31–40 of 53 posts
Humans treat criticism of favorite anything as threat to self-image.
Irrational "love" of foo, "hatred" of those that disagree due to psychological issues such as cognitive dissonance.
I always thought this was an interesting example of Apple extremists being provoked by a hoax: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2004/02/62157 The hoaxer, identified only as "Andy," claimed he received a dual-processor G5 for Christmas. But preferring a Windows PC, he swapped out the insides of the $3,000 machine for the guts of a cheapo PC. The post included several digital photographs to prove the outrageous cl…
As an extreme example some believe that the Westboro Baptist Church is a group of these "reverse shills". I don't think I believe that myself though.
Brands simply become shorthand for these choices.
You don't see Toshiba vs. Panasonic vs. Lenovo laptop wars because the choice there is not so hard to reverse and the deciding factors were fairly clear. But you do see it in Canon vs. Nikon DSLRs (because lens incompatibility forces you to double down on your choice).
Probably the worst example of this kind of thing is not Apple vs. (whoever) but religion.
They use the word "fanbois" to sound pejorative, but isn't this a good thing? It basically means that people are passionate about your company and its products. It means you're relevant. It has always been like that with rivalries like Mac vs. PC, Nintendo vs. Sega, and now Android vs. iPhone/iPad.
It clouds the discussion on neutral issues and fair analysis when people are emotionally or otherwise invested in companies. For example, see HN comments on news/opinion involving patents, Google, Android and Apple. They devolve in flamefests because people think that their particular company is being wronged, regardless of their original stance on patents etc. before such news involving their companies came out. Asy…
Just because many sources these days are very positive on Apple and its products, I don't think you can necessarily say that they are Apple-biased. The fact is that Apple is killing all of their competitors right now on almost every measure - product design, profit, etc. Insisting on more "even" coverage of their competitors just isn't warranted because in most cases the competing products don't deserve that much attention or consideration.
Gruber, Asymco, and Marco tend to be very positive on Apple, but when the company screws up, they'll be as harsh as anyone else. For a recent example, look at their coverage of the App Store's change in-app purchase and subscription policies .
To paraphrase Steven Colbert, sometimes reality has an Apple bias.
I always thought this was an interesting example of Apple extremists being provoked by a hoax: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2004/02/62157 The hoaxer, identified only as "Andy," claimed he received a dual-processor G5 for Christmas. But preferring a Windows PC, he swapped out the insides of the $3,000 machine for the guts of a cheapo PC. The post included several digital photographs to prove the outrageous cl…
Interestingly I've never seen this proven in any way, although I suppose it's possible. But extremists in FOSS are widespread enough that I doubt it's some evil secret plot by Microsoft (or whomever) to make the community look bad.
I always thought this was an interesting example of Apple extremists being provoked by a hoax: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2004/02/62157 The hoaxer, identified only as "Andy," claimed he received a dual-processor G5 for Christmas. But preferring a Windows PC, he swapped out the insides of the $3,000 machine for the guts of a cheapo PC. The post included several digital photographs to prove the outrageous cl…
"bediger also mentioned the possible presence of "reverse shills" being used to pollute the Linux camp." Interestingly I've never seen this proven in any way, although I suppose it's possible. But extremists in FOSS are widespread enough that I doubt it's some evil secret plot by Microsoft (or whomever) to make the community look bad.
tl;dr: we make snap decisions about people because we have to; the world moves fast. therefore we want people to make the right snap decision about us, so we brand ourselves with bits and pieces of all the brands out there that we think convey us to the outside world. the line between brand and "me" get very blurry. when a person says "I hate brand X", because of that blurry line, they are saying/you are hearing: "I…