Doctorow on the antitrust case against Apple
The foundational tenet of the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur.
Call it Apple exceptionalism" - the idea that Apple, alone among the Big Tech firms, is virtuous, and therefore its conduct should be interpreted through that lens of virtue. The wellspring of this virtue is conveniently nebulous, which allows for endless goal-post shifting by members of the Cult of Mac when Apple's sins are made manifest.
Cory Doctorow
An absolutely brilliant response to the DoJ lawsuit from Cory Doctorow.
You notice this Apple exceptionalism" a lot right now because of the new laws in the EU and now the lawsuit by the US DoJ. Apple products being better is posited as a fact, a law of the universe, and as such, any claims, either through lawsuits or legislation, that Apple is doing something wrong, illegal, or anticompetitive are by definition false. Things that, according to them, make Apple products superior" can simply not be illegal.
You also notice this a lot when it comes to the existence of Android. People who don't like being locked in or have issues with Apple's behaviour can just switch to Android, right? The thought that there are real, monetary costs to switching from iOS to Android - costs driven up by Apple's very behaviour - is irrelevant to them, because in the eyes of the tech pundit, everyone's rich.
What we'll be discovering over the course of the DoJ lawsuit - a course that will take us years - is that the general public cares a lot less about Apple as a company than Apple tech pundits think it does. People have iPhones not because they love Apple, but because their previous phone was an iPhone, because of network effects, or a bit of both. I doubt the average (in this case) American gives a rat's ass about Apple, and are much more worried about the fact they have to live paycheck-to-paycheck in a dysfunctional shell of a democracy while being told the economy is doing just great.