Which, instantly, should be reason enough to understand that said criticism is BS.
Apple products are among the best in the industry, period. Not just from the industrial design part of it, but overall: coherence of product vision, attention to important characteristics for the target market (battery time, portability, weight), quality machining and materials, attention to small details (from multitouch touchpad to magsafe adaptor and from backlit keyboard to magnetic, non protruding, lid hinge).
These people think that because they are not speced and designed like gaming PCs they are not worthy ("I can have a better GPU for less money in my custom box, and with xeon lights on the sides too).
And they attribute their popularity to some BS "reality distortion" effect, ignoring the fact that hardcore hackers, prominent programmers and old school neckerbeards, from Rob Pike, DHH, and Duncan Davidson to Jamie Jawinsky and Miguel De Icaza (the frigging founder of the Gnome desktop) down to Linus Torvalds, who waxes poetically about his MacBook Air as the best in the market.
So, "fawning over Apple" justs translates to "did some favorable reviews of products, instead of making up BS reasons to dislike them".
http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/09/thank-you-apple.ht...
Linus Torvalds is said to be using the ChromeBook Pixel as his primary machine.
http://www.geek.com/chips/linus-torvalds-is-making-the-chrom...
As for Miguel De Icaza, he's eating his own dog food, as he now makes his money selling an IDE for iOS development, so of course he's going to choose the Mac because that's where the toolchain is.
Half of it it's about how it's Apple's fault that he didn't have a USB to boot off, so he tried to boot of a (camera) CF card (unsupported) and then an old Mac that wasn't up to running the latest OS version. Because Apple should consider what olders machines an OS supports not on hardware specs needed by the new OS, but on the needs of people upgrading their OS without a USB that want to use their older machine as a firewire devices (huh?). It's like the kind of complaints you read on Tripadvisor ("the bell boy didn't smile enough to me", "the bedsheets where not the exact Pantone blue they had on the hotel website" etc).
>http://www.geek.com/chips/linus-torvalds-is-making-the-chrom...
Yes, but he said a MBA just until then, of which he writes on his Google+ page. Also, if you read the article, what he solely likes about the Pixel is the screen resolution. And he dislikes its weight. He looks like a perfect candidate for the inevitable retina MBA.
>As for Miguel De Icaza, he's eating his own dog food, as he now makes his money selling an IDE for iOS development, so of course he's going to choose the Mac because that's where the toolchain is.*
Well, it's not just that. He also wrote a post about why he moved to OS X, and how he got dissillusioned with the Linux desktop prospects.
EDIT: rsynnott, below, has an excellent point.
I've had other parts crap on me though, e.g a battery after 2-3 years of use that had to be replaced. Also had an iMac (sold now), which had a faulty DVD (also replaced).
The thing is, those things happen to ALL production runs, there are some % of defective units. You can be Apple, IBM, Dell or BMW, and you still get this. I've had "upmarket" IBM hard disks die on me for example ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGST_Deskstar ).
And, for tens of millions of machines sold, you only get to read about the far fewer faulty ones on such problem forums (well, duh!) -- so it's not much to get an accurate picture on.
I like to do extensive research before I buy something (I buy lots of tech gear, from stuff like DSLRs to Audio interfaces), and if I gave much promimence to the occasional forum complaints, I wouldn't have bought anything at all, because there are always people that have issues with any product you search. I prefer to stick to reviews, seeing units in action from friends and in the store, etc. Case in point, my latest buy, a Focusrite Scarlett interface. Pages of complaints about strange audio glitches with Mountain Lion / iMacs etc in audio forums. Have been working 100% fine for me.
By "you", I don't mean you, yapcguy. Just in general towards those that are criticizing Anandtech.
They compared it's price to a few workstations to show that the price isn't unreasonable for similar hardware (i.e. Apple isn't adding a $1200 workstation tax).
For the rest of the review they compared it to other Macs, because chances are that's what buyers are going to compare it with. If you want a Mac, those are your choices. I really doubt too many people who are in the market for an HP or Dell workstation are going to consider a Mac Pro.
Plus there is the problem of benchmarks. The OS can make a big difference, so you'd either have to run every benchmark twice on each system (once on OS X, once on Windows or Linux), and then the non-Macs can't run OS X. It would be a ton of extra work, but I'm not sure how much gain it would give.
Again, I think the number of workstation shoppers who will consider this machine is small. I expect the vast majority of it's sales will be to Mac users who want something more powerful than an iMac or a MacBook Pro.
Especially with the gap in Mac Pro releases over the past few years, I have seen many people deciding between Mac Pro and a custom built hackintosh. For the stuff that really justifies a Mac Pro, these were the only two options for some time (short of moving off of an OSX stack). Sure, someone custom building a multi thousand dollar work station is not your typical consumer, but neither is your typical buyer of a spec'd out Mac Pro.
Anandtech fawns over a lot of products, but I suspect perhaps this is due to them reviewing products they are interested in, and not wasting time on stuff they aren't. I'd start to worry if people can't reproduce their lab numbers but at the moment, they're considered the most detailed and accurate of the lot.
Unless someone can actually call their conclusions and numbers into question using actual facts, then it's just anti-Apple whining, whether it's him or "some readers".
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2270612
Pretty much every review of Apple gear has people moaning about bias in the comments.
I'm not saying there is any favoritism, but certainly the perception amongst Anandtech readers is that there might be.
At the end of the day, there's no reason why the writers at Anandtech would be any more immune to access journalism than other folk who have tried and failed.
You are actually saying there is favoritism. It's dishonest to claim otherwise. You've just suggested that Anand has succumbed to access journalism.
Why not just be honest about what you think, rather pretending to be disinterested reporting on the views of others?
Let's also note that the commenter accusing AnandTech of bias in that comment thread you linked is resoundingly and overwhelmingly rebutted by other readers.
Well, yes, but any time just about anyone anywhere reviews an Apple thing and doesn't say "This is worse than iHitler", there are cries of bias, evil conspiracy, etc. People are a bit funny about Apple.
