> more or less despising the company and its manipulations
I will never understand why perfectly normal human beings do this, whether it be against Apple or Google. I have an Apple sticker on my car because I'm proud of where I work. On four separate occasions now Google fans have come up to me after I've parked and tried to convert me to an Android fan or make fun of me for being an "Apple fan," assuming the sticker represents my status as a demagogue for one side. (One guy asked me if I felt inferior for not having root on my phone and I had to resist answering the question honestly, but it would have been really fun and confusing for him.)
My own family gets sheepish and embarrassed when they buy an Android phone because their partisan friends have trained them to think that I'd react explosively to this grievous slight instead of the truth, which is that people should buy what works for them and it's not really any of my business. I don't actively sway people toward Apple products or discourage them from buying what they want. Sometimes a Mac is the answer, and sometimes it isn't. Their purchasing choice has arguably no effect on me personally, and this applies to other things too, like cars. As you're discovering, in general, people don't listen anyway and instead quietly form a negative opinion of you.
Speaking personally, there are things I dislike and like from Apple and there are things I dislike and like from Google. I simply cannot connect with the mindset of red vs. blue, us vs. them, vim-vs-emacs, all-or-nothing that people get frothed up like this about. It's your prerogative to despise Apple and I'm fully supportive of your decision to do so. I'm just saying it strikes me as weird to invest part of your humanity in despising an inanimate entity that creates products as opposed to just not buying the products. I'd say this about people who despise Google, too, and I'm only using that example because it seems like the war of our time (and because you probably carry an Android device, given the market).
Am I the only one who feels like it's just not worth it to hate a company? I don't even hate Comcast, and they've given me plenty of reasons. I don't even hate patent trolls; they've identified a strategy that is legal and shitty and exploit it. That's capitalism. Maybe it's just me and, before you think it's partisan, I felt like this before ever being personally vested. I've just got far better things into which to invest my hatred.
(Only my personal opinion, speaking for me alone.)
You're conflating two issues: tribalism, and genuine consumer grievances.
I don't despise Apple or Google, and my general approach is "Use it if it works reliably and is useful." I'm not particularly tribal, in that sense.
However, I do despise MS, because in my experience the software is absolute crapware and full of avoidable bugs. It has literally wasted days of my life. And I know I'm hardly unique.
In the general case, people despise corporations for the same reasons they despise people: if someone lies to you, rips you off, wastes your time, or makes promises and then doesn't deliver, you'd be a fool to respect them.
Tribalism is only half the story. The rest is that corporations make an implicit - non-legal, but still heavily implied - contract when they create consumer relationships.
Apple used to be very good at this. There was an implied value proposition: "Expensive, but beautiful, original, inventive, and outstanding" and Apple did a competent job of delivering on it.
Recently Apple has become noticeably less good at it.
You can dismiss Android fanboys for tribalism, and that's a fair point.
But it's a very bad idea for a corporation to ignore customer satisfaction, and to assume that its deliverables will never change the perceived value of the social contract it makes with consumers.
I will still help my friends install Mac OS on their computer if that's what they need, or even help them get a good deal on a Mac if I can. I'm not trying to convert people to my way of life, but I do share what I know and value to anyone willing. Until recently I suggested Apple products to people as being easy to use for non techie people. I don't do this anymore because of how Apple has been abusing it's power, e.g. deleting people's music, imposing their cloud services, their development tools, censoring GPL libraries from their store, paying artists crap... At some point enough is enough. It's perfectly valid for me to feel anger towards what is essentially a techno-religious organisation gone corrupt. I'm angry and sad at the corruption of any party or religion. Having values, feeling passionately about things, these don't make me partisan, it means I'm alive, my heart is beating and my soul is kicking.
I don't "hate Apple" because I'm partisan, I'm frustrated more generally at a whole bundle of abuses and orthodoxies of the religion of mass marketing, and to put it bluntly am frightened about the perpetuation of ignorance, put forth for short term profit, suffocating the grass roots of human knowledge as we speed blindly into an era of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and genetically modified organisms.
Sorry, "not buying products" and otherwise being silent doesn't cut it. There are (were[1]) whole magazine categories that test and criticize consumer products.
[1] In Germany at least some of those magazines were quite good. Haven't read any recently though.
Okay, you've refuted my point, now bring it home and illustrate your point: why doesn't it cut it?
Reviewers are a totally different animal and orthogonal to my point; I'm not arguing that reviews should cease. You're talking to a guy who respects film reviewers individually and recognizes patterns and traits of certain reviewers (like Ebert or Travers or Tom Long, who I dearly miss in retirement -- if I were on the fence for any film in the last decade I read Tom), so I definitely value review as an industry. Hell, Broadway might argue review is an essential part of the industry, I reckon, since there are many people who wait for the Times to review a play before buying tickets.
I will never understand why perfectly normal human beings do this, whether it be against Apple or Google. I have an Apple sticker on my car because I'm proud of where I work. On four separate occasions now Google fans have come up to me after I've parked and tried to convert me to an Android fan or make fun of me for being an "Apple fan," assuming the sticker represents my status as a demagogue for one side. (One guy asked me if I felt inferior for not having root on my phone and I had to resist answering the question honestly, but it would have been really fun and confusing for him.)
My own family gets sheepish and embarrassed when they buy an Android phone because their partisan friends have trained them to think that I'd react explosively to this grievous slight instead of the truth, which is that people should buy what works for them and it's not really any of my business. I don't actively sway people toward Apple products or discourage them from buying what they want. Sometimes a Mac is the answer, and sometimes it isn't. Their purchasing choice has arguably no effect on me personally, and this applies to other things too, like cars. As you're discovering, in general, people don't listen anyway and instead quietly form a negative opinion of you.
Speaking personally, there are things I dislike and like from Apple and there are things I dislike and like from Google. I simply cannot connect with the mindset of red vs. blue, us vs. them, vim-vs-emacs, all-or-nothing that people get frothed up like this about. It's your prerogative to despise Apple and I'm fully supportive of your decision to do so. I'm just saying it strikes me as weird to invest part of your humanity in despising an inanimate entity that creates products as opposed to just not buying the products. I'd say this about people who despise Google, too, and I'm only using that example because it seems like the war of our time (and because you probably carry an Android device, given the market).
Am I the only one who feels like it's just not worth it to hate a company? I don't even hate Comcast, and they've given me plenty of reasons. I don't even hate patent trolls; they've identified a strategy that is legal and shitty and exploit it. That's capitalism. Maybe it's just me and, before you think it's partisan, I felt like this before ever being personally vested. I've just got far better things into which to invest my hatred.
(Only my personal opinion, speaking for me alone.)