With the Iphone X, Apple Made Some Big Changes to Who Gets Review Units First, and Not Everyone is Taking It Very Well

Apple's new iPhone X doesn't hit store shelves until Friday, but squabbles about who gets the hotly-anticipated device first are already breaking out.

But the quarrels aren't being triggered by consumers battling for the best spot in lines outside Apple's stores. Instead the noisy discontent is coming from among the select group of journalists, bloggers and product reviewers who've long been accustomed to getting early access to the newest iPhones. 

Some, it seems, are not taking well to Apple's surprise changes to its list of reviewers to whom it doles out its first test devices and to the amount of time it lets reviewers play with the device before they can publish their impressions.

In a series of venom-filled posts on Monday, for example,  Apple blogger John Gruber lashed out  at some of the media outlets he apparently deemed unworthy of getting early access to the new iPhone. 

"Thank god Apple seeded Mike Allen with an iPhone X review unit. Such great insight from his fucking nephew, the emoji expert," Gruber wrote sarcastically,  referring to a piece in which the Axios executive editor  delegated some of his product review to his 19-year-old nephew.

"Thank god Apple seeded Fashion with a review unit," Gruber railed on, referring to a  YouTube video blogger  who also numbered among the first to receive an iPhone X test device. While Gruber got a review unit as well, he was one of the bloggers that were given less time than usual to test the device before he could publish his review.

No one likes to be second fiddle

Gruber, along with many other outlets including Business Insider , had less than 24 hours to play with the iPhone X before Apple's restrictions on publishing reviews lifted Tuesday morning. By contrast, Apple allowed Allen, Wired's Stephen Levy, and several YouTube bloggers, to publish their reviews on Monday after having their test devices for about a week.  

Gruber's reaction was by far the angriest, and it elicited a flurry of responses:

But Gruber was not the only tech pundit to question Apple's approach to iPhone X reviews:

David Pogue, another member of the product review "old guard," was more diplomatic, but even his piece  included a hint of pique . Pogue highlighted October 31 as one of four "dates to keep in mind" with regard to the iPhone X timeline. Why? Because that's when most of "the professional reviews appear," Pogue wrote.

Meanwhile, Brian Chen at the New York Times insisted he would not play along with Apple's new rules:

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