Yeah, hah hah, the "pet" journalists are pampered by the Apple iCoffee, but in all seriousness I'm very glad that Gruber got this one-on-one treatment because his reporting is as much about the fact of the meeting and the way of the meeting as it is about the content of the meeting. And that's entirely relevant to the audience of Daring Fireball! I don't expect the NY Times to do more than report on the content of the meeting, but I love getting this well written and well thought out little "inside Apple" from Gruber. The other guy whose account I'd love to read would be Andy Ihnatko's take were he invited to such an event.

I'm usually fairly anti-Gruber. But this was, in all respects, an interesting and insightful read, well thought out, and offered little in the way of Gruber's worshipping at the pedestal of Apple.

I also think that, prior to this, Apple was running into a problem of being unable to know when they were talking to developers and people in general, as we saw with large parts of the iTextbook presentation.

With this model, the developers will get their news in the same manner as always, and the keynotes can be reserved for a general audience.

This kind of situation has two bad effects, first being that the "pet" journalists will have a hard time criticizing Apple in the future, for the fear of losing exclusive access, and the second being that impartial journalists would want to court Apple with positive articles, in the hope of getting the exclusive access.

You're thinking in your perspective. That's perfect for Apple.

I don't even think I'd use the word journalist to describe Gruber. I really can't even read his stuff any more. I got one paragraph in to this one and was disgusted. How is he so popular? I get the whole Howard Stern shock value thing, but seriously, who can actually get through one of his Apple love stories?

He's a good blogger, but I can only ever read a few of his posts at a time without needing a break.