The review by John Gruber of the Touch Bar based MacBook was critical of the feel of the keyboard - this was before the actual reliability problems came up.

He along with everyone else was critical of the first Apple Watch.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/05/03/patel-apple-wat...

Seeing that he still not only gets review units every year, he gets the prime live interview every year after WWDC with top Apple executives, I don’t think he has been blacklisted.

Not to mention that Marco Arment is often critical of Apple and got a review unit of the Mac Mini last year.

Those two bloggers will only criticize Apple products in comparison to other Apple products. They will never say a competitor's product is better even if most other reviewers say so.

John Gruber on Pixel’s Night Site Camera

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/25/night-sight

Gruber has stated repeatedly how much of an embarrassment that the MacBook keyboards have become but he famously still uses an old ADB Apple keyboard so he doesn’t have as much first hand experience as Marco who buys computers more frequently.

They have both complained about Macs falling behind compared to what Microsoft is doing with the Surface line.

Marco routinely criticizes the Apple Watch and compares it to the non smart watches he prefers. Gruber also prefers regular watches.