Apple coverage gone soft?

The topic of whether the coverage of Apple Computers being too soft is not a new one. But Arik Hesseldahl, a writer for BusinessWeek Online, is assessing it again in this piece posted this morning.

Hesseldahl notes that on Tuesday, AP issued a one sentence NewsAlert about Apple beginning to ship computers with Intel chips in them.

Says Hesseldahl: “It’s the first time in my memory that a product announcement by Steve Jobs has caused the AP to send an alert — especially since this development was fully expected. And it says a lot about the intensity of media attention Apple generates. When is the last time a NewsAlert went out based on the words of Michael Dell or Bill Gates? Clearly, the AP’s editors determined this news was important enough to warrant such action.”

He later adds: “When I see Jobs interviewed on TV, he remains so irritatingly on-message, reporters seem almost sorry to do their jobs and change the subject by asking an off-topic question, about his health, or about something unrelated to the message of the day — say concerning the state of relations between his other company Pixar (PIXR ) and Disney (DIS ). He rarely opens up to publicly reflect on his life, which both deepens the mystery and heightens the curiosity.”

Some would say that the Apple coverage today is reminiscent of the coverage of the Internet industry from the 1990s, and we all know where that got business journalism.