John Gruber thinks a great deal of himself! I've never been quite sure why.

Because most of us tend to think a great deal about ourselves. The difference being: he has a lucrative, popular blog and we don't.

I mind me of the fit he pitched over Atwood et al. attempting to bring some sanity to the farrago of Markdown variants a couple years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264733

I'm glad his blog gets him paid! Everyone should have a way to make a good living. But I'm not sure why his blog getting him paid requires that I or anyone else take him as seriously as he so often seems to do.

Agreed.

I think his beef is more with the vapid content of the review rather than the fact that Mike Allen got a review unit.

This new phone comes out and it’s got some new stuff that we’re really not sure about - no buttons, Face ID, the notch - and the reviewer relays a story about his nephew and an emoji. It’s hardly insightful journalism, is it?

The review does mention other stuff like Face ID as well, though: https://www.axios.com/axios-am-2503582568.html?rebelltitem=2...

It just leads with an aniemoji anecdote. For a lot of users it's probably every bit as important as discussion of the notch.

Because it's not journalism. It's entertainment.

I think that's post 3/3 in a series of "Thank god Apple gave X a review copy before me" — it's incredibly bitter and a bit unseemly, to be honest.

To be fair to Gruber, I think his criticism of the PR for the X is that it displays a lack of taste. If Google picked slack-jawed YouTubers to be the first wave of press for the Pixel 2 I bet he’d have a similar, if more derisive, reaction.

Eh, that's just Gruber's style, always a bit of an asshole. Sometimes it's amusing and sometimes it really grates, but you've got to admit it seems to be working for him.

Anyway, underneath the presentation, he has a good point that it's pretty weak that Apple chose complete puff-piece reviewers to get initial seed units.

Probably drives a Mercedes, but not so bad as a BMW.

I don't get the impression that he was denied a review unit, just that his embargo clears later. The Youtubers don't seem even to have been given a unit at all — just access to them in Apple facilities.

He got a review unit 24 hours ago, per his most recent post.

Right, so the youtubers were just sort of teaser reviews. I do think it's disdainful, and slightly obnoxious/elitist, but I don't read it as personal bitterness.

> “Thank god Apple gave X a review copy before me”

Ah yes. Excellent usage of quotation marks for your interpretation of Gruber’s thoughts. Nothing at all dishonest about that.

Just to give a bit more context. Three recent posts use almost exactly this wording [0-2], but none of them include "before me".

[0]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/30/allen-iphone-x

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/30/fashion-iphone-...

[2]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/30/iphone-x-highsn...

That particular criticism (aside from being pretty mean to a 19 year old) struck me as especially silly - one of the key iPhone X features is a silly animated emoji face. Of course it makes more sense to get a young person to review it instead of John effing Gruber. If anything he ought to be angry at the feature, not that he isn't first choice to review it.

> ... one of the key iPhone X features is a silly animated emoji face.

I think we should all take a step back and let that sink in a bit.

I don’t dislike Gruber, but has he earned the entitlement he seems to be suggesting? Gruber is very “inside baseball” — average consumers don’t really care about his opinion. Sure he’s “tech famous” but I don’t think anyone that isn’t already using an Apple product really cares what he thinks — and even most Apple users probably aren’t making a decision from a Gruber review.

No one ever looks good complaining they didn't get invited to the dance, but I think he's earned it to the extent such a thing can be earned.

A negative review from him would probably be pretty damning and deter lots of techies who are stilly trying to buy the phone.