Yes. The whole pretense that Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field" is somehow remarkable is one of the weirder and lazier tropes of tech journalism.

I think the backlash is stronger because Apple puts more into their marketing. They put a lot of effort into making everything "magical", "unforgettable", and "world changing". Naturally, some people have strong adverse reactions to that, and are going to be quite negative in an attempt to even it out, at least as they see it. It makes complete sense if you look at it as a counter/reaction to Apple's heavily positive PR.

“In what seems like a ritual at this point, I watched Apple's iPad 2 keynote in disbelief, noting the factual errors that kept coming up minute after minute.”

The only surprise is that a journalist bothered to fact-check a Stevenote.

Yea, just the whole tone of this article really made me queasy. It just smacks of bias. Had it been even-handed observation...