Suspicion is one thing. But Pogue has never played the part of the Apple fanboy. He's pretty thorough with his reviews, no matter what the product's for, and he

Suspicion is one thing. But Pogue has never played the part of the Apple fanboy. He's pretty thorough with his reviews, no matter what the product's for, and he's good at spotting the good and the bad with everything. He was the first reviewer to say he didn't like the iPhone keyboard, for instance, in his original review. With the Storm, he's being much more dismissive than usual, hence the suspicion - but he's dealing with a product that's visually and feature-wise a direct face-off with the iPhone, only with added layers of abstraction and difficulty inherent in using the device. Pogue's very clear about all of that. To read this review and say that Pogue's being negative because of the messed-up incentives is missing that Pogue is in fact reviewing an inferior product. I mean, I suppose there's some bias in my statement, since I do trust Apple and its products, and therefore I tend to see straight in this only with people who are in a similar place. So in my mind, Pogue is only doing the logical thing when he slams down this phone as being a cheap Blackberry knock-off. The Apple journalist deal is one that gets a bit argumentative. I think that Apple fully has the right to only give products to journalists that like Apple, and I don't think that there's a bribe inherent in that. And I know I'm in the vast minority for people that think that, too. In my mind, though, Apple gives those devices as a favor, not as a responsibility, and they are sensible when they only hand out to people that happen to like Apple. That's my inherent bias in this discussion: I think that Apple's in the clear for this.