Apple columnist seems generous to me. Apple evangelist/advocate seems a lot closer to what he does. He forms what I consider the trifecta of Apple evangelists online: MG, Gruber, Dilger.
There are some others that another poster mentioned -- Pogue and Marco. Pogue is borderline. He performs at MacWorld, writes books about Apple products, and does seem to go out of his way to defend them. But not with the same regularity and gusto of the three. Marco I view as a dev with a specific agenda to make money as a dev, and what he writes is about that -- if indirectly.
Robert Scoble is someone who writes a lot about Apple, but I don't consider him an Apple evangelist or advocate. He will go out of his way to prop them, but he'll also oddly go out of his to dig on them too. Maybe it depends on what side of the bed.
In any case, I hope that helps.
If you were an Apple-centric blogger and you were just calling balls and strikes your blog should look like John Gruber's or Marco's. That's how dominant Apple has been over these years. If instead your blog is filled with press releases and looks like Engadget's review of the original 7" Galaxy Tab then your blog is bullshit and pushing false equivalence for pageviews.
I could list pretty much everyone on the staff of the Verge and Engadget and Gizmodo. None of them fit this mold. Geller isn't, Laporte isn't, Lyons isn't, Paczkowski isn't, Om isn't, Block isn't.
My list wasn't meant to be comprehensive, but just meant to attempt to explain how other reporters differ from the trifecta.
Request: name an Apple centric writer who isn't an evangelist.
names a bunch of non-apple centric writers
[strike]Come off of it.[/strike] Being an Apple blogger today is like what it would be like if you could be a Celtics blogger in the 60's or a Mongol blogger in the 13th century. If your Mongol blog isn't filled with claim chowder from Kievan princes you're doing it wrong.
edit after 30 min break: Apologies for any inflammatory-ness on my part. I had a simple point that every actual Apple writer looks like a fanboy because when you cover a phenomenally successful subject a legitimate deconstruction of why they are successful can be superficially identical to fanboy praise.
There are a lot of Michael Jordan fanboys. There are also a lot of serious people that think he's the best player of all time. Go back to the 90's and both groups are going to vote for him for player of the month every month. That doesn't make the second group fanboys though, that's just a testament to how successful Jordan was at the time.
I've named almost every other major blogger in the tech industry. How about this, give me a list of the apple-centric bloggers and I'll tell you who are the evangelists and who isn't. Since apparently you don't like my list.
Come off of it.
Don't be a jerk, jerk. And I don't read Mongol blogs.
Edit: Thanks for the apology. I also apologize for escalating. I actually think your Jordan analogy is quite good. But I think also spells out the difference, at least in my eyes.
I also view Jordan as the greatest of all-time. With that said, I didn't gloat when he did well. I was in awe of him, but I wasn't a cheerleader. I'd vote for him as MVP, but I wouldn't cherish Karl Malone never winning it. I wouldn't call Malone a lesser player in order to prop Jordan up as a better player. I wouldn't downplay what Magic or Bird did to recognize that Jordan was still the greatest.
I feel like these three would cheer about Karl Malone getting injured a knee or Magic catching HIV if it meant that it would strengthen Jordan's position as best ever.
This is probably most obvious in the tablet space. You'll see some bloggers noting that the iPad dominates. No question about that, but you'll begin to see a split between those who are looking forward to what Android and Windows have in store for the future, versus those who are just outright dismissive that there is or ever will be anything to compete against the iPad. And in fact downplay anything that might actually be even slightly competitive, ala the Kindle Fire.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that they exist. They provide a viewpoint, and there's enough viewpoints to go around. But I think we should call it out so its obvious to those reading it.
But he's more pathological though.