This comment reminds of me of these such philosophical dualisms:

- Form (Formal Blueprint of Ideas) vs Appearances (Actual Manifestation of Ideas) (Plato)

- Noumenal (how things are in themselves) vs Phenomenal (how things appear) (Immanuel Kant)

Gruber has been an idealistic and longtime Apple observer. This is probably why he seems to invoke the Idea of Apple to compare and critique the current Appearance of Apple.

Fascinated to see a remark on HN that reminds me of this concept in philosophy.

From TFA, to illustrate:

"These are the not the work of carpenters who care about the backs of the cabinets they’re building. These icons are so bad, they look like the work of untrained “How hard can it be?” dilettante carpenters who only last a few days on the job before sawing off one of their own fingers. The whole collection looks like the work from someone with no artistic ability nor an eye for detail. From Apple, of all companies."

This year the Apple leadership didn't visit his Talkshow anymore. Likely as a response to this article.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/29/no-apple-executives-tal...

I feel that he became critical of Apple only post-Jobs.

[flagged]

> especially after Alan Dye made such a mess with "Liquid Glass".

Your comment makes it seem like Gruber is a big critic of Liquid Glass like many commenters on HN are, but that's not the case. He's certainly critical of some of the execution details like icons or translucency that can hinder reading, but his stance on it is pretty nuanced leaning toward cautiously optimistic.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/09/apple-intro-liq...

This is the answer. Gruber has and will continue to criticize Apple, but there has generally been very little room for daylight between his values and those of the company (either as expressed in their products or by their leadership). Also, while he doesn't say it, but I suspect that there has long been a feedback loop where his articles defending the company line are well-received internally and have helped him get press access to executives (for his WWDC live show) and preview hardware.

All that said, there has been a marked change since John's "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino". Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that Apple leadership did not like this article and snubbed him for his liveshow. Since then, there have been many more articles critical of Apple on daringfireball.net.