Josh's description is dead accurate, but those of us who have been paying attention have known this for a long time.
Most arguments that I read that argue against Gruber and MG's point of view resort to either ad hominem or respond to tone.
Calling Gruber and MG Apple evangelists does not refute their central point.
I like Joshua Topolsky and The Verge a lot. I think they produce the best reviews in the business. Their audio and video casts are funny and informative. JT is probably the most informed Android reviewer. He's probably the most informed gadget reviewer.
JT: "It doesn't get under my skin because I fundamentally disagree that Android 4.0 lacks the polish of iOS."
JT: "I don't disagree with Gruber and MG. The iPhone is an amazing device. ... Not seeing it is not the issue — the issue is not being able to see it any other way."
JT's argument is that these are not verifiable facts we are discussing. We are discussing opinions. But he also states that Android is polished.
We would all be better off if he wrote an article titled "Android Is Polished" and listed the polish point for point.
What's Gruber's central point? To quote Gruber: "You either see it or you don't."
How do you refute that? His central point is that you can't attack my central point, because you can't see it. His central point is that you can't see god, because you don't have enough faith. It's not falsifiable.
Give me falsifiable metrics that could, at least in theory, be refuted and I'd be happy to look at them. But you can't trot out the pyramid of refutation when they've made your central point vacuous.
Let me point you to the Pyramid of Refutation. http://i.imgur.com/QhGkT.jpg
Let's be honest about the "faith based" HN approach to declaring Gruber is an evangelist. You just say it, without any evidence or argument and then voila, yousuck up a ton of karma from like minded people.
People who doubt me go search daring fireball threads on HN, it happens almost verbatim in every single one.
Gruber over the last few years has linked to scores if not hundreds of articles documenting the small ways iOS is more polished. He also frequently links to things that could improve iOS, many of which are in other OS's including Android. Reasonable people might describe that as evidence not faith.
Disagree with him? Maybe start your own blog and list scores or hundreds of counterexamples. Surely with all the Android enthusiasts there's many of these already?
Say why he's wrong, don't just spout your conclusion.
Put simply, whenever I see a link to daring fireball on HN, I can say with ~ 2σ confidence that it will a) be about Apple or one of its competitors, b) argue that, whatever the issue, Apple Does It Better, and c) have its arguments picked apart in the comments. This has been such a long term trend that it has become thoroughly predictable.
That's fine, and Gruber's entitled to write whatever he wants about whatever he wants. That doesn't stop us from labeling him an Apple evangelist, and it doesn't mean we're wrong to do so.
This is not the fault of Gruber. It's a result of the selection bias applied by Hacker News as a whole. If you read Daring Fireball regularly, and not just the excerpts that make it to HN, you'll see that he frequently chastises Apple for what he believes are missteps. Here's a recent example:
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/against-skeuomorphism
Sure you can pull out some metric like "profit derived"(by which Windows Server totally rules the server space over Linux), but ultimately all the predictions by partisan pundits like "Let the iPhone get on Verizon and see Android stagnate completely" have been proven to be partisan BS.
Where Apple competes, this is what you find:
(1) Almost everywhere the iPhone is on sale it's #1 (and where available probably #2... and when the new numbers come out will it surprise you if it's also #3 where available?).
(2) the iPad is #1 (in a smaller category) by a mile.
(3) the iPod Touch is #1 (in a much smaller category) by a mile.
Who are you quoting?
I’m not saying Android is going to be “killed”, or that it will be reduced to a miniscule installed base. Neither are remotely likely.
But I think over the next few quarters, it’s going to become far less relevant.
These evangelists maybe cordial to WP or WebOS, because they're no threat, but ICS -- they'll save their best faith-based sermons for it.
I think it's because they've been making this same criticism since Android first came out, and its UI is still laggy and stutters. It's starting to look like that is just a permanent feature of Android, rather than something which should be fixed "soon".
All their criticism boils down to this one thing: that Android doesn't have the same level of quality when it comes to UI interaction. They readily say nice things about the features, but the interaction model is still broken, and they keep pointing it out because its important to them. Its important to lots of people, and thats probably why the iphone is selling so well.
Its obviously not important to people who prefer android, and thats fine. But since its not important to them they don't understand the criticism and ascribe people's love of the iphone to "faith" and "evangelism".
A lot of the criticism Apple followers have of Android is that it feels like a 'good enough' iOS alternative designed primarily to prevent Apple achieving dominance. Having lived through the 80s, many tech enthusiasts are keen to see a competitive industry with a focus on quality, design and innovation. Google facilitating Samsung producing iPhone knock-offs doesn't seem to contribute to that.
That's not to say that Apple never makes a good product or Google can do no wrong. They both have their fair share of successes and failures.
Sorry to sound nitpicky, but I was confused by the rest of your post after reading the first sentence.