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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

A lot of the elitism (or at least what I consider elitism) from Gruber, Arment, Siegler et all is incredibly off-putting to me -- and I own a MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone.

That being said, I think this is an incredibly well-reasoned and well-crafted explanation of the massive chasm between Apple 'fanboys' and Apple 'haters' -- and explains to me why, as a current zealot of the iOS ecosystem, I nonetheless find so much Apple commentary off-putting. Really great job by Marco and makes me much more inclined to subscribe to the Magazine.

Nothing's perfect for everyone. Some things are perfect for some people.

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>Apple’s products are opinionated. They say, “We know what’s best for you. Here it is. Oh, that thing you want to do? We won’t let you do that because it would suck. Trust us. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

Problem is, Apple's acolytes won't leave you alone to go through the door - they'll follow you and keep telling you you're a wrong for wanting something different or thinking different (the irony is always lost). Some of them will even write long and detailed blog posts about how 3.5" is the perfect screen size, and and if you think differently, you're wrong. (http://dcurt.is/3-point-5-inches), or maintain popular blogs which a little more than a large collection of stupid, snide remarks (Gruber).

In all fairness, he did call out Apple on the 4" screen being less-than-ideal:

http://dcurt.is/4-inches/

He's still completely ignoring the fact that Apple in their infinite wisdom decided that you absolutely must use two hands to zoom (pinch).

That sort of defeats any argument that they designed the phone for one-handed use.

This isn't true. You can double tap to zoom.

I don't see that in the comment on many websites. Just reams (almost literally) of Android users doing precisely what you describe.

I don’t think that’s very prevalent. I see exactly the opposite. People telling users of Apple products that they are wrong. They won’t leave you alone.

I'm sorry, but there was nothing "well-reasoned and well-crafted" about that article. He does come off as an Apple elitist, that's true. But how can he explain the chasm between Apple 'fanboys' and 'haters' when he clearly does not understand and perhaps has never used the other platforms? This to me is Apple elitism at it's worst. It may be a bit more polished but, ultimately, it's no different than the thousands of other Apple fanboy posts that fill the internet.

You are absolutely correct.

In fact, it is this (the elitism), that makes me hate Apple and their products more than any lack of feature in iOS ever could.

The problem is not elitism, but that there is virtually only one "elite" brand and that is Apple. Sony at least gets points for trying. Everyone else is just flailing. This is an anomaly in any other industry, and many industries are the polar opposite.

Can you imagine a world where there are hundreds of varieties of wine, but only several that are any good? Where you can pick between dozens of $2 bottles and several at $50 or more?

Apple's perceived elitism comes from people that produce something they truly care about, that are opinionated and uncompromising. That this is shockingly rare in the technology industry is fundamentally worrying.

I am sorry but it seems really unfair to developers of other tech products when you say truly caring about products is rare. Opinionated and uncompromising - that I may agree to, yes that is rare. But when we see attempts in this direction, by anyone other than a few companies (don't want to name Apple because I fear I will be marked as a fanboy), the attempts are marked as anti-user, draconian and anti-competitive (may not be illegal yet). Examples: Twitter pulling off API (widespread criticism), Facebook and Google+ real name policies (I think Facebook doesn't really enforce it anymore and Google+ now supports pseudonyms), Windows secure boot, Chrome making it difficult to sideload extensions, Quora locking up its contents etc.

While we see all of these other attempts as largely evil, we consider Apple to be producing _pieces of art_ that are allows them to compromise on universal acceptability. We, however, don't give that leeway to virtually anything else.

I think the problem is not that there is an "elite" brand and "the other one"; the problem is that when you are basically dealing with a two-party competition, especially in politics, people become incredibly entrenched, be it Windows vs. Mac, PlayStation vs. Xbox, Republicans vs. Democrats, and so on and so forth.

It encourages a narrative of a hero and a villain, a protagonist and antagonist, right and wrong, good and bad.

> there is virtually only one "elite" brand and that is Apple

Bzzt, thank you for playing.

What sticks in my craw is that they're not even "elite", they just do things differently, and not always better than the competition/Android, even for things like UI.

And if Apple are found to have done or said something stupid (Nexus 7 vs. the iPad mini springs to mind here, along with the early 'supercomputer' G4s being hamstrung by their PC133 memory bus), then history is revised, instead of people learning from their mistakes.

I don't see how Motorola/Freescale and IBM having shifted focus from competitive consumer PowerPC chips to embedded applications reflects so badly on Apple. That platform remained competitive with Intel until the G5, which never hit its stride.

Apple learned from their mistake. They made a dramatic transition to Intel inside of a single year. The impact to consumers was nearly zero.

Compare this with Microsoft's recent efforts to switch to ARM.

This is nothing to do with the processor, or PowerPC vs. Intel, but the memory bus in early G4s being a limiting factor. The G4 was great in specific Photoshop benchmarks, but getting beaten in real world tests by 18 month old Pentium IIIs.

Of course, you'd never know that from the ads or commentary at the time (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwI7xcdYV2k).

This, right here, is the elitism. The idea that Apple's employees "produce something they truly care about" is applying quite a brushstroke of glowing praise to thousands of random people. How do you know this? Because Apple TELLS you they produce something they truly care about. It really is that simple - that is their marketing message.

Creating stereotypes of users is not a valid excuse to hate a company and its products. One could find any number of asswipes under any banner to justify this type of silly tribalism.

Ditto. I'm hesitant to use the word "elitism" to describe the outspoken Apple fans, but it's especially aggravating when someone writes up extremely harsh reviews or descriptions of a competing product when it doesn't act or perform in the way that matches their ideal.

Also, I know everyone has the right to freedom of speech and such, but I find it to be somewhat disgusting and irresponsible for people with large followings to take cheap shots at competing platforms just to get people riled up.

At least there's always Siracusa.

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