Has InfoWorld gone Mac crazy?

To say that Tom Yager has a thing for Apple is like saying Homer Simpson likes donuts. Yes, InfoWorld’s chief technologist is a devotee. Yet it’s “not a religious issue,” Yager insists. It’s just that Apple “stands as an example of how to do many things right.”

[ Talkback: Do we devote too much space to Apple? | Read the letter that sparked the controversy ]

That belief translates into a fair amount of Apple coverage in Yager’s Ahead of the Curve column and, naturally, in his Enterprise Mac blog. It also means that sometimes we receive e-mails from readers asking me why we devote so much ink, both real and virtual, to a company with such a small enterprise footprint. The letters range from outraged conspiracy theorist rants (“How much does Apple pay you guys to write this drivel?”) to thoughtful calls for revising our coverage.

Reader George Ruehling, for instance, recently made the following plea: “For the sake of those of us out here in the business trenches who look to you and your magazine for help in discerning what lies ahead for us, would you please … instruct Mr. Yager to only give Apple products the coverage equivalent to their 5 percent market share.” Last week’s Letters column ran an even harsher indictment from Robert Blanchette that accused Yager of “membership in the cult of Mac” and requested that we print “something that professional IT people can use. …”

Blanchette’s broadside brought a heated defense from InfoWorld readers. As Mark Bolick put it: “For Robert Blanchette to say there are no Macs in the business world is disingenuous if not completely short sighted. … Sounds like an IT guy afraid of being downsized for no longer being needed for constant Windows reinstalls.” Gene Wirchenko noted, “I am not fond of Macs at all, but I would rather see that their partisans can speak and write freely.” Stuart J. Allyn chimed in with, “We love that Mr. Yager is a voice for the millions of users who are not enslaved by Mr. Gates and company. Yes, Virginia, you can do business without doing Windows.”

Despite all the parrying and thrusting, the question remains: Do we devote too much space to Apple? By bringing this issue front and center, I hope to continue to gather feedback on the issue. For now, though, I’ll let Yager have the last words. “Apple has shown the world how to sell a commercial operating system while maintaining close ties with — and giving back to — the open source community.”

When you consider the “amazing stuff that developers who work on Mac code are producing” and the unsurpassed richness of Apple’s application frameworks, Yager feels it’s his duty to continue covering Apple. “The Mac won’t take over the world,” he concedes, “but I want to make readers aware of alternatives that might save them money or put more power in their hands.”