Valhalla Island

Macworld invited John Gruber of Daring Fireball, one of my favourite websites, to speak on a panel. John then invited Cabel Sasser of Panic to join him. Macworld recorded it and filled a podcast with it.

I found this audio about 100 times more interesting than Steve Jobs keynote. A third is iPhone related and the rest on other matters like Panic, indie Mac software, the good old days of OS 8 before multitasking and Daring Fireball.

At the end there’s a little Q and A when John gets asked why DF isn’t commentable. Something he’s touched on lightly before but went into depth on in the recording. His reasons make a lot of sense. He doesn’t want Daring Fireball to be something people just skim over. What he said was 100% true for me, I read every DF post from top to bottom, on posts on other sites where there’s over 50 comments (or even over 10) I will rarely read any of them, just skipping through.

It makes a lot of sense to me. John makes a living off the writing on DF, just like a writer in a magazine would. In a magazine you’d never see a one page story followed three pages of various reader responses. I liken it to that.

I also have a lot of respect for and look up to Cabel. It was a great combination and I’m glad they were invited to do the panel and that it was recorded. It’s definitely worth a listen.