Nerd fight 2009: Gruber vs Lam on the Apple Tablet

by Justin Horn on Aug 14th, 2009 @ 3:05 pm

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In this corner, wearing dark gray shorts, John Gruber of The Daring Fireball. In the opposite corner, with the light gray shorts, Brian Lam of Gizmodo.

I believe this feud started when Gruber openly mocked Lam’s “inside source” for the Apple Tablet:

So Lam’s source is an “insider” but has no idea what the OS is and has the ship date wrong. Sure.

Then a back and forth started on Twitter:

Lam: @gruber I bet you’re not daring enough to say half the shit you’ve said about me to my face. twirp. (view original tweet)

Lam: @gruber also, we should syndicate your side of the story on Gizmodo if you are open to it. You’re a dickface, but I respect your work. (view original tweet)

Gruber: @blam Why not? Do you carry around some sort of dossier proving you are not, in fact, a hack? (view original tweet)

Lam: @gruber sure, I’m a hack. Never said I wasn’t. But never claimed to be daring either. typically, people who are don’t claim it. (view original tweet)

At this point I think Lam realized he was coming off as more of a dbag than Gruber and tweeted to his followers:

Lam: I appreciate the support, but lets cease the bad words about gruber. its out of my system. going to chill now. in the end, he does good work

In the end it looks like they have worked things out with Lam’s last tweet on the subject:

Lam: patched things up with @gruber . if I learned anything from vs @ryanblock days, better to cooperate than battle. for readers and our sanity.

So after reviewing the fight I have to give this one to Gruber. He came off like less of a dbag and he makes a lot more sense. If we get a tablet in 2009 I will rent a steam roller and run over my MacBook and iPhone*.

*DISCLAIMER: I will not actually do this