John Gruber isn’t a gamer. He’s talked about it on The Talk Show. Dan Benjamin even said, “I can’t imagine you playing a video game,” to Gruber, which I thought was somewhat offensive: John Gruber doesn’t seem like the type of guy who plays video games, and Benjamin thinks Gruber is pretty swell, thus Benjamin may have a negative opinion of gamers.

But anyway. Apparently both AMD and Nvidia are claiming that their graphics card sales have lagged because of the hard drive shortages in Thailand. Gruber turns this topic, about an industry he knows nothing about and does not participate in, into some sort of anti-Windows PC troll:

Sure, that’s the explanation — not that demand for Windows PCs is drying up. I’m surprised Nvidia couldn’t make up the difference with Tegra 2 chipsets that powering all those best sellers on the “non-iPad tablets” list.

Or, if you actually use graphics cards regularly and have for the last 12 years like I have, you’d know that recent graphics cards are so powerful that the upgrade cycle on them has been diminished considerably.

In the past you were looking at a new card once every 2 years, maybe 3 years if you didn’t care. Now even a mid-range fairly cheap graphics card can last over 3 years, if not more. My last graphics card lasted something like 4 years before I really felt like I needed to upgrade. (In general the hardware upgrade cycle on PCs for gamers has diminished considerably, along with the prices.)

What strikes me as especially silly coming from Gruber, is suggesting that slowing sales of a niche product (GPUs, used primarily by gamers) is somehow indicative of the entire Windows PC atmosphere. It couldn’t possibly be that consoles are cutting into how many gamers care about their GPUs, right? Or any number of other possible factors?

Nah, Gruber will just say the iPad—which isn’t a suitable gaming replacement for PC/console gamers and should have little to nothing to do with GPU sales—is cutting into PC sales. That’s definitely the narrative he likes to pick. If you want to say that, GPU sales are not the metric to use to support it.