On Access

I had more time to think about it. What I meant to say was that any critiques or dismissals of the group of YouTubers that got the hands-on demo/access to the iPhone X risk coming across as sounded very entitled. It seems like the regular group (or at least everyone other than Panzer) had a significant change to how the review units were handled this year and to see Gruber lash out (at least that’s my interpretation) at a new group of people that were given access sounds like someone who is more upset that his experience is different than previous years than he is upset that the whole roll-out is different.

I’m also still assuming Gruber was given a unit to review. The second group of reviews seem to indicate they just got them this week. I know he’s said before that a) he doesn’t pre-write anything b) he prefers to use the device before writing his thoughts and c) he doesn’t really worry too much about meeting the embargo deadlines so it’s possible his just isn’t ready to be published (vs him not getting one at all.. which seems very unlikely)

The biggest piece that’s missing, at least as I write this, is not knowing why he’s so bothered by this. There are a couple of reasons that I could definitely agree with but, for me, the way his linked list posts are written come across poorly.

I would not be surprised to hear him say that he’s upset with how they handled that access or confused/bothered by how Apple changed approach to review so if that’s his issue and it’s just a matter of me interpreting it wrong, then that’s on me. I’m very willing to re-examine this as I hear more about it.