The Hate

[tilton]

Every time there's any sort of big news about Apple, I can count on a wave of anti-Apple sentiment from certain parts of my social networks. I've been thinking a lot about that in the wake of the Steve Jobs news. What drives it? What makes people so angry

Comments

[triggur]

All great points.

I too was greatly more saddened by his passing than I anticipated.

The thing that upset me most about the haters isn't that they dislike apple or that they share that opinion...

It's that they felt the need to share it exactly when it would do the most damage to those of us who were already sad.

That's just being a douche.

[weredog]

So the moral of the story is they make a bunch of stuff for old people?

All kidding aside, I dislike Apples treatment of their customers, and Steve Jobs was an asshole. That's all the hate I have. I still like some of their hardware, but it's usually overpriced, and certain other factors make for a piss poor user experience. Yes, I know this from experience.

That said, I'd still trade my Android phone for a new Iphone in a second. I'd just be WAY more suspect of updating the OS this time around. The last time the OS "updates" degraded my experience to the point I smashed the thing into a large chunk of granite until it died. Nope, we won't let you go back to the old OS either. That would just be too customer friendly. (rage)

[areitu]

I agree completely. My mom figured out how to make a phone call on an iPhone in about 20 minutes and she still hasn't mastered the digital cable TV remote. My roommate pointed out to me that my entire computing experience has been shaped in some way by Steve Jobs, because I grew up using a home computer in the 90s that had Windows 3.1 on it. Everyone who uses a GUI and a mouse, an MP3 player or a smartphone is a product

[wolfstoy]

I think you're overselling Apple here. I starting using a mouse and GUI the first time with my Atari 1040ST. I didn't have any previous experience with those devices. The Atari used a system called GEM destkop which they developed based loosly on GDI's version. They weren't ever sued by Apple since their development was different.

As for MP3 players, I used them before the iPod. Before they even existed I had a laptop mounted in my truck to play MP3's and used a Palm 3 as an interface to control it.

As for the smart phone, they were very late to the game. I'd been multitasking with GPS and music playing on my phones long before the iPhone came out.

[laini]

I'm reminded of a joke I read on bash.org which was along the lines of "The only reason the Atkins diet works is because people on Atkins won't shut the **** up about being on the Atkins diet".

I think this accounts for a fair amount of the hatred or dislike of Apple that many hold.

You have a product and it works great? Cool, that's neat.
Do I want to hear about it every 5 seconds? No.
Do I want you to badger me to try it when my current non Apple Computer/MP3 Player/Phone/Tea Cosy/Hairdryer work just fine? No.

But I suppose the same is true of any company or whatever, they all have their over obsessive fanboys.

I think part of it is the same issue that can be seen in the gaming community.
People liked having their own little world and their own wee things.
For someone who's grown up with technology or gaming and been seen as an outcast because of that, for them both to suddenly open up and be not only accepted by everyone but embraced completely can be a bitter pill to swallow.

[wolfstoy]

Funny, I find it to be about equal. It is just that over the past 2 years the Android fanboys have actually had some points about their OS. The Apple fanboys have been around since about 1997 and have never seemed to stop.