I never have and still don’t understand people railing on Engadget for our coverage — specifically when it comes to Apple, a company too many people are still (for whatever reason) very polarized about. I’ll save my standard rant about the day of being an OS/platform evangelist is long since past, and that pluralism/platform agnosticism is the only that makes sense to use technology. But calling me and my publication biased because I didn’t editorialise enough about Apple’s new announcements yesterday? While I was doing photography and typing frantically to cover Steve’s keynote? Or that Engadget’s jumped the shark and afraid to say anything slightly disparaging about Apple because they’re a sponsor or invite us to events? I guess I should be a little flattered because I don’t think you’ve ever really arrived until people are saying you’re done and over, but please, let’s get real for a second:

  • We’ve never done anything but tell our honest opinions about devices (when possible and appropriate, of course). We have the strictest possible delineation between advertising / income and editorial, and to imply otherwise is not only libelous and absurd, but it’s also fairly ignorant, as anyone familiar with our internal business structure knows. (And yes, we’ve said this many times, and have been totally transparent about how we work vs. how we earn.)
  • We can and do perform our jobs excellently with or without invites to events or live coverage. Always have, always will. That’s the beauty of Engadget — we don’t need to sign NDAs or pander to companies to do our jobs.
  • For the record: I think the iPod Hi-Fi is boring and a huge let down; the Intel Mac mini was an eventually, not at all surprising, and is such an obvious device that it doesn’t even require any commentary.

The example I always use (and will use again today) stands: if Sony did the same business — threw a big press event to unveiled some hyped secret new device, etc. — the outcome would be exactly the same (oh wait, we already got to prove that). Blaming us or any other CE news pub (and I do mean any) for Apple knowing how to drum up buzz and work public perception to their own advantage (as opposed to just leaving a bunch of releases on PRNewsWire any old morning like table scraps) is pretty unfair and incredulous. I love gadgets; iRiver, Apple, Sony, HTC, love ‘em all; I can only hope more of these companies would learn to do a better job at getting people excited about their products instead of just sitting back and letting one company run the show.

Update: I rest my case. People are really, really absurd. “Do Engadget work for Apple? The users question them and Engadget responds by censoring and closing their comments section for the first time!” Now it’s just getting funny.