One of the things that never fails to amaze us is how Apple manages to get good reviews in the US even when the product is pants.

The new 24 inch iMac is a case in point. The product is clearly faulty. A large number of screens arrive to reviewers, and therefore punters with a bottom cracked screen. Sometimes it does not work. The review team at Engadget, for example, found that their new Intel Core i7-based iMac would not boot up.

The news groups are full of stories about how some of the Intel chips are all stuffed up. However the tame Apple press has been swift to react to the problems by insisting to readers how wonderful the product is really. The New York Times says that the only reason he has not asked Apple for a review unit of the 27-inch iMac is because it simply won’t fit anywhere in the house except where the Sony Bravia flat-panel TV sits.

“The LED-lit display is gorgeous, and the upgraded model with the Core i7 chip is searingly fast,” he said. Um didn't you say you had not reviewed it?

Wired claims that the screen “will turn your brain into a gob of HD-saturated jelly….it will render you dumb with child-like glee. You’ll just want to sit there and watch movies all day and night.”If your machine boots up, the chips work and the screen is not cracked we guess. No mention of that.

The annoying thing is that it is the duty of the press to give Apple a good kicking for selling shonky products at a huge mark-up. It was a job that used to come with the press card, before the press started to believe that everything that Steve Jobs did was golden.