Barter is still a form of payment and all of this screen placement occurs under contract and marketing direction from Apple. I still view that as paid product placement, which is different than if the production included Apple products without any contract or guidance from Apple.
"all of this screen placement occurs under contract and marketing direction from Apple"
Your link seems to go to efforts to state the opposite. Yes Apple has a liaison and yes they work with productions, but compared to the industry this is absolutely tepid.
So to contrast it, when you see HP or Sony or other such products, 100% of the time those companies paid a six figure+ sum and provided hardware for free. When you see Apple, the going case seems to be that you can negotiate free hardware if you want, but that's it.
They aren't picking Apple to save a few thousand dollars on props. In most cases they're trying to grab a little bit of that halo themselves.
It has been reported by people in the business -- quite a few times -- that Apple does not pay for movie or television appearances. At least not directly. Instead they provide hardware for free to be utilized for placements, at least if they're good with the content of the show and format of the placement.
"Apple products do not appear on screen by accident."
If your movie or show is about American upper middle class teens, they're probably going to have iPhones. Apple doesn't need to pay for that to be true, though competitors need to pay for that to not be true.
I mean, tonnes of times you see Apple hardware and the show goes out of its way to occlude that fact (e.g. the MBP with the Apple logo covered). There just happens to be a lot of Apple stuff in the business, and it's what people are comfortable with.