Mac Man tries to gobble up all the Apples. Illustration: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Posted on 08/11/2016 11:07:31 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Cult of Mac 2.0 bugYou don’t see long lines for the latest Lenovo PC or LG Android phone. But take a quick peek on the internet and you’ll find plenty of people lining up to say how much they hate Apple.
Every successful person or company has its critics, but the expressions of vitriol for Apple are more complex than the popular refrain ‘haters gonna hate’.
Some are bugged by the price of Apple gadgets, others sneer over the enthusiasm of Apple fans, mockingly referring to them as iSheep or fanboys. Others are rubbed the wrong way by late founder Steve Jobs, whose charisma and marketing savvy repelled some as strongly as it attracted others.
Even in death, his critics could not be silent. “I don’t wish anyone to die,” wrote one on a message board on League of Legends on Oct. 6, 2011, the day Jobs passed. “However, I refuse to sanctify him.”
Fuel for the fire
Saying so only makes the fans circle the wagons. Apple occupies rare air, in that its customers have become a distinct and potent brand community that only grows stronger from the hatred, says Albert Muniz, professor of marketing at DePaul University.
“It gives legitimacy of true membership,” Muniz says. “It’s such an entrenched user base. That sentiment (against) has persisted as Apple has gone from David to being Goliath.”
So to the “misfits, crazy ones and rebels,” here is a small dose of what you put up with because you love your iPhone or Mac.
“People who buy exclusively Apple all the time are unsettling. A sense of loyalty to a multinational, profit-driven company is just weird in my book, especially when it manifests itself in utter loyalty, a refusal to accept any alternative, an unnatural love for the product and an inability to accept that there are any flaws in the love they feel.” —David Stewart, Australia, on Quora, Sept. 13, 2014.
“I wonder if their new guy is going to try to continue building a fortune off of artificial quality and people who don’t know anything about computers.” —DinerCar on League of Legends, Oct. 6, 2011.
Or from this YouTube tech blogger last September with a channel named Gaming Wildlife:
Apple haters
If you find humor in the insults, there is an Apple Haters blog as well as the “official” Twitter account of Apple Haters “We are everywhere.” Any time stocks dip, malware strikes, or a new product gets tepid reviews, these and other forums come to life. The blog even has a store, on which you can buy coffee cups and T-shirt, including one that says “KEEP CALM and DESTROY APPLE.”
The chatrooms stir up some interesting discussion and often include reformed Apple haters or even some current user Piyush Michael, a student in Delhi, Indiana, who likes Apple products enough, but otherwise is not swayed by Apple’s messaging or the passions coming from what this website lovingly refers to as a cult.
Michael told Cult of Mac he has used both Apple and non-Apple products, his favorites being the iPhone and MacBook. He describes himself as indifferent to Apple, but his emotions are more likely to get stirred up by expressions of loud love for Apple.
“It’s just the smugness of the fanboys I hate,” Michael says. “In India, those who can afford (it) almost always buy iPhones. It’s supposed to make you stand out of the sea of mid-rangers. And in most cases the smugness isn’t even discrete. The same attitude you get from the PC (camp). Both camps form opinions without any experience of the other side and stick to it.
“In order to justify the money spent, they spend the rest of their lives denying any flaws in the products.”
Popular YouTube tech blogger Austin Evans has an audience that mostly uses PCs, especially for gaming.
He is reminded how deep passions run whenever he reviews or unboxes an Apple product, like a new iPhone. Evans can count on a small flurry of comments accusing him of being paid by Apple.
“I don’t do a lot of Apple videos because I am mindful of my audience,” Evans tells Cult of Mac. “Apple is one company I don’t have much of a relationship with. I do full-sponsored stuff all of the time and nobody cares, but when I do an Apple video, it’s ‘How dare you say something nice about them.’”
Another tech blogger, Lamar Wilson, has an interesting theory that may explain some of the hate for Apple.
He considers himself an ex-Apple hater who used to make a living building and fixing PCs. He even saw a number of viewers unsubscribe from his YouTube channel when they realized he had become “one of them.”
