I was kind of curious about the T400 so I tried to spec one out close to the MBP 15" and I have to say Apple's machine holds up surprisingly well. I was expecting a much larger price delta but if you match the two machines it's about $100-$150 difference. T400 obviously wins on customization and, IMO, the MBP wins on design and software. (Vista Business + Norton AV // OSX + iLife)

Back to your core point though of this reviewer ignoring the competition I think part of that may simply be that Lenovo does a really poor job advertising their computers whereas Apple does a really good job at it. I kind of doubt it's any pent up Apple bias simply because this site primarily covers PC hardware. Most likely the reviewer just had no clue the T400 could be configured to, more or less, match the MBP 15"