Daring Fireball
daringfireball.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
John Gruber writes about Apple, technology, and design, and created the Markdown format.
What HN saysCommenters praise its unobtrusive, privacy-respecting ads and group Gruber with Ben Thompson as examples of independent writers doing real journalism.
1.8KHN people shared it
1.1Klinked it in comments
2.0Kstories submitted
58Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How to write a README file for GitHub (Markdown tips)77 people · 2 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 2Daring Fireball is down60 people · 8 points · first shared 2007 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Aaron Swartz was a key contributor to Markdown55 people · 109 points · first shared 2009 · 3 comments on HN
- 4Gruber Now Charging $6000 For Weekly Sponsorships27 people · 7 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 5The Mac Pro Lives24 people · 877 points · first shared 2017 · 801 comments on HN
- 6Medium and the Scourge of Persistent Sharing Bars16 people · 273 points · first shared 2017 · 131 comments on HN
- 7Bad Dye Job14 people · 306 points · first shared 2025 · 121 comments on HN
- 8On Covering Webcams13 people · 10 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Apple’s New ‘Child Safety’ Initiatives, and the Slippery Slope12 people · 103 points · first shared 2021 · 32 comments on HN
- 10Mountain Lion: John Gruber's personal briefing11 people · 419 points · first shared 2012 · 302 comments on HN
- 11Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino11 people · 194 points · first shared 2025 · 28 comments on HN
- 12License11 people · first shared 2012
- 13Richard Stallman’s Disgrace10 people · 43 points · first shared 2019 · 14 comments on HN
- 14Retraction: The App Store Rejection of the Week That Was a Correct Rejection10 people · 7 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 15New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others9 people · 525 points · first shared 2010 · 480 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
colesantiago · 2025-02-10
Would seeing this on HN count as advertisement?
I also see HN Jobs that I did not ask for, would this also count as advertisements / marketing?
How would say, Daring Fireball [1] earn income from this cancerous mode of operation? Should this publication stop charging $11K a week to stop shilling products we don't need in your RSS feed?
So then it follows that all of these are 'cancer' by the author's definition.
How do we solve this once and for all to satisfy the author?
The only way to stop this would probably be to "close your eyes?" or perhaps maybe adblock, although we cannot adblock billboards, or this isn't really a big enough problem in the first place.
Solutions to this would be much welcome.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/
oneeyedpigeon · 2024-12-06
> a nice banner ad
It's amusing to hear this phrase, but I totally agree with you! Probably the best ads I've ever come across are on Daring Fireball [0]. They're so unobtrusive and privacy-respecting, they're in the source of the page!
[0] https://daringfireball.net/
ElFitz · 2020-08-09
Lazy so-called journalist, I'd like to present to you... drums rolling... Ben Thompson of Stratechery[1]! Followed by.... rolling drums... John Gruber of Daring Fireball[2]!
And quite frankly, these two are just the ones I thought of, from the top of my head.
And, I couldn't say why, I think nowadays the Financial Times could write pieces on the matter more interesting than nearly anyone at Wired could.
[1]: https://stratechery.com/
[2]: https://daringfireball.net/
roryokane · 2020-07-14
If you don’t want to use the term “piracy”, the best alternative I’ve heard is “bootlegging”. Credit for the idea goes to the author of https://daringfireball.net/, who suggested that term way back in 2009.
stankot · 2019-12-08
I really love this one:
https://tobiasahlin.com/
Shameless self promotion (my blog):
https://muffinman.io/
And of course, Daring Fireball:
https://daringfireball.net/
matwood · 2018-12-19
There is something to be said about writing begets writing. Long thoughtful posts are great, but those take time and often do not get finished. The more someone posts, the easier it gets to post. Then the more they'll post, and so on.
I think John Gruber does a pretty good job at https://daringfireball.net where he posts shorter stuff mixed in with longer out articles. I think I heard him say once his goal was to get someone to check his site once or twice/week.
Twisell · 2018-10-24
I would love to hear John Gruber opinion about that. His advertised funding model is sponsorship without agressive ad and without passive tracking.
https://daringfireball.net
So yes I totally think that current bonus for add fraudster is not helping a "new John Gruber" to emerge.
samayshamdasani · 2017-06-20
https://daringfireball.net is a classic, but good one.
