> Religion is a touchy subject. Oddly enough, as I have come to discover in these pages, so is Apple.
This has also been my experience. I know people with whom I just avoid talking about Apple. Personally I just accept that Apple is their religion (some of them have Apple bumper stickers) and that religion is something deeply personal.
There are people who develop a religious fervour for brands, but I too often see that used as an excuse to dismiss legitimate arguments and preferences. Some people seem to develop an almost religious antipathy to brands and their customers. If Apple fanatics think Jobs or Cook are Jesus-like, the detractors seem to cast them as one rung up from Lucifer.
It's assumed that if you prefer Apple products, it must be because you're brainwashed or ignorant. The possibility that there are rational reasons for preferring Apple and its ecosystem is rejected with no consideration.
It's curious that Apple have been more successful in inspiring this kind of zealotry than have the FSF. The power of good marketing I suppose. As I indicated in my other comment in this thread, I think such 'corporate fanboyism' can be considered a kind of immaturity.
I would say the FSF certainly has. It's just a far smaller group. Probably smaller than the group that finds them rather off-putting. And, of course, far smaller still than the group that doesn't care if, in fact, they've heard of the organization at all.
I have used Apple products for years and like them. I've tried competing products and they never worked as well as a complete package. Sure, they might have had a feature or two that was better by some metric, but overall Apple stuff works well for my use case. Does this mean I'm in love with Apple? I don't think so, but for now they work.
Love and hate are also pretty similar emotions. I find both the people who love Apple and hate Apple to be...odd. I really don't understand either. It's a company, either use their products or don't.
This is where the hate comes from: It is frequently not a choice that one is able make, to not use their products. "You're at work, you must use $this." Is one of thousands of examples where your preference is made utterly irrelevant.
Also this is where the love comes from.
When forced to use something else and you hate it because your dislike of it is supercharged by that coercion, and you would much prefer to use this other product you might decide you love this other product and even evangelise it to increase your chance of being able to exercise your preference.
The idea that we use choose our use of, and knowledge of, operating systems by our own free will is a little fanciful. X billion smart phone users and 99+% of them freely choose 1 of 2. "It's your choice" doesn't make sense as soon as you look at it from that perspective. At best, exercising your preference comes with a non-trivial cost. At worst, you have no choice.
If it were easy to decide to use something else, something different whenever you felt like it the evangilism and ire would be more like it is for fast-food chains or clothing manufacturers. ie A little more fringe than we're seeing in computing.
I always find it funny when people describe the beliefs of middle-ages as bigoted, believing God more than Galileo (or so the legend says) when clearly today, some masses clearly believe in states being the originator of public good, and some corporations being worth worshipping.
Civilizations have evolved, but humans still be humans ;)
I agree it's rather silly for an adult to have a strong emotional attachment to a corporation. I can understand a child feeling that way about the company behind their favourite products, but it seems unbecoming in adults. The best example might be Apple 'fanboys'. (I don't know of a gender-neutral term here. Fanboy implies an excess of appreciation, but fan means something weaker.)
I don't see that it has much to do with religion though. It's only silly because of the specifics of what a corporation is - a somewhat amoral body of capital, very roughly speaking - but it's not always silly to be attached to an institution. There's nothing religious about supporting the Against Malaria Foundation, or the EFF, or (here in the UK) the National Health Service.
> I don't know of a gender-neutral term here. Fanboy implies an excess of appreciation, but fan means something weaker.
I would say "fanatic". Of course the word "fan" is derived from "fanatic", but perhaps the fact that "fan" is a shorter word implies less zeal than the longer word.
Visit some investor forums and search for TSLA sometime. They make Apple fans look tame :)
With that said, and it may be my own bias kicking in, Apple anti-fans seem way more passionate than fans. The anti-fan cannot understand why any rational person would ever use a product from Apple.
All of the above completely pales in comparison to the best example of adult fanaticism - political affiliation.
That sounds about right. Sure there are exceptions but most Apple "fans" have just bought into the Apple ecosystem, generally like their stuff better than the alternatives for most purposes, upgrade now and then, and often buy new types of devices, even though they acknowledge that Apple whiffs now and then. I'd mostly even put Gruber in this category.
They mostly don't openly ridicule people who run Android, Linux, or Windows. Whereas, as you suggest, there's a definite subset of people who think and are happy to say they think anyone who buys Apple products has more money than sense and has clearly been brainwashed.
Aren’t you just equivocating on the phrase “in love” though? In this context it just means a strong preference for products manufactured by a certain firm in a certain industry, which isn’t particularly abnormal.
"Falling out of love" still implies the kind of love you also fall into, I think. "Falling in love" has not yet been banalized to some mean some generic positive emotion like the word live itself unfortunately has.
I'm sad about the latter because we apparently lost the word to simply express this profound emotion without context.
The whole cultue of Apple is so weird, and kind of appalling. Just the fact that their press conferences are broadcast, and they're held in front of an audience that applaud everything the presenter says, and laughs at his jokes. People "live blog" it, like some bizarre court stenographer. And 1.000 threads are posted on HN about Apple keybords having been made even worse. Again.
That’s some selective consideration right there. Every large consumer tech company broadcasts their press conferences, because it’s of interest both to fans of the products and industry pundits.
Samsung broadcast their phone events every year. As do Google. Microsoft and Sony are very happy to get on stage to tell you about their new consoles. Tesla have got a new car to tell you about too.
Surely you can see why some people might be interested?
I call them mass, because that’s what they are. I watch even them intentionally because the comical onslaught of positive words and colors does have a mood enhancing effect
I suppose the alternative would be a press conference that is broadcast to nobody, presented before an audience that remains entirely silent, and covered by no news outlets or tech blogs.
That doesn't seem like a fair thing to expect from a consumer technology company.
If you can do a shuffling run, punctuated by awkward hops around a stage while screaming, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" to applause from a huge crowd at a corporate event, then you've got some devoted fanatics.