“There may be fear in the tech community,” Wilson says. “There’s a morbid fear of things that are easy to use. They hate tech that is dumbed down. For some, their jobs and personal reputation is ingrained in being the tech person.”
What’s the big deal?
Apple mostly shrugs and may even revel in the free advertising the debate gives its products.
Sometimes impatience and even hot rage comes from its own community, which expects Apple to put out a perfect game changer every time.
Jobs may have even handled some direct hostility from one customer, complaining about poor reception with the iPhone 4s in the early days of what became a widespread antenna problem.
Several tech websites published what was believed to be an email exchange with an angry man and Jobs. The writer allegedly threatened to go back to using an Android phone and said he was ashamed to be a Mac fan.
Apple’s public relations team said the emails were fake, but even in fiction, the final word from Jobs may be the best response the next time an Android loyalist gets in the grill of a happy iPhone fan.
“Relax … It is just a phone.”
Why do people hate Apple? Because they can.
Didn't say it was the only reason. But I do think it is a big factor, based on how Apple is marketed.
When I took my GIS class we used Macs. In order to use the GIS software we had to boot them into Windows.
Given that Android software can do most if not more than my iPhone can do (have both) I see no reason to ever get another iPhone, let alone ever be a first time buyer of a Mac.
Of course the fact that their CEO Tim Cook has decided for me that buying an Apple product is also a political statement also takes me off of the returning customer list. What kind of business leader would purposely display open contempt for 50% of his potential customer base? An Apple CEO would, that is who.
So, Apple is Liberal; remind me again what form of Govermenr Korea has? Seems to me that Apple employs tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans in middle class or higher jobs - you know in slums like Austin, Tx and Silicon Valley and Coperino, CA doing software and engineering work, retail stores throughout the US and the world. And this is apparently "bad". How dare Apple pursue a profit? Why that is outrageous, right? No other company in a capitalistic society would do that, or am I confusing your paradigm with the communist party?
Isn’t it odd, that the people who are among the 90% market share just cannot stand that anyone does something different? Most Mac users are proficient at Windows; but few Windows users would even know how to turn a Mac on. Yet, these people insist we are wrong and foolish to try something outside their “norm”
Not sure if you were being sarcastic... S. Jobs was a prick but he was the heart of Apple. He didn't make me feel like I had to compromise my values if I bought one of his products. With his death the company became just an overpriced gadget maker with a SJW flavor. Kind of like the Ben and Jerry's of the tech world.
That was a very well written screed.
Foxconn suicide rates are so low the put nets around their concentration camp factories.
LOL!
Anyone who can’t laugh at that article deserves to be laughed at.
Funny...my iPhone 5S is three years old and has just as much battery as the day I bought it. Goes for a good 3 to 4 days on stand-by, 2 days of use.
Yours must just have sucked.
At its highest, the suicide rate at all of FoxConn's factories, with their 750,000 workers, was lower than one per 100,000 per year, central_va. The suicide rate in the US is in the same age cohorts is 11 per 100,000 per year. These are facts.
FoxConn's CEO Terry Gou, in an excess of zeal, put up the nets around one factory's dormitories before it was determined that it was unnecessary. The real causes of the few suicides was that Gou had been paying the families of the deceased workers up to 22 times their annual pay in bereavement pay, over-and-above the normal amount of state paid workers compensation their deaths would have garnered.
The current suicide rate among FoxConn's 1.5 million workers now, and for the last several years, is effectively ZERO per 100,000!
The factories are not "concentration camps." People apply by the thousands for openings when they are available. People do not apply to work in "concentration camps", and you are an idiot, if you believe that.
Incidentally. It is a known fact that those few suicides that did occur, were committed at plants making Microsoft Xboxes, HP Computers, Nokia Cellular phones, and Sony PlayStations! Not a single one happened among workers at a plant working on Apple products, or even closer than150 miles to one making Apple products! Again, facts get in the way of your talking points.
Apple makes $40B/year would it be asking to much for them to make their products in the USA? I know that makes me a silly nationalist but WTH?
