The Wrath of the Apple Tribe

Narrative Fallacy writes "If you've ever written about Apple products with even a hint of negativity, you'll appreciate Salon's excerpt from Farhad Manjoo's True Enough, about why the Apple tribe is so rabid. 'There are many tribes in the tech world: TiVo lovers, Blackberry addicts, Palm Treo fanatics, and people who exhibit unhealthy affection for their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners,' writes Manjoo. 'But there is no bigger tribe, and none more zealous, than fans of Apple, who are infamous for their sensitivity to slams, real or imagined, against the beloved company.' Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg has even coined a name for the phenomenon — the 'Doctrine of Insufficient Adulation.' 'If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it's partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy,' says psychologist Lee Ross at Stanford University. 'You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving them equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness.'"

I blame it on Apple...

..and their ad campaigns.

Seriously, market a product as "stylish", "hip" and "different", and you'll raise a troupe of people to whom presenting themselves as different is pretty much their only end. I personally find it one of the most disgusting facets of consumerist capitalism.

Re:I blame it on Apple...

I personally find it one of the most disgusting facets of consumerist capitalism.

Ooo, someone forgot to take their "Think Different" pills this morning, didn't they?

Re:I blame it on Apple...

Pfft. I wear a long sleeve shirt under a short sleeve shirt under a long sleeve shirt.

How to pretend to be a tech journalist

Step 1: Troll Apple users

Step 2: Write an article about all the hate mail you get

Step 3: Ad revenue

Goto Step 1

Dvorak has done this so many times he should be selling his technique on an infomercial at this point.

It's a religion

I do have an unhealthy obsession with my Roomba, but it doesn't come close to the religious outrage that descends on my blog whenever / if-ever I say anything that doesn't approach worship of Apple.

Honestly, it's the biggest reason I no longer buy products from Apple. The astonishing thing is how many years this keeps going on. I had a friend who started hiding his Newton for fear of the cultists that would swarm him and go on about how great it was while he was just trying to look up an address or whatever.

The only sane Apple-nut I ever met was Douglas Adams, but then he was at least reasonable enough to acknowledge other OSes, although you wouldn't believe it from the Apple fans who quote him endlessly.

Why are so many of their consumers complete nutcases?

Re:It's a religion

I'm pretty good friends with an Apple salesman. He loves their products and believes in the company. Both of those are prerequisites to being a successful salesman regardless of the products being sold, but Apple seems to make it easier than just about any other company. It's an amazing cult.

I personally have purchased only one Apple product -- I recently bought my wife an iPod touch. While I absolutely love the cool user interface experience, the consumer lock down is much worse than I imagined it would be (and I was expecting bad.) Overall I can only rate the thing "half-way above shit." I'll never buy anything else from them and I'm not going to recommend them to other people unless that changes drastically.

At Least I'll be Vaccinated

about why the Apple tribe is so rabid

You mean it's not rabies? Oh...I guess I didn't need those shots after the last time I called the MacBook "useless" and one of them bit me...

Can we mod this story...

+1 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

I must not be a fan then

I use Apple products all of the time; the only personal computers that I ever have powered on anymore are all Macs. My "promoting" of Macs to friends and family has been more beneficial in convincing some of them to buy Apple products more than any clever advertising. I've even brought Apple into my workplace and who knows, it may even make a decent foothold in the formerly all MS shop. I would consider myself a fan.

But I will point out the negatives in their products where I see them. There is no point in pretending that they don't exist as all that does is give them time to fester. I am a realist. I'll also point out issues with the company when they deserve it. Yeah, praise is better but only if they are going to work for it.

I am more judgmental because I've been in the IT field for years and have used, and I mean really used, many different OSes out there. I also wouldn't have considered calling myself a Mac user before OS X. Sorry fans, but OS 9 was pretty terrible.

I suppose Apple needs the rabid fanbase as they are advertisers that pay the company for the privilege. Maybe Apple should even thank them every now and then for keeping the company afloat for so many years. They also need the realists that speak their mind and truthfully say what is good, what is bad, and what is downright idiotic. Yes, this means that these groups will clash but it is needed.

