Gruber is part of an interesting phenomenon that has emerged over the past few years: supporting companies (and reviling their 'opponents') with the same passion that people normally reserve for sports teams.
This is not a recent trend. People have been devoted to Apple since their founding. Comparing this devotion/passion to sports teams is probably understating it - Wired's feature on Apple in 1997 had a picture of the Apple logo with a crown of thorns on the cover. Going further back, families and pundits had similar devotion to car and cigarette companies.
There weren't blogs to document it, but you'd see many of the same arguments over videogame consoles, computer platforms, car manufacturers, clothiers, sports teams, warlords, philosophers, religions ;). Identifying with a side in a large competition falls under the category of basic human behavior.