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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.'"

11 of 870 comments (clear)

  1. At Least I'll be Vaccinated by snl2587 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  2. Re:ratio by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Re:ratio by BountyX · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
  4. Re:You just don't get it... by calebt3 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  5. Re:I blame it on Apple... by plover · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

    --
    John
  6. Re:Sorry, still trying by LoadWB · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tribe of Apple, meet the Church of the Amiga.

    BOOYAH! :)

  7. Re:I blame it on Apple... by plover · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't know why the Mac hating crowd needs to resort to 6+ year old marketing slogans

    'Cuz I'm too drunk to remember their current slogan, whatever the hell it is. I know there's something folksy about the Macbook Air music, and U2 sings Vertigo for old iPods, and there's a funny "Hi, I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" commercial campaign, but no actual slogans that have sloshed their way to my addled forebrain.

    If they had a good slogan now, I'm sure I would have made my joke about it instead. But I came up empty, like a manila envelope with nothing inside.

    Oh, and I remember Ellen Feiss. She was kind of hot, in that grunge way. But nobody takes Ellen Feiss pills any more, they smoke Ellen Feiss blunts instead. :-)

    --
    John
  8. Re:I blame it on Apple... by xenocide2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    They don't even bother with taglines anymore. They know what it is they sell, and sell it without even using words. What they sell is image.

    The macbook air ad tells you exactly what to do with it: pull it out from somewhere like a rabit from a magician's hat, then show it off to your neighbors (then put it away because it can't do shit).

    --
    I Browse at +4 Flamebait

    Open Source Sysadmin

  9. Re:Experience it first hand by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    It's a bit like the word "feminazi", which draws a completely unfair analogy, as it is deeply insulting to any proud member of the National Socialist party.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  10. Re:ratio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well you can have that look even when it's on the bottom of the screen by doing this:

    "defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -bool YES; killall Dock"
    Clearly OS X is not ready for the desktop. How is Joe User supposed to use a computer that can only be configured by typing cryptic commands into a terminal window? Come back when you can change settings like that with a simple graphical interface, like in Linux.
  11. Re:Experience it first hand by cloakable · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'm personally highly indifferent to OS*. I just felt compelled to respond to this:

    Users of other OSs need to hate them to take their mind off the endless fail they experience on a daily basis.

    I don't really want to know where you pulled that one from, but I've never experienced any failure on my boxes, let alone endless fail.

    And personally, I disagree with the Troll moderation. That is Flamebait.
    --
    No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.