Re: We know The Register hates everything about Apple
Sorry Trevor, I disagree with you.
You have that right. That said, I am also a reader of El Reg, and I read Jasper's articles along with almost everyone else's. I emphatically and completely do not buy that J.H. is biased against Apple. Instead, I feel that it is you who have a dangerous emotional attachment to Apple that is influencing your ability to perceive a combination of critical thinking and snark as bias.
To address your complaints directly:
My wife didn't buy a Macbook Pro beacause it didn't have a DVD drive. She said "that's fine on a netbook, but for my primary machine I need one." She bought a Lenovo.
Poking at Apple for having the top end so ridiculously expensive is absolutely legitimate. PC manufacturers have - for the most part - be forced by competition (thanks, Lenovo!) not to charge $virgins for a step up in RAM/screen/etc. And a lot of similar-classed PCs are still upgradable, meaning you can do exactly what I do: pick up a system with 2 or 4GB of manufacturer-provided RAM and up it to 32GB by nipping down to the corner store and getting SO-DIMMs for a bent copper. (Though I am getting sick of having to remove the keyboard to get the second DIMM in...)
As for "why didn't he mention it had an SSD", that would be because it's 2014. Nobody fucking uses spinning rust anymore. Again: buy your Lenovo with the el-cheap-o built-in rust, pop down to the corner store and slam in a 1TB unit. Hell, I managed to get a 480gb mSATA and a 1TB PCI-E into my 11" Lenovo X230. AND 32GB of RAM and it's nowhere near $2000, let alone 2000 pounds.
So yeah, you know what, I think you've got your knickers in a bunch over nothing. The man has some valid points and you are having a wobble over the fact that he raised them.
Cope.
You bring up Sony VIAOs when comparing to Apple on price, and they're a damned good comparison. They're outrageously expensive...so much so that they were a boat anchor Sony had to get rid of because of how much the market simply didn't want them.
Who does do well? Lenovo. Because they make great computers that people actually want and they do so for cheap. These range from the unupgradable to the ultimately upgradable. They have a little bit of everything. As the dominant PC vendor - not to mention the one who is making the most profit - it makes much more sense to compare Apple to them than it does some shattered has-been that is gasping it's last breath.
That said, it would make perfect sense - and be perfectly legitimate - to say "Apple is expensive, like a Sony Viao - in the article. It's just not necessary.
If J.H. were picking apart Alienware, Sony or so forth for the same things, would you be getting all uppity because he didn't include a cross comparison of every other vendor? I suspect you'd consider them fair game, because it isn't an "attack" on your beloved Apple.
So yeah, J.H. is having some fun at Apple's expense...but he raises valid points and does give us info about a new product.
You, OTOH, decide that you need to personally attack him rather than simply choosing to look at the headline and go "oh, I don't like that guy because he says things that make me angry" and simply not reading those articles. I have a list of authors at various news outlets I avoid, and I manage to do so* despite pretty severe adult ADHD which results in my having virtually no impulse control. You have no excuse.
And really, that's what it boils down to here. The argument could be made that J.H. could have phrased his articles in such a way as to avoid hurting the feelers of the faithful...but it can just as easily be made that the faithful need a sharp spike in the feelers every now and again. (And I say that applies to those who put their faith in any vendor or product!)
If you actually engaged with him as a human being, I think you'd find he doesn't have an anti-Apple chip on his shoulder. He respects them for what they are, and couldn't actually care less what other people buy. He simply reflects some of the things that the demonstrable majority of people care about, even if you, personally, don't.
That you agree with Apple's choices doesn't make anyone who doesn't biased.
*I avoid authors who consistently and willfully ignore science in favour of pushing pesudoscience that fits their political agenda, no matter how completely fucking wrong that pesudoscience is, how out of context they have to take any real science, or how much data they have to ignore to make things fit into their views. I won't give them the page views.