Brooke Crothers, writing for CNET:

Apple-centric blogs play an important role in disseminating information about what is probably the most important consumer-electronics company in the world. But the coverage is hardly neutral.

While not all that surprising, the FUD factor can get pretty hot and heavy sometimes. You know, that tendency to try to discredit any major threats to Apple’s dominance. Namely, Android.

Take the blog Daring Fireball. It offers some solid analysis. But in the end it’s a fanboi site, assailing the misinformed or pointing out how wrong or disliked the Android competition is. That kind of attitude gets in the way of informed insight.

There’s nothing wrong with being biased, assuming you’re upfront about it. 

Give me biased and right over fair and clueless any day of the week.

It’s acceptable, of course, to discuss whether Gruber is right often enough to overlook his biases, but Crothers doesn’t offer any such argument, so we’ll just assume he’s trolling. (One link does not constitute what I would call an argument.)

My experience, though, is that Gruber is often right, even if he’s often snarky, or brash, or smug.

At any rate, it doesn’t matter if I’m talking about politics, technology, soft news, or hard news: Being right — or at least being knowledgable — is more important, and even more desirable, than being unbiased.

When considering an obvious bias, here’s how I’d evaluate the usefulness of the source, from very to not at all:

• Being right
  Bias doesn’t even play into this, really. If you’re right, you’re right, and if you contest “right” with accusations of bias you’re an idiot and/or a bigger fanboy than the person you’re calling out.
• Being knowledgable
  Short of being right, being knowledgable enough about a subject to support or defend your bias is the best you can hope for. Bias mixed with knowledge makes for a compelling stew.
• Cluelessness
  Is it even possible to be clueless and biased at the same time? There’s almost nothing interesting about someone who is unbiased but also clueless whereas being biased but also clueless is indefensible. Nothing to see here, move along.
• Being wrong
  If you’re often wrong, and biased, you’re in trouble. (It’s akin to being a cocky loser.)
• Being intentionally wrong
  If you’re intentionally wrong, and biased, you are, at best, an asshole. 

I’d put Gruber somewhere between being right and being knowledgable. The surest way to piss people off is by being consistently right.

I’d put the best tech blogs in the category of knowledgable.

I’d put most of the mainstream media — when it comes to tech coverage — at clueless.

I’d put Crothers somewhere between being wrong and being clueless, with a dab of intentionally, casually, wrong. Classic troll territory.

Synonym: Payroll Pundit.

Fox news skews towards being intentionally wrong.

If you’re right, you’ve no need to hide your bias. If you’re wrong, or especially if you’re intentionally wrong, you’re probably going out of you way to do so.

I would argue that the more we know, the more likely we are to harbor biases: Science.

I would also argue that the less we know, the more likely we are to harbor biases: Religion.

It’s not all that hard to tell the difference, really, but Crothers seems to lack the intellectual honesty necessary to even try. He’d rather accuse, than analyze. 

He’s probably not paid enough to do both.