Hipsters and overpriced consumer electronics?
Apple products are not really overpriced. Try buying a capable iPad-like tablet for less than $499. Try buying something like the 11" Macbook Air for less than $999. The iPhone 3GS is $49 with a two year contract.
Is there a rebel without a cause sensibility about hating Apple?
I don't think the comparison is entirely without merit. From what I can tell, a lot of the scorn directed at hipsters (or at least the "hipster" archetype/strawperson) stems from fact (or perception) that they value cultural artifacts based on the social status that they can leverage those artifacts for, rather than for any intrinsic value they might have. Compare someone who tells their friends about a band because they like the lyrics of that one song they listened to all the time in high school, vs someone who tells their friends about the same band because they want to be the first to do so, gaining some reputation in the process. (Obviously there are more subtle gradients of behaviors and motivations here, but lets stick to broad strokes.)
Apple's branding and advertising tends to exhibit a similar focus on how their products will improve your status, rather than on the capabilities of the actual hard/software. Consider the 1984 Mac ad, or the iPod silhouette ads. They weren't telling you to buy an iPod because it could hold more songs, they were telling you that if you had an iPod, you could be one of the happy beautiful people dancing on a soundstage. Compare that to a run of GeneriCo (seriously, I've seen it like ten times but I can't recall the brand) ads that have been running for back-to-school PCs on Hulu. The whole thing is a laundry list of features without any context for why they're going to make your life better. And there's a creepy guy hanging on the wall of a girl's dorm room. They haven't even grokked JWZ's level of marketing savvy (http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html) let alone Apple's.
Collide that with some long-standing geek ethics (function over form, a hard-won appreciation for the inner beauty of seemingly ugly tech, etc) and a backlash isn't all that surprising. The hipster thing is just convenient. Hating on them is already a popular internet pastime, so throwing that (as above, somewhat spiritually appropriate) label on Apple is a nice shorthand for showing how much you don't care about how big bezels should be or whether your corners are rounded. It doesn't help that there are a fairly substantial core group of Apple devotees who engage in some absurdly irrational behaviors for status-seeking reasons (which is pretty much what "hipsterism" is all about). Why, our enraged geek wants to know, would anyone stand in line at an Apple store for hours for a new iPhone? THAT IS WHAT THE INTERNET AND FEDEX IS FOR SMAAASH
So, yeah. Extending that to accusations of overpriced-ness is left as an exercise for the reader.
Let's look at the ad campaigns for the Mac and iOS devices. There was the Switch campaign where they had people talking about why they switched and how it made their lives better. The "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" campaign which was a bit abstract but talked about what the Mac could do. And the iOS ads, all of which show you real life functions of the iPhone and iPad. The iPod Touch is being marketed as a game console and they are showing real games that you can play.
Contrast this to the current crop of Samsung commercials. All the ones I have seen on TV do not show the product in any useful way, do not show what you can do with their products and claim that you will be better for buying their product. They are all very abstract.
The Acer Iconia ads are much better but aren't very well made.
The Droid Does campaign was pretty good but a little impersonal. But there was also their initial iDon't ad which told you nothing about their device but subtly referenced their competitor. Then there was that Droid X space thing which was supposed to be what exactly? And then the Droid commercials where they try and show something that the phone can do and BTW, you will turn into some super awesome android guy.
So in recent times, Apple has not been playing the social status card so much. Also, geeks are just as vulnerable to the social status message. Just look at this "Apple is over priced and it is all about marketing" meme. Geeks are just seeking increased social status in a different group. But they want it just as much as the Apple crowd.
Look at the lid of every mac book. Which way up is the Apple? Your way so that you naturally see it right side up when opening the lid? - no - it's upside down to you, because the point is, everyone else is supposed to see it.
It's just one more example of design that makes sense.
More broadly, this is the kind of rationalizing which probably come from some irrational hate that the grandparent is talking about.
Also to talk about advertising, it generally works that way. Not just in the first world, but in the third world too.
Let me give you an anecdote. tl;dr: ads targeted towards working class in India had the decor which is not even common among wealthy, it works.
I grew up in India, in a rather wealthy family in a medium-sized city. And I mention that, because with it comes with something which is very uncommon in most of the Western world and even bigger Indian cities. I had an entourage as a kid, the kind that only old money has in US, with a pretty minute fraction of wealth. And I was close with some of my help, been to their homes, parties etc. (May sound weird, but is not that common in that part of the world.) And most ads which specifically target them, project a lifestyle which I have generally not seen even among the wealthy i.e. people who they work for. And yet, instead of shying away from those products and considering them elitist, they embraced them, as opposed to the things that used more down to earth marketing. I have not watched Indian TV for almost a decade, but I doubt that things have changed a lot.
So what's wrong with Apple projecting a slightly more stylish and affluent image. Benz does that too, and so do most startup videos I have seen, irrespective of whether they were made by Adam Lisagor.
Errata: On second thoughts, I am not sure if it was true for the ThinkPad. But the Dells and HPs were like that.
The difference with the Apple logo is that it is usually illuminated - rather than mere branding that you have to look for, it actually pulls your eye and works as an advertisement due to the difference in illuminance.
Going back to ThinkPad, I think the difference was that it was a small logo on the corner. Consider having a big ThinkPad logo in the center, and how odd it may look to anybody who looks at the user. Probably why other manufacturers also do it.
Thinkpad's branding ("Lenovo" and the angled "Thinkpad" in the corner) face the owner when the laptop is closed.
The Apple is inverted. When the laptop lid is up (in use), it's advertising Apple to others. When the laptop lid is closed, the owner sees an upside-down apple.
That's marketing genius.
(Typed on a Thinkpad, running Debian GNU/Linux, of course: while I appreciate marketing genius, I prefer technical superiority ;-)
No ? Oh so it's not really apples-to-apples then.
Just ignore it and carry on.