John Gruber to go pro or quit or something
John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame has an announcement up his sleeve.
Responding to criticism that he doesn’t blog often enough, he says 
, “I’ll be announcing the fix for that one later today.”
I guess this means we will read more of John’s writing and that can only be a good thing.
Half the time I don’t understand what he is writing, but even then it is still good. He probably deserves his reputation as the most influential individual Mac blogger.
And he is not a stuck-up wiener either. Which is refreshing.
When an unknown Australian approached him out of the blue asking for an interview on what he thinks of Mail.app, he cheerfully agreed.
He sent in a great piece on Mail and what’s good and bad about it. He threw in some free advice too on how blogs should be formatted, which has made Hawk Wings nicer to look at and easier to read.
You can’t beat that. Intelligent, witty and a gentleman.
I imagine that’s enough adulation now. Keep your eyes on Daring Fireball and enjoy with me more Gruber more often (I hope).
UPDATE: John Gruber quits job, goes full-time on Daring Fireball .
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April 20th, 2006 at 5:24 am
A Word on Gruber takes the cake and eats it as the canonical extreme antithesis to comments like yours. Apparently John achieved that level of popularity where it’s a near guarantee someone is going to despise you that much. :-o
April 20th, 2006 at 7:14 am
Goodness me!
As you say, it’s a kind of perverse, inverted compliment.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:59 am
> A Word on Gruber takes the cake and eats it as the canonical extreme antithesis to
Oh, the Rixter. For some insight into his personality, temperament, and mentality, see these old pages at PerversionTracker: http://spiny.com/ladd/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2&search=rixstep
Trevor
April 21st, 2006 at 2:03 am
The irony being that it’s already the following day, and he’s not told us anything else.
Perhaps “the fix” is to no longer blog?
April 21st, 2006 at 2:08 am
No, he has. See the update in the post above.
April 21st, 2006 at 2:16 am
Yes, just as I posted this, I got the latest from my RSS reader.
So he’s going full-time. I *DO* wish him luck, but really, unless he *radically* changes both the content and frequency, I don’t see how he can sustain a reasonable income.
Of course, this brings up the question: What is reasonable?
I happen to live in a very affluent part of the US. Anything below $50,000 of household income really isn’t considered a living wage. I don’t think he’d be able to pocket $50k from ads. John is married. He doesn’t live where I do. It’s entirely possible that he can have a reasonable income from DF, assuming he doesn’t want all the shiny new things most people want. There is no shame in not being a consumer whore. I commend it.
So John, I wish you all the best. Keep writing, you’ll only get better!
Cheers!
April 21st, 2006 at 9:24 am
I enjoy John’s style of presenting and arguing his points with more depth and clarity than many writers, even when I disagree. And he usually does a good job summarizing certain issues/topics while they’re still endlessly and redundantly discussed on forums without any new insights.
Purely as a reader, sites like Daring Fireball are a refreshing contrast to the forum clatter. In particular, popular threads on rumor forums often suffer from being flooded with posts from people who apparently haven’t read previous comments or simply have no clue about what they’re writing. And their devolution with petty arguments and bickering is tiring.
For interactivity, it’s been a lot more satisfying for me reading/posting comments on interesting, intelligent weblogs (Hawk Wings being an easy favorite) than it ever was on noisy forums. Low traffic and slower pace creates a comfortable conversational flow of communication that’s friendly and respectful. If someone asks a question it usually gets a response. And there’s a sense of closure to “mini-discussions”. Definitely my style of blog as an alternative to e-mail.
Finishing this more on-topic, I wonder if John intends to open DF to public comments. Personally, I don’t mind if he doesn’t unless there’s the sort of intimacy to that “comment community” like I just wrote about. Given the oft-controversial nature of his writings I’m not so sure. Finding places online to publicly discuss certain “popular hot topics” at a leisurely pace, with civility and minimal distractions, can be tricky. Posed another way, where do “grownups” chat online without being interrupted by the “kids”? In flux, I suppose, and much like asking “where’s the killer party?” — if you don’t know by now then asking won’t help. :-)
April 21st, 2006 at 6:41 pm
I don’t know what he will do. And reading this most recent posts, I get the sense that he doesn’t quite know what he is going to do either.
Certainly opening a site to comments is a great way to build community, and cultivating a paying community is now his bread and butter, so who knows?
In my case, it’s also a great learning opportunity. The comments that people post here is an important way for me to learn more about Mail.app and Mac OS X. Of course, John may have less to learn ;-)