So, this doesn't really surprise me.
[1]http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-prs-dirty-little-secre... [2]http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_contro...
Also: it's not a blacklist as he describes it. It's a WHITE-list, since there are people (like Grubber or Pogue I guess) that get stuff earlier.
It's not like Apple people give interviews etc to anyone -- so it's not like there's a blacklist of people not getting access.
There's just a whitelist of people having early access. I've seen this from MS, Adobe, Google, Canon and generally tons of other companies.
So, this doesn't really surprise me.
[1]http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-prs-dirty-little-secre... [2]http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_contro...