It is less expensive. The iPhone 6S with 64GB is $849. Here is the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on sale from Amazon.com:
I can get the note 7 free right now by just signing an extended agreement.
110 more for a phone that lasts 4 years instead of 2.
Try $53.4 billion last year. . . but Apple makes that amount world wide. In fact, central_va, Apple earns about 60% of that amount off shore. Are you going to argue that Apple should make its products proportionally where it earns its profits? If not, why not?
Apple also makes several of its products in the United States, but you don't want those facts to get in the way of your hatred, do you? It also accounts for over one million jobs in the United States. Again, you really don't like facts, do you? Apple has testified before the US Senate they'd LOVE to bring their profits home so they can be invested in the United States, but our confiscatory tax rates, the highest and most irrational in the world, makes it far too expensive to do so. That move would create far more jobs than what you propose, but it has been blocked every time by the Democrats in Congress who cannot see beyond the tax income they'd get if they could force Apple to bring home the money they've earned off shore!
As I mentioned earlier, Apple DOES make some of its products in the USA. The iMac is made in Elk Grove, California, and the Mac Pro is made in Austin, Texas. What other major computer model is made in the USA? Dell hasn't for over a decade. HP? Don't make me laugh. All I hear is crickets from you guys in answer to that question. A lot of the components of the iPhone and iPads are manufactured in the USA. You've been told all of these facts before, just as you were told the facts on the suicides before, so you now know the truth. . . but you continue to spout the lies in these threads. You've done this before. That makes you a serial repeat liar.
You refuse to learn from the factual data. In that you seem to act like a Liberal with the lack of truth in your statements.
. . . you can also get an iPhone 6S, or wait until September 7 or so, and do the same thing, getting an iPhone 7, also for "free". If you believe any of those are really "Free", I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Cheap. You are paying for it in your contract and then some. Your carrier is NOT giving you that phone for nothing.
Doubtful. Apple phones have a far longer lifespan and a far better re-sale value than does any Android phone. Just check eBay for the prices of older phones. Even four and five year old iPhones command much higher prices than many much newer Android phones, even flagship phones of the top brands. That again is just factual.
Apple's iPhones Retain Their Value, Samsung's Android's Don't
"As seen in the chart above, even after a new iPhone has been out for a full year, it still retains almost 40% (or more than $240) of its retail value. That figure drops to 24% ($156) after two years, when most people are eligible for an upgrade. That means if you bought the iPhone 5 when it came out in September 2012, you could still earn a significant amount of money this fall when the highly anticipated iPhone 6 is expected to be released.Samsung Galaxy phones retain their value similar to iPhone. After one year, a Galaxy is worth almost 30% (or about $160) of its original retail price and almost 20% (or about $100) after two years. So Galaxy owners can expect to receive about $100 after two years when their carrier contracts have expired and a new model comes out.— Gazelle (whole sale purchase prices as of 2014)
So if your specious claim that Apple's iPhones were only good for two years were true, the resale value would be zero, not far above the value of the Android's resale value. Ergo, you are wrong. I retired my original iPhone which I got on June 29, 2007 from use as a phone in March of 2015, after it was handed down through various family members, but even in that month it was handed down to my three year old granddaughter to use as an iPod touch (just no cellular service), and it was STILL on the original battery which held 80% of its original charge capacity EIGHT YEARS LATER and still worked! It is still working fine.
My ex-wife got my iPhone 3GS and used it for four years until she got my 4S which she just traded in for a brand new iPhone SE this year. The 3GS was still on its original battery when it was sold, and so was the iPhone 4S which I got on October 14, 2011, and it has been in constant use by either me, my younger daughter, and then by my ex, until January of this year, a total of FIVE and ONE HALF YEARS on the same battery and has given excellent service. It only needed replacement because it took a bath in the kitchen sink and started acting kinky!
So much for your false "Two years" meme, RedWulf.
Not really - there are 3rd Party apps to deal with file transfer to and from iPhones/iPads for both Windows and OS X (soon to be released Sierra).
You don’t even need iTunes to update iOS (unless your device is full)
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