Dvorak attacks the media for their lame and Apple-friendly reporting. He says: "As big and as important as Microsoft is, the coverage of the company is quite mediocre. This is particularly true in the mainstream press. The reason for this is that today's newspaper and magazine tech writers know little about computers and are all Mac users. It's a fact."
You can read the rest... He really lays into the media and exposes the nonsense that has been going on for years now.
Every time Steve Jobs sneezes there is a collective chorus of "Gesundheit" from tech writers pounding away on their Macs.
This reality is not going to change. In fact it will only get worse as technology coverage is handed to newer, less-qualified observers who simply cannot use a Microsoft Windows computer. With no Microsoft-centric frame of reference, Microsoft cannot look good. The company essentially brought this on itself with various PR and marketing policies that discouraged knowledgeable coverage...
I know plenty of journalists that don't use Macs. The ones that don't wish they do. So I'm not entirely with him (although a good ways there) on the assertion that using Macs makes the media clueless to reporting on MSFT. It does seem to make them very Apple friendly and tolerant. Ah, to have a product that inspires such favoritism - and the moxy to use such aggressive, litigious and anti-free speech PR practices... A quick aside - upgrading your Powerbook, as I have done, does not make one particularly Apple friendly. The bad news is it runs slower, does weird things and sucks the life out of a battery in just over an hour. The good news is you can fry an egg on the base with the heat generated during this process.
What is really intriguing in his commentary is the remark on "frame of reference". Four years ago, MSFT framed the entire industry. Apple is the frame now. Arguably it is a frame for broader trends in design and the like. As much as we might like to blame the media - and they deserve plenty of whacks on this one - we shouldn't take anything from Apple which through stunning execution and design has redefined what we expect - and will tolerate - in computing, music and now entertainment as a whole.
