I think it's important to note that this isn't a New York Times piece but a Read Write Web (and an amateurly written one at that) reposted in the NYT template shell. It's a bit misleading to call it an NYT article entirely, though they should take some responsibility for republishing it.
How would it be different if they hired an independent journalist to write it? Apple gets their PR in front of analysts on the subway and the The New York Times can maintain plausible deniablity.
