..and from the very same article:

"It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one."

He wasn't the only one getting the special treatment, they were communicating to tech journalists.

Sure. And? What’s your point? Apple met separately with loads of journalists. I don’t see anything special about how they treated Gruber.

How many of these journalists are known to be critics of Apple, or write about them in a more direct, non-ass-sucking way?

They invited correspondents from The New York Times. Don't tell me the iEconomy articles wasn't the biggest blow to Apple this year (after the ruling that they had to say Samsung wasn't cool enough to copy them, of course!).

Yeah you're right. An exclusive, face-to-face meeting with the senior vice president of marketing is nothing special. I'm sure things like that don't influence his writing about Apple at all.

That meeting happened in 2012. Gruber's been writing Daring Fireball since 2002. http://daringfireball.net/archive/

I've been reading him on and off the whole time. Once upon a time he was actually worth reading but I don't even bother now because I can practically write his tech-Pravda pieces in my head.

I agree.

Also, I wonder how many more rMBP are sold as a result of people reading this? (assuming the would-be buyer is sitting on the face between a regular non-retina vs retina macbook)

The thing reads like a praise-review hidden beneath a veneer of typography fetish.