why couldn't the guy just mention Raspberry Pi in the article? Why did he have to refer to it as "that other board". Comments like this disturb me when I hear them coming from the hacker community, which is supposed to have a foundation of openness and selfless sacrifice. If something is considered a valuable asset to the community, give props where props are due. Don't say "that other board" just because you don't want to give Raspberry Pi any more market share. Market share and competition should have no place for discussion in the open source community.
I don't think he was seriously trying to conceal the competition -- everybody knows what he means (and has already bought an RPi if they were interested). I read it as a teasing form of friendly rivalry. And you can't go create a low-buck board designed to sell in the 6 or 7 figures without inevitably comparing yourself to the RPi. When it comes to getting hackery Linux computers into people's homes, the RPi is the gold standard, and comparisons are inevitable whether you're a competitive person or not.
