The past year, DF hasn't been as enjoyable as its been in the past. Apple, Gruber's Beatrice, is engorged as a company, and seems now to be veering from interestingly complex to dully complicated. [...] But, in light of that victory, his renegade confidence has become an assured superiority. He hasn't written, for a long time, an engaging description of a laptop or an account of an anthropomorphized interface element.
Slightly off topic: The Atlantic had an article yesterday about DF's 10th anniversary (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/08/happy-10...), and it had this bit of astute criticism:
The past year, DF hasn't been as enjoyable as its been in the past. Apple, Gruber's Beatrice, is engorged as a company, and seems now to be veering from interestingly complex to dully complicated. [...] But, in light of that victory, his renegade confidence has become an assured superiority. He hasn't written, for a long time, an engaging description of a laptop or an account of an anthropomorphized interface element.
To which Jason Kottke agreed: http://kottke.org/12/08/an-appreciation-of-10-years-of-darin...
So perhaps Gruber is consciously responding to these critiques and upping his game - which is nice, because this post was a great read.