I'm a bit late to the party and I can't get on my old account anymore, but the sheer number of Apple related threads was one of the reasons I left when I did.
I can't say when it started, but there frequently stood on the top the "questionable app store rejection for a seemingly minor detail" (and the releated "Apple morally objected to this content"). Other favorites were "Steve Jobs ate a leaf of lettuce" and "Steve Jobs swore this one time" and other nonsense.
The defining moments were when the iPhone 4(?) was released, and the words AntennaGate plastered the first page like there were shining details in the news every 15 minutes, when the whole thing played out like (1) Discovery (2) Accusation (3) Denial (4) Excuse (5) Patch to display accuracy. It was all drama from start to finish.
The other moment, while I will freely admit was significant news, was Steve Jobs' death. Praises were sung for him for a solid two weeks, followed by excerpts from the Biography for the next month.
Apple is an important company to the community here, and that's fine, but the karma system and the knowledge that people liked Apple lead users posting every Apple related story.
This isn't perfect, but there's a twitter account that marks stories which hit the front page named @HNFrontPage. Using an external search engine (Topsy) which has records dating back to May 2008 (~1590 days) we can find 7,847[1] stories about Apple have hit the front page, making for around 4.9 Apple stories on the front page per day.
Here are a small selection of stories voted to the front page about Steve Job's death, with points and comment count.
I can't say when it started, but there frequently stood on the top the "questionable app store rejection for a seemingly minor detail" (and the releated "Apple morally objected to this content"). Other favorites were "Steve Jobs ate a leaf of lettuce" and "Steve Jobs swore this one time" and other nonsense.
The defining moments were when the iPhone 4(?) was released, and the words AntennaGate plastered the first page like there were shining details in the news every 15 minutes, when the whole thing played out like (1) Discovery (2) Accusation (3) Denial (4) Excuse (5) Patch to display accuracy. It was all drama from start to finish.
The other moment, while I will freely admit was significant news, was Steve Jobs' death. Praises were sung for him for a solid two weeks, followed by excerpts from the Biography for the next month.
Apple is an important company to the community here, and that's fine, but the karma system and the knowledge that people liked Apple lead users posting every Apple related story.
This isn't perfect, but there's a twitter account that marks stories which hit the front page named @HNFrontPage. Using an external search engine (Topsy) which has records dating back to May 2008 (~1590 days) we can find 7,847[1] stories about Apple have hit the front page, making for around 4.9 Apple stories on the front page per day.
Here are a small selection of stories voted to the front page about Steve Job's death, with points and comment count.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078434 537 points, 17 comments.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078510 367 points, 10 comments.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078479 343 points, 14 comments.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078335 303 points, 1 comment (a source link which points to the first thread in this list)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078514 151 points, 0 comments (a second posting of one of the above)
[1] Search used: http://topsy.com/s?q=Apple+OR+%22Steve+Jobs%22+OR+iPhone+OR+...