Also, I have been reading a lot of https://hackernoon.com lately.
danesparza · 2017-01-30
Excellent list of devs already. I would add:
Tess Ferrandez: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/tess/ (Fantastic analysis of Windows debugging internals)
John Gruber: http://daringfireball.net/
nimeshneema · 2016-05-12
Registered Apple developer here.
I visit the following sites to keep myself up-to-date on Apple ecosystem:
http://www.macrumors.com (Covers news relevant to developers, entrepreneurs and consumers alike. The only blog one needs to follow to get updates on happenings in the Apple ecosystem)
http://daringfireball.net (John Gruber personal blog. For the quality of its editorial and views on happenings in Apple and Tech world. He is also the created of Markdown)
http://www.loopinsight.com (Jim Dalrymple's views on happenings in Apple ecosystem, the widely renowned Apple insider)
P.S.: Not for a regular visit, but Macrumors also maintains a very insightful buyer's guide at http://buyersguide.macrumors.com
dangoor · 2016-03-15
There are cases of individuals who make money charging for content (Ben Thompson comes to mind: https://stratechery.com/) and others who give away their content but have managed to put together revenue streams that don't annoy their users (http://daringfireball.net/).
If someone has unique content that other people want, especially as an individual rather than a multi-person business, there are ways to make money. It's not "baked into the web", so it may require being creative about how the offering is put together... but, it's still doable.
What makes Ben Thompson an interesting example is that there is no shortage of people writing about trends in tech. But he has a focus and style that are unique enough that people pay to subscribe to his updates.
petercooper · 2014-09-01
I run a series of e-mail newsletters on topics I'm interested in and have about 190k subscribers.
But that's only one tiny way, there are lots of people who do things like blog about news full-time, run tumblelogs, industry analysts, etc. http://daringfireball.net/ would be a top example of one of these. http://www.loopinsight.com/ are another. Lots of podcasts, YouTubers, etc. Generally "indie media" I guess.
It's worth noting, however, that it's quite hard to make a good living in that way and only a small percentage make it to an enviable position. It's certainly a lot easier to make $100k+ per year as a full-time programmer than as someone consuming/producing media.
ds_opseeker · 2026-08-21
Love your "on average" qualification. Like the cartoon where the water temperature is fine on average, with one bucket boiling and the other ice.
The interesting question is how to define 'average'. Over what probability distribution?
Hey, anyone remember this from earlier in the week? https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/anthropics_watermark_text_adulterat…
browningstreet · 2026-08-18
Oblig...
"Contra a bunch of idiots at Hacker News and elsewhere.."
https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/follow-up_thoughts_on_watermarking
toasterlovin · 2026-08-10
I came across a theory which seems more likely to me: Gruber lost access to Apple execs after he posted the following regarding Tim Cook and other tech CEOs congratulating Trump on winning the election in 2024:
“I wonder how much Cook dithered over that cheerful-looking exclamation mark. I hope he regrets it. … I wonder how much it stings to be reminded that all the money in the world cannot buy dignity. I wonder too, what taste Cheetos-dusted 78-year-old testicles leave in one’s mouth. Whatever the flavor, I hope it lingers.”
From the very end of this: https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/i_wonder
simonw · 2026-07-29
I don't like subscription popups - see recent John Gruber rants on the subject: https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover
I'm willing to take the hit to subscriber numbers for not having that kind of thing on my own site.
From an SEO perspective, I think I might be beating Substack comfortably.
My blog has a different page for each item, plus it ties them together with tags.
The Substack email is a full week of content in one go. I don't think that's particularly SEO-optimal.
Again though, I'm willing to take the risk. So far I've not seen any obvious downsides to this model, and I've been dual publishing in this way for a few years now.
jonhohle · 2026-06-08
Dating Fireball just posted about how broken SwiftUI is for basic things AppKit was doing correctly in the late 90s (undo/redo)[0].
I think peak productivity for desktops was probably hit about 10 years ago. Most things since then are worse, and the best things from macOS (drag and drop everything nearly anywhere, consistent keyboard shortcuts and interfaces, scriptability of everything, etc.) were never copied by other systems.
