[gress]

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products.

You are actually saying there is favoritism. It's dishonest to claim otherwise. You've just suggested that Anand has succumbed to access journalism.

Why not just be honest about what you think, rather pretending to be disinterested reporting on the views of others?

Let's also note that the commenter accusing AnandTech of bias in that comment thread you linked is resoundingly and overwhelmingly rebutted by other readers.

[corresation]

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products.

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of any product. If someone likes Google Glass, four hundred comments by people calling you a glasshole and telling you that you must like Google stealing all your data. Positive reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note got huge criticism among the Apple sphere, everyone agog over how anyone could possibly like something so big (must be payola). And on and on and on.

[gress]

Quite so for most of these cases, but Samsung has been convicted for paying shills, so let's not use this as an excuse to whitewash them.

[corresation]

but Samsung has been convicted for paying shills

Apple gives special treatment to outlets and bloggers who treat them "well" (and punish those who don't). It's all the same inducement, and it's all just as grubby.

[pohl]

So knocking Gizmodo — who chose to profit from the receipt of an ill-gotten prototype — off the list of invitees is somehow just as bad as buying journalists outright?

[corresation]

If you want to present a boorish caricature and then snarkily knock it down, I guess congratulations? Gizmodo and the stolen phone debacle has absolutely nothing to do with this.

Having early access to products and personnel for Apple reviews is a huge coup for media outlets: They need Apple far more than Apple needs them (if Anandtech didn't get sent a day 0 $7000 review unit, AnandTech would have gone without a lot of views and a front-page of HN and many other sites. Apple would have lost nothing -- the target market for the Pro would have just read the reviews elsewhere, and are at no risk of buying a competing workstation).

Apple hand-selects who gets these early access units, and thus who gets the attention of an early review. There is a strong incentive for those reviews to gently understate negatives and to overstate positives, remaining on the list for the next go around. In this case a workstation that prioritizes the irrelevant (box size is never even a discussion point when talking about high power workstation, but suddenly it's the primary design point?), and has some astounding faults that most other companies would be eviscerated for: The dongle approach of expansion; Power draw that at times exceeds the power supply rating; Chipsets going to 100C+ because the "thermal prioritized" design was actually "being novel small" designed; Performance that even in CPU+GPU scenarios only marginally improves on the performance of a box from four years ago?

I would posit that had this box carried a Lenova or HP tag on it, the reviews would be extremely negative, if not mocking.

This is not unique to Apple: Exactly the same thing has happened over the years with various industry or namespace leaders, reviews veering towards the positive to assure that you get to the front of the list for the next wave, in a perpetual cycle. There was a time when getting early access to Microsoft inspired a whole industry of fawning and soft-gloving.

Bizarre that gress is so desperately trying to present the notion that I'm somehow defending Samsung and their pathetic attempts at astroturfing support (though such is the entire business model of the PR industry, which every business engages in, so pretending it's so unique is delightfully naive). Their tactics seem very trollish so I'll simply ignore their nonsense.

[gress]

If you want to attack his "caricature" you should be able to point out some way in which it is inaccurate.

Samsung has been convicted of paying shills to make false forum postings and reviews.

You are accusing apple of choosing who to give review units and press invites to based on who they prefer.

Every company does this. What else do you expect them to do? Provide a review unit to every blogger who asks for one? If you claim their behavior is underhand, you should be able to explain an alternative.

Comparing giving out review units to paying for shills is plainly absurd.

As to your comments about the review itself, they certainly reveal things that you would like to complain about, but none of these things were whitewashed or concealed by AnandTech, in fact they were fully exposed in statements, charts, and numbers.

Your chief complaint seems to be that you would have liked the review to have a vitriolic tone.

[gress]

It's hard to believe that you are equating the fact that Apple chooses who to invite to press conferences (what else do you expect them to do?), with Samsung paying for shills to fake reviews and forum postings.

[yapcguy]

And Apple has been convicted of e-book price fixing as well as misleading customers into buying extended warranties which were not necessary...

[gress]

So this is really about bashing apple.