Top all-time · #38
Marco Arment
Personal blog · marco.orgprogrammingdesign
Marco Arment writes Marco.org, a personal blog at marco.org about programming and design. Since 2009, 645 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,182 times, most often “The best laptop ever made”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Marco Arment's posts on Apple hardware and software quality, Apple Watch podcast apps, RSS habits, and his laptop and headphone reviews.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter changed RSS habits after reading the post and is happy; another follows the blog closely.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The best laptop ever made13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2017-11-14
- Right versus pragmatic11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2012-02-25
- The impossible dream of USB-C11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2017-10-14
- Low Power Mode for Mac laptops: making the case again10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-01-14
- Standing Up For Android9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2011-12-08
- Clip sharing with Overcast8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-04-27
- Apple has lost the functional high ground (2015)8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-02-04
- Overcast 4.2: The privacy update7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-04-27
- More iOS device and OS version stats from Instapaper7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-12-01
- Why the 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro still sells6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-01-05
What Hacker News says?
> It blocked Spotify from using a podcasting API after it acquired 2x major podcasting companies Is this talking about the Apple Watch-Podcasting issue? Until recently, podcast apps on the watch had issues saving where you are in an episode because they couldn't constantly run in the background; you could still play audio in the background without your app, you just couldn't watch the percentage played. Fitness trac…
Comment linking /2018/09/17/overcast5
on “Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair”Submitted Shame on Y Combinator as a story · 1280 points
HN discussionAlso see https://marco.org/2018/09/17/overcast5 > That’s why I nearly jumped for joy during the watchOS 5 announcement in June, when Apple unveiled most of my list of watchOS changes needed to make good podcast apps. In my understanding, an Apple Watch Spotify app would surely be technically feasible as of watchOS 5 (but I might be in the wrong here, I haven't tried myself more than read the available API docs).
Comment linking /2018/09/17/overcast5
on “Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair”Submitted Worse as a story · 674 points
HN discussionSee https://marco.org/2017/09/24/what-watch-podcast-apps-need .
Comment linking /2017/09/24/what-watch-podcast-apps-need
on “Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair”Submitted The One-Person Product as a story · 666 points
HN discussionTo paraphrase a recent HN comment about the touchbar... "I'm so glad this model has soldered storage" "I would buy a dell xps but only if it had soldered storage" things no one ever said. [1] Soldering ram and storage on a laptop this big is an anti-feature, just a remnant of what Marco calls the "spiteful design" [2] of the last three generations. When a DIY upgrade to 128gb/16tb is affordable not a single person w…
Comment linking /2019/11/13/mbp16
on “16-inch MacBook Pro”Submitted Bullshit as a story · 651 points
HN discussionJohn Gruber’s review https://daringfireball.net/ And before everyone accuses him of being an Apple fanboy and biased, there is no disputing that he is very much a keyboard snob. He hated the last generation keyboard and he called it out during his initial review. He also famously still prefers an old ADB Apple Keyboard and he never bought a laptop with the old one. He’s also linked to a lot of articles criticizing i…
Comment linking /2019/11/13/mbp16
on “16-inch MacBook Pro”Submitted “MP3 is dead” missed the real, much better story as a story · 650 points
HN discussionMy 2015 era MBA was great. They just screwed up, and told us they fixed it so many times it doesn't matter if they've actually fixed it this time (which they may have - https://marco.org/media/2019/11/mbp16-graph.png - we'll see in a few months) because we don't believe them. Typing this on a Surface with WSL2.
Comment linking /media/2019/11/mbp16-graph.png
on “16-inch MacBook Pro”Submitted The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion as a story · 641 points
HN discussionMarco posted an update earlier - https://marco.org/2019/11/13/mbp16
Comment linking /2019/11/13/mbp16
on “16-inch MacBook Pro”Submitted The impossible dream of USB-C as a story · 635 points
HN discussionAssuming the developer has been in business for a significant amount of time, there are a lot of signals that help tell you whether an app is legit or not. As a random example, if I look for information aout Overcast (a fairly successful app from an independent developer), I get: * A bunch of reviews from users, very few of which sound fake: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overcast/id888422857 * Articles about the a…
Comment linking /about
on “Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account”Submitted Lockdown as a story · 625 points
HN discussion> So basically apple just went back to the things they tried to fix that weren't broken and then messed up the aesthetics by making it a design from 2010 and added a notch. "Apple corrected nearly everything about their laptop design that people complain about, used a design this is considered by some to be the best MBP design ever [1], and put a small intrusion on the screen in the least-used-possible spot in order…
Comment linking /2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
on “MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch”Submitted Right versus pragmatic as a story · 568 points
HN discussionI got the same feeling as the author when I read Mossberg's comments. If someone who is that big of an Apple fan is seeing the cracks in the stucco, it is something Tim Cook really needs to pay attention too. Marco Arment kicked off a similar storm last year at this time[1]. [1] https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-grou...
Comment linking /2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground
on “Apple’s declining software quality”Submitted IOS 5's "Cleaning" Behavior as a story · 568 points
HN discussionSee: http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider
Comment linking /2011/09/23/business-insider
on “Plagiarism”Submitted The next SOPA as a story · 558 points
HN discussionYou cannot have 100% platform support of 100% quality 100% of the time. Compromise has to be made. If you're not making an explicit compromise by mercilessly cutting platform support, you're implicitly compromising schedule and quality. Apple have always been the best by far at prioritizing quality, and making hard choices, well above and beyond anybody within any industry they enter. They have always fixed the most…
Comment linking /2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground
on “That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people”Submitted What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit as a story · 511 points
HN discussionI had an idea, that I was going to implement over the month of May as soon as I finished my internship. I was very excited, I wrote up a pitch and mapped out the infrastructure. I just hadn't written code yet, I was saving that for when I could just write code for myself in May. This weekend someone else launched it. It's not as if I was thinking that my idea was novel, I just didn't think anyone else would get onto…
Comment linking /2019/04/27/overcast-clip-sharing
on “Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?”Submitted 2018 Mac Mini Review as a story · 455 points
HN discussion> A $400 Sennheiser 650 will no doubt blow them away while still being $150 cheaper. Of course they will. But it's not fair to compare open backs with closed backs without a huge asterisk [0] > If you want the best sound quality for the buck, you usually need to go with open-backed (or simply “open”) headphones. The open (but uncomfortable) SR60 is probably the best value in the business, followed by the awesome DT-…
Comment linking /headphones-closed-portable
on “AirPods Max”Submitted I want to pay for TextMate 2 as a story · 454 points
HN discussionThe developers of Little Snitch have confirmed that, at the very least, network filtering would work in userspace via the new Network Extension framework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677849 Marco Arment suggests that it's possible that Turbo Boost Switcher might not: https://marco.org/2020/01/13/macos-low-power-mode-redux
Comment linking /2020/01/13/macos-low-power-mode-redux
on “If a MacBook Pro runs hot or shows high kernel CPU, try charging it on the right”Submitted Apple has lost the functional high ground as a story · 453 points
HN discussion
