The only part of his comments that really amounts to negative criticism is about the glass back.
He isn't hard on Apple about the missing italic face in the same way he is about e.g. Microsoft's errors (he basically treats it as a regression for Apple to fix), and it's a gross distortion to characterize his verdict on the antenna as "This could be a fatal design flaw." Almost every mention of the antenna issue is cushioned with soothing positivity. He repeatedly states his belief that reception only drops when your reception is lousy to begin with, and overall he seems to think it's likely that the issue will be helped by a software patch, or maybe a small hardware fix. The "fatal design flaw" angle is brought up very briefly, immediately said to be unlikely, and then further softened by reiterating his belief that the issue doesn't affect your reception that much anyway.
I mean, I like Gruber. He's a good writer and has a lot of interesting insights and I actually value his opinion, but you'd have to be stark raving mad to read his blog and think, "Wow, this guy is kind of hard on Apple."
To put my two cents in on the antenna issue, I believe that Gruber is just saying it how it is in this case. I have an iPhone 4, and nearly everyone that sees it asks me about reception issues. I've talked on it for a total of probably 4 hours now, in various locations with various signal strength and have had no issues with dropped calls or reduced reception of any sort. During many of the longer calls, I've tried holding the phone upside down, bridging all the metal gaps, left handed, right handed, etc... and it made no difference.
So call him "optimistic" in his analysis, but if his experience is anything like mine, he is right to be wary of all the reports of the "death grip" as much as I am.
He isn't hard on Apple about the missing italic face in the same way he is about e.g. Microsoft's errors (he basically treats it as a regression for Apple to fix), and it's a gross distortion to characterize his verdict on the antenna as "This could be a fatal design flaw." Almost every mention of the antenna issue is cushioned with soothing positivity. He repeatedly states his belief that reception only drops when your reception is lousy to begin with, and overall he seems to think it's likely that the issue will be helped by a software patch, or maybe a small hardware fix. The "fatal design flaw" angle is brought up very briefly, immediately said to be unlikely, and then further softened by reiterating his belief that the issue doesn't affect your reception that much anyway.
I mean, I like Gruber. He's a good writer and has a lot of interesting insights and I actually value his opinion, but you'd have to be stark raving mad to read his blog and think, "Wow, this guy is kind of hard on Apple."