I'm confused by what you're saying. You claim to not be talking about quotas, but cite not covering the fact[1] that "ICS has revolutionized Android" as a failure. If he had covered it, that would be better, correct? So evidently there is some level of positive Android coverage he's required to do before he's allowed to say what he actually thinks and link to what he actually wants to link to. If that's not a quota, what would you call it?
[1] Here I get absolutely bewildered by what you're saying, given that the first device with ICS was released today, and I know this precisely because I read it on Daring Fireball yesterday, wherein Gruber writes: "I spent a few minutes playing with Topolsky’s Galaxy Nexus in the On The Verge green room; some of the text editing improvements in Android 4.0 alone make it quite obviously the best Android phone in the world".
Yeah, but it's always couched in some sort of snark. Yesterday, he posted something offhand about wondering how many people were going to line up for the Nexus release, clearly worded in a way intended to mean "we all know it will be none". So today, people sent him images of lines outside a Verizon store, and his one line reply (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/12/15/galaxy-nexus) was, "Quite chivalrous of them to let all the women in first", which again, is intended to be read as, "look at all the nerdy guys".
Now do a google image search for "iPhone 4S lines" -- just pick the first few hits (here's the first one: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2011/10/iphone-4s-lines.html) -- and count the ratio of men and women. I'll save you the trouble and tell you up front there are a lot of men in those lines. But Gruber literally wouldn't think of commenting on that, because to him, people line up for the iPhone because it's wonderful, and they line for an Android phone because they're abnormal in some way, and that's simply how he processes the information. Whether or not its a conscious strategy is mostly irrelevant to me as the reader: if my choices are dishonest or incompetent, I'm going to look elsewhere. Which is a shame because he's a good writer.
[1] Here I get absolutely bewildered by what you're saying, given that the first device with ICS was released today, and I know this precisely because I read it on Daring Fireball yesterday, wherein Gruber writes: "I spent a few minutes playing with Topolsky’s Galaxy Nexus in the On The Verge green room; some of the text editing improvements in Android 4.0 alone make it quite obviously the best Android phone in the world".