The original story where these comments appeared on does not look very impartial and appears to have been constructed to generate pageviews from the Apple fanba

The original story where these comments appeared on does not look very impartial and appears to have been constructed to generate pageviews from the Apple fanbase, so I am not shocked that the other camp chimed in to "protect theirs". So it was a win-win-win for the author: Pageviews from both camps and a follow-up article. 1) Samsung invested heavily in marketing - this is standard when you want to sell your products. How is this a "dirty trick" as stated in the headline? And attacking the customers of your direct competitor in a funny way is also not dirty. 2) Paying bonuses to salespeople so they sell Samsung over Apple - if you know the whole story you are also aware that the iPhone heavily benefited from carrier subsidies during the years of its great success. iPhones were heavily subsidized to the detriment of Android/Blackberry devices and affected the carrier's profits greatly. See e.g. here: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/08/technology/iphone_carrier_subsidy/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/08/technology/iphone_carrier_su... 3) Short position on Apple - The author even discounts this as likely false, and something like this would have to be disclosed in the books. Samsung is much smaller than Apple, especially when Apple had twice the market cap, so it is beyond me how they could have pulled this off without any proof. That said, having read some things about Samsung's operations in general they are no saints, and probably employ "more dirty" tactics than Apple. But I do not feel good about Apple either, and the issue described in the original article (paid shills on the Internet touting their company like there is no tomorrow) is one of the major factors why I dislike them.