The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

I really don't see what's the issue here. Some people don't like Apple.

Also:

> Initial reviews of the much-anticipated iPhone X appeared on October 31, but I’d only had the phone for 24 hours when the embargo dropped

Having Apple hardware before official launch (when review embargo is still on) tells me that the author will never publish bad press for apple, and is not to be trusted on reviewing Apple hardware.

Apple is know for stopping shipping pre-release hardware to people that are honest in their review and that might call out questionable choice.

The guy from unbox therapy said this pretty explicitly: when he started questioning apple's hardware design choices they stopped inviting them to their events and stopped sending them pre-release items.

You can see something similar in mkbhd's videos where he's pretty much constantly walking on thin ice. He says and doesn't say stuff. My gut feeling regarding him is that he can get away with some of that because of his large audience.

> Apple is know for stopping shipping pre-release hardware to people that are honest in their review and that might call out questionable choice.

I've been doing this for a long time and I'm not aware of a single case where this has happened. I'd love to write about this, so please let me know which reviewers, who had previously been seeded with review unit hardware from Apple, were dropped after they wrote honest review. (I don't think what you're describing is, in any way, an accurate description of Apple's relationship with Lewis Hilsenteger.)