He earns money from ads, do you think he would earn less should he write critically about Apple?

(All of this seems very much beside the point, though. Discussions about Daring Fireball have become so predictable. Nobody seems to be even interested in talking about the arguments, everyone wants to throw dirt around.)

Well, he has stated on many occasions that he has "sources" inside of Apple where he gets alot of his information from. If he started to be overly critical of Apple and his sources suddenly dried up then his writing would suffer, his readership would go down and his ad revenue would decease.

So I'd say it's pretty easy to make the case that he would indeed earn less if he was overly critical of Apple.

And what is the incentive of the Apple insiders? While Gruber may not, they are perfectly capable of forming their own, independent opinions on what Apple proper does, as orthogonal as they may be.

Why? When 99% of the media sledges Apple with no reason, why do you care if 1% supports Apple with no reason?

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The thing that gets me about the Apple vs $var debates, is that most of the people screaming about how they hate Apple have never tried Apple. Whereas the people supporting Apple against $var have almost invariably tried $var and found it lacking.

One side brings informed opinions, the other brings baseless bile. Whenever I see that happen, regardless of the topic, I know which side of that divide I want to be on.

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True story: today I went down to the local $non_profit and helped out one of the guys get his new Apple laptop hooked up to the network and the network printer. The network worked immediately after entering the WEP password. The printer didn't work first time, so I deleted it and tried with new settings. It worked the second time. I also tried to persuade him of the virtues of buying a 1-2TB drive and using Time Machine.

It was so easy it was embarrassing.

I contrast that with some work I did with a startup last year. I bought one of their own Windows laptops into their HQ, and trying to get onto their own wireless network was a nightmare, even though I had a room full of techies to help. I strongly suspect that in the end the tech support guy just turned off the wireless router and left it off because it was too much trouble.

I'll do Apple support for love (ie free support for friends and family) , but you couldn't pay me enough to do Windows support. I fully appreciate the guys that do take on that thankless task, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Does that make me an incoherent raving Mac fanboy? Some would say so. But at the same $non_profit I stood and patiently nodded while one of the 70 year old blokes told me about his Windows experiences. At the end I fully commended him (he's running anti-virus, anti-spam and does regular backups) for his efforts, and I assured him that he was doing the right thing with the backups, to keep doing exactly what he is doing. I didn't preach to him about Apple at all, I don't see the need. If he's happy, let him be happy. If he is doing everything right but has some nagging feeling that he should be doing something else, I will reassure him that he's miles ahead of the rest of the pack.

He earns money from software and services which run in Apple-based platforms. ( Pixelmator, for example ). If he constantly undermines Apple, will Pixelmator be happy?

He has to give an air of legitimacy by pointing out Apple's faults once in a while and competitors' good products now and then. His primary audience is Apple fans. and he writes for them.