Slate’s Jack Shafer has a good old-fashioned bomb-thrower of a column that is guaranteed to piss off the cult of Mac:
The Apple Polishers – Explaining the press corps’ crush on Steve Jobs and company
I don’t hate Apple. I don’t even hate Apple-lovers. I do, however, possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade.
More little tidbits:
Although staffed by dorks and drizzlerods, Apple projects itself and its products as the embodiment of style and cool. The population of Apple’s parallel universe? A paltry 1.8 percent of PCs worldwide.
[…]
Apple incites fanaticism about its products via ad campaigns and evangelist outreach programs designed to make its customers feel as though they’re part of a privileged and enlightened elite. One unnamed loser at Slate says today’s V-iPod news made her want to rush out and buy one, even though she already owns two iPods, one of which she bought three weeks ago.
[…]
Hell, all the press corps really needs to put Apple products in perspective is a few short-term memory neurons focused on the fanfare visited upon recent, mediocre iPod releases. Only a year ago the company received excited press notices when it introduced the iPod Photo, now acknowledged to be a failed product. I searched Nexis to find a mention of the iPod Photo in the hundreds of V-iPod newspaper stories from today and found only one. Of the wildly heralded but totally average iPod Shuffle, released in January 2005, I found only two.
When the V-iPod’s super-duper, long-lasting, big-screen replacement shows up in 12 months, the press will have forgotten this second-rate box, too.
Ironically, the curmudgeonly column is available in a podcast version.
Ed Bott 
NewMexiKen has never had a Mac (alas) but I’m about to. And a second iPod. Those who have these products love them. Perhaps Shafer can’t find articles about the older Apple products because new ones keep coming along at a rate that Redmond cannot fathom. Longhorn/Vista beta 2. Whoopee!
Finally. I’ve been waiting forever for someone to write this article. Apple does have some very nice products, but the press coverage they get is ridiculous. It’s propoganda, not reporting and it doesn’t help consumers make informed choices about the relative merits of various products.
The same holds when Apple releases security fixes for ‘critical’ bugs. Headlines read: “Apple swats bugs!” and the like. When Microsoft does the same thing, headlines read: “More ‘critical’ flaws found in Windows”.
What Apple has done with its iPod is called “disruptive” technology. Technology that cause waves of change in our industry. This is one of the reasons that techies listen when Apple releases something new. The Mini-Mac & now the nano & new iPod indeed fall into this definition. The tech press does indeed seem to notice Apple’s announcements with an unreasonable amount of glee; while Microsoft stories are usually about the latest security exploit & the evil empire. That Apple carries such a small % of the installed base of PC’s is more because of Apple’s own decisions to keep its technology under close control & marketing & opposite actions by its competitors.
P.S. Now here is a story that is worthy of tech columnists – the ripple effect of apple’s releases on the accessories market:
http://ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/ipod-5g-with-video-the-ipod-economy-reacts/
Like Microsoft does for the PC world, Apple feeds a huge market of “secondary” technology. This is another reason why Apple’s latest is good for the industry & worthy of mention & at least a little buzz.
It’s to the point where Apple is releasing a new iPod monthly, and he’s right, almost every newspaper tech writer gushes and writes 41 column inches on how we’ve never heard music until we’ve heard it on an iPod. Guess when they lost their graphics advantage years ago at least they still have the iPod bone.
I’m not one who treats the computer as a toy or game machine. But Apple never lured the likes of me.
There’s two elements to this, and Jack Shafer does spear one neatly – the press’s tendency to believe that manna is flowing from heaven when something that’s been around for months if not years is released with an Apple label. (Possibly it’s because Jobs gives such things the velocity of news – they don’t get preannounced, so they can be published with a BLAM!)
But on the other hand, a lot of Apple products are a pleasure to use; their engineers do good stuff. (Compare joining a wireless network on an Apple machine with a Windows machine. The latter always leaves my teeth very gnashed.)
Of course, if Jack had wanted to see some critical coverage, he could have headed over by The Register – “Front Row plus video iPod: Media Center killer or shoulder shrug?” (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/13/video_ipod_analysis/).
Disclosure: I wrote it. Ed’s reactions welcome 🙂