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Ah, right, Apple's past behavior, like when they forced OEMs to pay for MacOS licenses on all computers, even when they didn't have it installed—oh, wait; that was Microsoft. No, you must mean Apple's past behavior when they turned a popular and well-made browser into a tool for stealing everyone's data so they could profit off it—no, sorry, that was Google. Then it must be Apple's past behavior when they chose to stoke millions of people's worst political divisions in order to increase their own profits—dammit, no, that was Facebook! Let me check my notes. Right, Apple's behavior. Like when they....reads notes...Made phones and computers that...were more expensive than some people wanted? Made them hard for users to repair? Um. Yeah, I don't think that's alienating enough non-geeks to have the effect you describe. And I can tell you, as a Mac user for over 30 years now, that the primary reason Apple provides such a large ecosystem themselves is because from roughly 20 minutes after the first Macintosh was announced through well after the iPhone went on sale, the majority of the tech world considered them "doomed" because they didn't act like Microsoft. And after the iPhone came out (and yes, overlapping with the "doomed" narrative), they instead declared roundly that Apple had lost its spark every time they held an event that did not introduce a product as groundbreaking as the iPhone (which is to say, always). Apple provides the ecosystem themselves because decades of experience shows them that no one else is going to do it for them, and when they depend on outside companies for important parts of their experience (Motorola, IBM, Intel, Qualcomm), those companies eventually let them down. |
However, I don't think it has had a huge effect on Apple's brand reputation among consumers.