Banned reviewer: iPhone 5 just works

Banned reviewer: iPhone 5 just works:

The folks at Apple really do believe in the Apple mantra, “It just works.”

They believe in it so fiercely, they’ll punish journalists who suggest that Apple products don’t always just work, as I did in several reviews of the previous iPhone. When the iPhone 4S came out last year, I tested its voice response system Siri, and published some of Siri’s more absurd misinterpretations of my Australian accent. Apple officials accused me of fabricating the reviews because there was just no way that Siri, which just works, would make absurd responses like that.

For that and for other blasphemies against the Apple mantra – I once wrote about jailbreaking an iPad, which no one in their right mind would do, given the way iPads just work – I’m now on Apple’s unofficial but very real blacklist: I don’t get devices to review, and I don’t get invited to Apple briefings. If you were wondering why there were no reviews of the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in The Australian Financial Review, that’s why. Apple officials told me I didn’t subscribe to the Apple mantra sufficiently to participate in the review program.

With the iPhone 5, I now see that Apple was right to punish me like that. Apple’s products do just work, and I was out of line to question it. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.