Except, y'know, when he doesn't. For instance, he's been pretty critical of a lot of Apple's rejections from the App Store. Example: http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/ninjawords "Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong. I can’t imagine what it will take to top this one."
Now, perhaps this is in fact the only sort of Apple action that Gruber is ever critical of. My hazy memory says otherwise, for what it's worth.
Er, no. The followup (you mean http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/phil_schiller_app_store, right?) has Gruber saying that he still thinks it's wrong to put a 17+ rating on a dictionary for having Naughty Words in it, and that he doesn't think the person who rejected the Ninjawords dictionary acted (1) wisely or (2) consistently with Apple's policy as described to him by Phil Schiller.
(He did say that Apple weren't as wrong as he'd thought they were, because he'd thought they insisted that the Ninjawords dictionary be both (1) censored and (2) marked 17+, whereas supposedly that turned out not to have happened.)
Anyway, I'm not sure what your point about the followup really is. Gruber said something very uncomplimentary about Apple's handling of App Store applications in this particular case (most outrageous yet, hard to do worse) and in general (clear implication of lots of earlier strikingly outrageous rejections). Therefore, he is not uniformly uncritical of Apple. -- Unless you're suggesting that he said that with the intention of issuing a retraction to make Apple look even better, and that his later comment wasn't (as he claimed) precipitated by getting an email from Phil Schiller responding to what he'd said?
Don't get me wrong: it's clear that John Gruber is on the whole very, very enthusiastic about Apple and their products. I would not look to him for unbiased commentary on anything Apple-related. But that is not at all the same thing as being prepared to defend anything "regardless of morality", which is the accusation heresy made above and which still seems to me quite un-called-for.
Yeah, I saw that. But he seemed to be going back and forth, how he understood why Apple was doing it, and while he didn't like it, it really seemed like he still supported Apple.
That's his big thing: Apple is allowed to do these things, and it makes it alright. Legally they can do something, we shouldn't complain. I just got from his followup that while he didn't approve, he still supported Apple's decision.
Now, perhaps this is in fact the only sort of Apple action that Gruber is ever critical of. My hazy memory says otherwise, for what it's worth.