How else are they going to move forward?

Re:I must not be a fan then

I couldn't help noticing how Mac fanatics kept on touting their superior OS, until OS X came along, which fixed all of these problems that they never acknowledged having before. Same thing with the switch to Intel. They kept saying how superior their Power PC chip was, then with the switch to Intel they're saying its now working so much better. WTF?

Even though I'm not a big fan of Apple, I will admit they have some advantages here and there.

You can't even say anything bad about Jobs

Earlier in the week, I posted this comment [slashdot.org] to this thread [slashdot.org], about something in the first three paragraphs in the referenced article [wired.com].

I was amazed at the number of fanboi's that modded it off-topic, only to have it modded it back up, then back down again. Some apparently thought I had committed blasphemy.

The article in short

Why are Mac fans so quick to see bias everywhere? On issues we're passionate about, we all tend to think our own views are essentially reasonable. Thus when a reporter, editor, news network, or pundit mentions the other side's arguments, it stings.
  That's basically all the article says. And we knew that, of course. But why are Apple fans so extremely sensitive to criticism? I've said many 'bad' things about Apple on this forum, and it inevitably got me modded down. Apple zealots are even worse than the Linux zealots of ten years back.

Re:ratio

There is at least ten mac hater[s] (sic) for every fanboy, each posting ten whining comment[s] for every adulation of apple.

Are you sure you've read the summary correctly AND you know what board you're posting on? You seem to be confusing Microsoft and Apple. One is bad, the other is God.

Hope this helps. Oh, and you might want to cut back on the schnapps.

Re:ratio

I'm reminded of this episode [burbia.com] in which some poor schmuck visited an Apple Store for the first time and wrote about it in his blog.

Re:ratio

I was assualted by a fanboi when I told him my Tapwave was cooler than his iPhone. Luckliy, I had a stylus as a weapon, while all he had was his finger. He didn't want to drop his iPhone either becuase it didn't have applecare.

Re:ratio

Don't forget the whining fanboi apple adulations. "Mac OS X is perfect, but I'm going to switch to Windows because of the translucent menu bar!!"

You exaggerate, but not by much. I've also heard nitpicks about the top menu bar having (gasp!) square corners on top instead of rounded corners. Oh for the love of all that is good in this world, are you going to let THAT bother you?

Re:ratio

Oh yes. And don't get me started on the reflections in the new 3D Dock. They're all wrong.

Re:You just don't get it...

Are you one of these 'females' I keep reading about?

Re:inappropriate even handedness

For instance, intelligent design.

That's not a fair comparison. Intelligent design cannot _ever_ hope to partake in a scientific discussion, because there's no science behind it, and that's _it_. No point in debating something that's completely wrong in any way you look at it. Different opinions on different products, however, are a different issue altogether.

Re:Experience it first hand

The author of the article (yes I actually read it) went as far as comparing the pro/anti Apple crowd to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yes, he seriously did. And not by briefly alluding to it, but over the course of several paragraphs.

I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.

Re:Experience it first hand

He didn't compare the situations, but he compared people's pyschology, and the fact is we all like to have a tribe to rally around and see others as the enemy. A bit of maturity is hopefully learning when you're doing that and try to avoid it.

Re:Experience it first hand

Anybody who wants to experience this first hand.. just flame apple on slashdot :) and see your post mod down to hell

Been there, done that. Points drops almost as fast as when you suggest Linux may not represent perfection. ;-)

Re:I dunno..

I think the apple fanboys easily win for the moment. I'm a long time linux user, and often found the zelotry a bit embarrassing. But looking at the comments on digg when apple comes up actually make me feel a bit uneasy in general. It actually can be borderline scary seeing the amount of nerd rage apple stories can unleash there.

Re:Sorry, still trying

Tribe of Apple, meet the Church of the Amiga.

BOOYAH! :)

Re:Sorry, still trying

Apple don't have nothing on them rabid amiga hippies. I still get hate mail from them crazy mother fuckers.