One of the difficulties of looking at Apple products critically is how hot emotions run. Apple has a very loyal group of followers who defend all the company does, and Apple does such a great job of promoting its offerings it is sometimes hard to see through the reality distortion field and do a proper assessment.
What I’ve learned to do is write out what I think Apple needs to do at a particular event, and then assess how they did. It isn’t a perfect process, because I may be setting the bar too high or low myself, but at least it is independent of Apple and avoids any bias—positive or negative—that might be introduced as a result of the event itself.

