Daring Fireball Resorts to Images, Friends Fear for John Gruber

There’s no doubting that times are tough. Recession claws at all of us. It forces us to do things which under normal conditions we would not even consider. For some that means taking a commission they’d usually reject outright. Like PHP coding or something. For others, it means completely abandoning any pretence at artistic integrity. In a sickeningly populist move, John Gruber has started posting images on his otherwise minimalist blog, Daring Fireball.

This deeply uncharacteristic behaviour occurred during Gruber’s review of the “Richard Solo iPhone Backup Battery.” (You have our sympathies, John — we often have trouble finding anything interesting to write about, too.) The picture — above, right — also appeared in full colour, not even tasteful black and white like what we’ve done here. The incident has left the entire Mac-centric blogosphere stunned and shaken, asking itself, “What next? Comments?”

We put this question to one of Gruber’s friends, who wished to remain anonymous in case he decided to stop doing the Talk Show podcast with him.

“To be honest, John’s decision not to have comments isn’t so much about censorship as aesthetics. I mean, have you seen how messy some people can be? It’s not just the spelling mistakes and bad grammar, but the punctuation, too. There’s a level of untidiness that no amount of Perl can clean up.

“Besides, can you imagine what the comments on Daring Fireball would be like? I’m thinking a slightly bloodier version of the Somme. The UN would have to send Belgium in to moderate.”

We’ll keep monitoring the situation, and at the first signs of Arial usage we’re staging an intervention.

• Daring Fireball