his posts.
Hubris isn’t informative, either.
True. But youthful hubris is very understandable. We were all 20 yrs. old at one time. Most of us mature with age.
Most of us aren’t presenting ourselves as reliable
sources of information at 20, either, no?
I wasn’t defending or excusing, just saying most of us made mistakes at that age and didn’t acknowledge it was a mistake until later in life. No blogger/reporter/punditis always right. I think he’ll figure it out eventually.
Well.
Technically it takes months, sometimes years, to prepare a piece of complicated hardware like the iPhone for mass production.
But you can mutilate the UI of a piece of software beyond recognition in days.
Just saying.
You’re spot on.
To be fair, we’re talking about a company that spent a good chunk of time disparaging its own past products’ skeuomorphism at the iOS 7 keynote, apparently just to stick it to the departed Forstall, and despite the fact that their recently departed and revered founder was a big proponent of the same.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the explanation is more plausible than a simpler alternative. I’m just saying, Apple has shown signs of pettiness before.
First of all – Apple has a long list of “Kits” – CloudKit, SpriteKit etc. So the name is not surprising.
More importantly – I am convinced that HealthBook was a legitimate name for a product that Apple created – intending to leak and see where the holes were. I’m sure there were real mockups and meetings, and conference calls, ….and a list of two or three people that now are looking for work elsewhere because they took the bait and leaked the product.
That seems a lot more plausible than Gurman’s sour grapes explanation.
What’s most disappointing is that, in a world where most rumor reporters bat about .150 – Gurman hit some legit home runs. It’s a shame he’s focusing on his near misses.
But in that case I think they were going for self deprecating humor. It did come off as a bit mean. What I thought at the time was ‘man Forstall must have pissed off a lot of people at Apple’. Let’s not forget he got one sentence (and no thanks) in Apple’s press released announcing org changes.