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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

Apple is different because it’s a super-vertical. “I love/hate Apple” goes from the physical layer up to the entire platform and ecosystem. Apple is a shared experience.

Nobody gives a hoot about Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc because they are just commodity providers. People do very much care about Microsoft, but they do so on different horizontal layers — finance guys love Excel, IT guys love AD, developers love Visual Studio. But... there is no shared experience.

I think bias is the wrong characterization. End of the day, Apple is very good at communicating their position on things, and they do it across their portfolio. My nine year old son is somehow excited about the M1 chip. Some of the stuff that sounds like bias is really a reflection of people actually knowing what the company is doing.

Other than niche companies like Ferrari, I can’t think of anyone better at marketing and communications than Apple.

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The vendor lock-in aspect of the super-vertical integration is definitely one of the more abundant points of complaint I see. I get that it's a controversial choice, and it goes hand in hand with their proprietary standard model, which I think is what feeds my suspicion that there is actual bias at play, as opposed to strong opinions being voiced without the bias.

There seems to be as much shared experience in ragging on Apple as there is in using their products and maybe in supporting their positions in the face of naysayers. Other providers offer similar integrated experience. Google has entries in most hardware markets, and Amazon certainly exercises a ubiquity across more than just the IT industry.

I wondered about 'bias' being the right thing to talk about, of course I was influenced by the complainants characterisation. I imagine I have a pro-Apple bias to some degree. Certainly I know I like the products, infrastructure, and integration, and I'm largely supportive of their technical direction. Is it bias, or are these conversations purely opinion based?

I don't fully understand what you mean by "a reflection of people actually knowing what the company is doing." There might be some misinformation floating around, but I would expect that to balance over time and subject matter. If you mean that some people chime in to these conversations without enough information I suppose my lesson here is not to feed the trolls :)

Great to hear the young one is interested!

If you follow Apple stuff, ask a random non nerd about something that recently happened in the Apple universe and they’ll typically know at least half of the story. They may not understand, but awareness exists. Ask people about any other company except maybe Facebook. They have no clue. Nobody knows what version of Windows they have, etc.

Apple rarely has more than a half dozen SKUs in any category. Everyone knows what they are. Even people who complain about Apple know about the products.

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