Now systems are being designed to follow Node JS-style development which doesn’t work like a normal thing anywhere and native apps are just as bad as electron apps from a usability perspective…
At least they can be vibe coded since Interface Builder is no longer needed?
0 - https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/swiftui_only_makes_it_easy_to_devel…
al_borland · 2026-02-22
Markdown’s popularity seems to stem from its simplicity. Complicating the base standard may hurt more than help, as tools that only need the basics (what it was designed for) would be pressured into full support of a complex standard.
It’s one thing for an app to create scope creep for markdown that those users can leverage. It’s another thing for the standard to create the scope creep, which is then pushed onto all the apps that may use it.
At some point, markdown loses its human readability when too many features are added. So if it gets too complicated, someone will inevitably create a new more simple standard… or push something like “markdown classic”.
John Gruber, who created markdown, doesn’t even use it for all the stuff most others do today.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/04/apple-notes-markdown
JumpCrisscross · 2025-12-23
> Why is it always so difficult to find the details?
"There’s a new podcast, 'Killer in the Code', from author Michael Connelly that details Baber’s supposed solution tying both cases to the same guy. All the publicity about this today stems from the debut of that podcast yesterday" [1].
[1] https://daringfireball.net
DonHopkins · 2025-12-11
Love the sick burn at the end:
>Who knows? Maybe they're just trying to simulate the butterfly keyboard in software.
Apple truly has some incredibly incompetent people working for it, obsessively focused on cosmetic style instead of substance and usability.
Alan Dye voluntarily leaving certainly won't solve the root problem that they didn't fire him years ago.
Bad Dye Job:
https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
Gruber: Apple employees ‘giddy’ about Alan Dye’s departure:
https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/04/gruber-apple-employees-giddy-about-alan…
Eric_WVGG · 2025-12-09
Several of his “lieutenants” are following, actually.
His successor Stephen Lemay has exactly the kind of pedigree a person who cares about UI could ask for. There's a lot to be optimistic about. https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
hn_throwaway_99 · 2025-12-08
It's worth reading Gruber's writeup on Dye's departure - it really sounds like it will be a net positive for Apple that he's leaving: https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
stmpjmpr · 2025-08-26
I follow him, and despite being an Apple commentator, he can be very critical of Apple. You might have missed this from earlier this year: https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of…
jes5199 · 2025-05-21
this is designed to appeal directly to a certain kind of self-mythologizing Bay Area techie, the kind that was common in the early 2010s. It’s meant to signal continuity, “we’re just like you, we loved Steve Jobs”
apparently it worked on some people: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/21/sam-and-jony-io
jgruber · 2025-03-28
This is fantastic, and I'm embarrassed I didn't think to do this year-by-year analysis myself. But then how do you square up the tepid response here to
https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of…
nntwozz · 2025-03-16
"A word is worth a thousand pictures".
— Apple HIG
In 1985, after a year of finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple human interface group took on the motto "A word is worth a thousand pictures.
https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html
Linked from Daring Fireball back in the day.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/12/tog-word
ryandrake · 2025-02-18
Gruber[1] posted that Bloomberg reported[2]: "Humane’s team, including founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, will form a new division at HP to help integrate artificial intelligence into the company’s personal computers, printers and connected conference rooms, said Tuan Tran, who leads HP’s AI initiatives."
So they'll hang around as some sort of director-level Thought Leaders or something? Sounds like a safe and lucrative landing.
1: https://daringfireball.net
2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/hp-116-million-deal…
Scaevolus · 2024-08-09
Yes. It makes JS run at ~30% speed, a worthwhile tradeoff given how often JIT bugs are used in exploit chains.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/06/apple_disables_webkits_jit_in_lockd…
haunter · 2024-05-07
I love when Gruber is confidently wrong https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/28/m4-ipad-pros-gurman
lnxg33k1 · 2024-03-27
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/21/garland-monopoly?ref=birc…
[Update: Whoops, I was wrong about that. Matt Birchler, who works in the payments industry, has a great explainer about how this works, and it turns out major banks and credit cards do generate per-merchant “DPAN” numbers for tap-to-pay transactions. I stand by my argument that Apple Wallet is at least as, if not more secure than, any digital payment app provided by a card issuer.]
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From the original author (Gruber)