Everything he writes is objectively biased. Have you ever read anything he's ever written?
Tech news is already so full of bought promotions pretending to be articles, fan boyism and subjective "analysis" it really doesn't need more. It's already enough of a burden on the reader to try to figure out if a review of some new product is being truthful or was paid for by an ad on page 23, or if the editor has some platform to push or if the writer wants to keep using the sources he's developed with some cool company.
Technology media is honestly pretty terrible in general, and very few of the faults of the arena don't apply to Gruber. Except he's also a really great writer. He's smart. So it's not quite out in the open like it might be on a lesser site like a CNET review. But he has lots and lots of tools that he employs to push his agenda.
Here's some literary devices that Gruber employs in almost everything he writes:
- Minimizing or Maximizing Framing devices (when Apple is right, he makes them smarter than Gods, when they're dead wrong he makes it seem like a reasonable alternative that's still better than anybody else)
- False comparisons (Apple's apple's to everybody else's inferior oranges)
- Jumbling of facts (often used to lead into a Min/Max Framing segment)
- Information-like sentences (lots of facts and figures, but no actual information)
- Omissions (easy to excuse)
- Emotionally driven excuses (Apple did it this way to pull at your heart strings)
- Setting then ignoring a thesis ("Here's why Apple's is amazing", then uses the above devices to ignore that thesis when Apple doesn't live up to it)
He also likes to drop little bomb posts questioning the veracity and fairness of the rest of the media, which subtly informs the reader that he's not like those journalists.
Here's his recent tech-news post history (I won't comment on his non-tech posts):
- ‘FINALLY’ OF THE WEEK - where he criticizes the tech media for using the word finally in the following sentence "Cheap USB-C Cables for Your MacBook Are Finally Here"
- TRIPADVISOR, BOOKING.COM REVIEWS START APPEARING IN APPLE MAPS - where he points out that Apple is a better company than Google because its Business Development team secured data sharing partnerships for Apple Maps
- HIGHBALL 1.0 - where he pumps up a cocktail recipe app. He drops the not-so-subtle-jab at Google line "They might have actually found a good use for QR codes."
- MORE ON APPLE’S CONSTRUCTION HIRING - where he brings doubt into Apple's probably illegal hiring policy for construction on their new campus w/r to convicted felons. Of course the doubt he sews is framed that everybody else must be doing it so Apple discriminating against them is okay.
- ROLLING STONE UVA RAPE STORY RETRACTION: A CASE STUDY IN FAILED JOURNALISM - again a piece that subtly brings up the failings of everybody else who's not him in providing trusted and Fox News style fair & balanced coverage of things
- REPORT CLAIMS SAMSUNG PAID HUNDREDS OF ‘FANS’ TO ATTEND GALAXY S6 LAUNCH IN CHINA - an uncritical regurgitation of a quote from the WantChinaTimes, with an update of a quote from Samsung denying it. No insight or discussion from Gruber, no sources checked.
- ‘APPARENTLY NONE OF YOU GUYS REALIZE HOW BAD OF AN IDEA A TOUCHSCREEN IS ON A PHONE’ - where he quotes somebody else quoting somebody from 2007 comparing a Samsung flip phone to an iPhone
- FELONS BARRED FROM CONSTRUCTING APPLE’S CAMPUS - another post from him on this subject, this time excusing Apple because background checks on employees of the richest most profitable company in history must be "expensive"
- Reach for the Sky, Pando - where he criticizes the SF Chronicle for breaking the story on Apple's discriminatory hiring process. He also takes time to defend Steve Job's notoriously abrasive personality and the illegal hiring practices Apple has taken part in previously w/r to tech workers.
- JOANNA STERN’S GALAXY S6 REVIEW - where his only point is are that the S6 is an iPhone lookalike and Samsung's software sucks, and they aren't up to competing against Apple's products. Of course he completely omits that the article claims the S6, in balance, is a match to the iPhone 6. If your information source was Gruber's take on the review, you'd think the S6 was a cheap unusable knock-off. But the review doesn't claim that at all. He carefully omits in his quotes where the review praises the S6 for a better camera set, better battery life, faster recharging, bigger storage, cheaper price and a better screen.
and on and on and on going back years.