Apple's churning of the gut

An interesting argument. I've thought for years that the reason why this stuff happens with Apple and nowhere else is their vaunted secrecy. Nobody else clams up like Apple does, which leaves a void for tech-press dummies to gleefully fill up with whatever silly shit they invent, which of course is exactly what they do.

But more generally, Apple is different from any other company near its size. The secrecy is one big difference, but there are others such as their approach to product development. These fundamental differences cause cognitive dissonance in the people the article talks about. These people are taught to think that Apple products are the same as what everyone else makes, just better-marketed and way more expensive, therefore Apple customers are status-seekers, not rational consumers. But Apple's incredible success makes it difficult to seriously hold that viewpoint anymore. You could think that when Apple's customer base was a handful of people who worked in movies and graphic design, but not anymore.

> "each and every website, even if it's only remotely related to technology, appears to be populated with people who can't resist the urge to slam Apple for whatever is the popular Apple-fail-du-jour."

Is that because they actually hate Apple, though? Or is it just a function of the emotional attachment Apple creates?

Consider what we'll call "The Oprah Example".

Oprah doesn't remotely write or talk about technology that often. And far more people in Oprah's audience will have Windows PCs and Android phones than Macs and iPhones.

But Oprah is far more justified in talking about Apple. (And she does.) Because those people in her audience who have Apple devices likely have an emotional bond with them. And they will appreciate a story about Apple. Whereas even those people with Android phones and Windows PCs in her audience almost certainly don't give a damn about Microsoft or Samsung. They likely don't even know off-hand who manufactured their devices.

Not that Oprah herself parrots component order stories. But it's the same mechanism in other places that do. People care about Apple. Ergo they will actually read about Apple. Any number of blogs might have a grudge against Sony or Samsung or Microsoft, and repeat negative stories about those companies, but the fact that no-one really cares about those companies means that they necessarily fall flat.

So the "dog pile" on Apple that you perceive doesn't exist because people hate Apple for its success. It's because people have emotional opinions about Apple and thus will actually read stories about Apple.

Indeed what you see as a dog-pile against, many people who dislike Apple see as a mindless cult that gets outsized press because the newspapers and hollywood are full-fledged devotees to the cult.

They're two views on the same mechanism: the emotional reactions Apple generates.

And the proof of this is as simple as looking to the way that Apple has long commanded a slice of the public consciousness that far outweighed its marketplace relevance. It's only fairly recently that their user base was large enough to justify the press they already had.

The only option that the author doesn't explore, is the possibility that the WSJ author may be correct in saying that the more robust Android ecosystem is gobbling up market share.

>Apple was the underdog for so long and now that it is one of the biggest and most successful companies in the world, well, we can’t root for them anymore.

Uh... I think the patent abuse, App Store censorship, and attempting to normalize a paradigm where one needs the hardware vendor's permission to run software have something to do with antipathy towards Apple.