For our Green my Apple campaign I've been watching the online buzz on blogs about the campaign closely. An influential blog on Apple is Infinite Loop.
Back at the start of January, Infinite Loop ran an article claiming that "EPA information should make GreenPeace red-faced" about our information on Apple. Being an Apple blog it was pretty one sided and of course it was lapped up online by some Mac fans eager to prove Apple is completely green after all. Even though the EPEAT ranking had been around since July 2006, the story spawned many more blogs some with even more over blown headlines like "EPA proves Greenpeace wrong" just right before the opening of Macworld. What followed was an interesting peek in to the world of Apple blogs.
Given the one sided slant of the article I dropped the author (Mary E Tyler) a line with our point of view, more in hope than expectation. I was pleasantly surprised to get a prompt response that she would post a follow up quoting our views. That response was delayed due to Macworld, where an Infinite Loop reporter skipped his appointment to talk to us. In the meantime Green Business News published a balanced (as in quoting both sides of the story, not a Fox news sort of "balanced") article on the whole saga where they actually bothered to call us and EPEAT. Of course this article wasn't widely quoted as the original Infinite Loop article because the head of EPEAT poured cold water over any 'EPA proves Greenpeace wrong' notions.
A couple weeks later, Mary let me know she had written a follow up quoting the research I sent her. It was supposed to be published as soon as it was edited. But it turns out Infinite Loop editorial staff wanted a more negative slant on Greenpeace. Mary refused to rewrite the article and it was killed. Shortly after, Mary emailed me saying she and Ars had parted ways by mutual agreement.
Apparently Infinite Loop editors don't think Apple has anything to green and promotes groupthink to that effect. The 40,000 people who have emailed Steve to go green so far obviously think different!
Even the latest IL article by Jeff (who seems to consider writing about Greenpeace as punishment) acknowledges Apple does have work to do, then asks us to go away because change takes time. Well we've been asking Apple to change since 2004. Given Apple changed its entire computer hardware and software range to run on new chips in just a year, it seems that some green innovation from Apple is long over due.
(PS - Old archive articles on Infinite Loop seem to have disappeared hence no link to Mary's original article)