You know you’ve made it when otherwise sane and rational people spill bile and hatred all over the internet at your company, your product and your customers.
This week ought to see Apple reeling from the sucker punch of the ever-so out of context reporting of recent suicides at a subcontractor’s plant in China. Reporting that goes to great lengths to mention that Apple’s iPhone and other products are assembled there whilst neglecting to mention that HP, Dell and Microsoft all have their products made by Foxconn.
This has made the news, and given Apple-haters plenty of opportunity to point fingers. Someone I’d previously thought a friend took exception to me adding some balance to a Facebook post about Apple/Foxconn, in so doing branding all Apple owners as ‘a cult of smug wankers’ then laying into me in no uncertain terms.
Personal sleights aside, this week has also seen Apple surpass once-mighty Microsoft’s market cap, the international launch of the million-plus selling iPad, with lines around the block in London, Sydney, Tokyo and many other cities across the world ,I shouldn’t wonder.
And in news that’s going to make authors across the US (a US tax ID is required) sit up and take notice, Apple also announced that authors will be able to cut out intermediaries and publish directly to the iBookstore for iPad.
I’ve been a Mac user since 1993, I owned a Mac all through the ‘dark times’ for Apple; I was a subscriber to Guy Kawasaki’s EvangeList mailing list; I’ve done my fair share of encouraging friends and family to switch. I guess I’m one of those people that Apple haters despise. I won’t pretend to understand the motivation of these people – to so diligently troll online forums, blog comments and magazine websites for opportunities to spread hatred. Any discussion of Macs, wherever it takes place is considered fair game to go off topic and rant about whatever the anti-Apple issue of the day is.
On the other hand, Apple’s so-called fan-boys have been known to get pretty heated too when seeking to redress the balance of negative reporting, though there’s a little less of that since the days of ‘beleaguered Apple’ in the 90s.
For a company to incite such passion on either extreme shows that they’re doing it right. Keep it up Apple!
Image credit: kyz via Creative Commons on Flickr.
