[thepostman0]

You still love apple products? This sounds like Stockholm syndrome, I seriously mean that. You are paying your captors.

[mort96]

I don't understand how you draw a connection between this and Stockholm syndrome. "The products are great when they work, but Apple is horrible to deal with when something goes wrong" is a completely sensible opinion.

And after all, the 99% case is that things work well. Choosing products which are worse 99% of the time but where the company is more pleasant to work with in the 1% case where something goes wrong is a tough sell. (Omitted from this discussion is whether Apple products are truly better when they work or not. That's a wholly unproductive discussion which comes down to opinion and mattcantstop clearly thinks that they are.)

[HelloNurse]

It's a completely sensible reason to avoid products that are undependable by design.

Many Apple "engineering" decisions favor the walled garden over robustness; for example, I am unable to update many important applications on my old work Macintosh because they were installed from the app store using an "Apple account", or whatever it's called, that cannot be used anymore because the colleague who knew the password has left the company; having a privileged account on the computer isn't good enough.

[bryanrasmussen]

there are various programmer types who find the Apple way really onerous and problematic, because they want to control everything, these can be either Windows or Linux since both give you the ability to control and mod your system at very high level.

Every example of bad behavior by Apple in relation to their products, customer service etc. connects in the mind with this underlying philosophical difference between how computers should be used, and so the indignant feeling wells up in their brain that Apple users are misled and abused, and if you are misled and abused you must have Stockholm syndrome.

This however is just my reading of the phenomenon I have observed quite a lot.

Before anyone tells me I'm an Apple lover, I would say until the M1 I considered all OS'es equivalent with some various benefits to each, but as long as I have M series Macs I do believe they are very superior (but haven't tried recent - this year - non M machine)

[112233]

When sonething Apple does not work (e.g. icloud sync) it simply does not work, there is nothing you can do.

If windows or linux does not work, there is easy 50 step manual fix on arch wiki, toutube, tomsguide (you have to try all to find the right one)

Do you know how nice is to be able to tell others, that there is nothing you can do, and mean it?

[crossroadsguy]

Right. 50 step manual fix! Only that it actually is like generally 3-4 step fix.

But I get it. As opposed to trying to let it sink in that something that could have easily been fixed and diagnosed you get to hear “buy a new one; nothing can do”, I am sure being able to fix something is less appealing. Because we must not lose sight of things like the organismic satisfaction one experiences when being able to pay for something Apple. That opportunity! Oh, my breathing is going up already. Just the thought of it.

Yeah, I get what you mean.

[rahoulb]

There are times when I find this utterly infuriating, but other times it's an absolute blessed relief. I know there's no point wasting time hunting for a solution (that may or may not make the situation worse) and I should just walk away and do something more meaningful instead.

[kbelder]

It's interesting when somebody lists A, B, and then comes to the exact opposite conclusion C that you would. What a different life you and I must have lead.

[danmur]

lol, plausible deniability

[amelius]

I told my family: fine, you can buy Apple products, but don't expect me to fix them when they fail.

[nikanj]

The 50 step manual fix is actually just generated by chatgpt and sounds plausible, but does not actually work. It's just a red herring to get page clicks / ad views.

[handsclean]

Stockholm Syndrome was invented by a man who didn’t even talk to the people he accused of it, but simply asserted it as explanation for why former hostages were criticizing the police, while those former hostages were clearly stating that it was because the police were aggressive and irrational, escalating with acts like unnecessarily pointing guns, and generally disregarding the safety of the hostages. The only other famous case turned out to be acting under duress. It is to this date not a real psychological diagnosis.

Similarly, if you’d like to understand why people put up with Apple’s moderate abuse, maybe ask not how one might write them off as insane, but instead what their alternatives are.

[thinkingemote]

I think it's more like defence of investment. They have spent tens of thousands of money, time, knowledge on this brands ecosystem of devices and software. It's not just airpods it's the phone, watch, desktop, laptop, all the software purchased over their lifetime and the identity that goes along with it. In deciding to leave there's also future costs of moving to something more free but "worse".

The pain needs to be way greater than the cost of what they have invested. In a way they are not captors of peoples freedom but bankers who hold people's time, effort and money. Even with OP's case I can almost guarantee that whilst he might consider moving away from Apple because of his bricked laptop, he won't - he will side with his investments. Leaving this ecosystem would also cause psychological pain - its very hard to tell oneself that "I was wrong".

The genius is that Apple makes good stuff and they know that what they make "just works" and it all works great together and people will invest not only money but their very selves in the company. The company is the world biggest tech company for a reason.

[npteljes]

I think it's rather "pick your poison". It's not like there are non-sucky options available. And I mean this generally.

[gureddio]

All of these ecosystems have problems. I'm a long term Google Pixel user and I could list all of the irritating problems I've had over the years

[mschuster91]

Hardware-wise it's hard to beat Apple on build quality and resale value. The software side though has really gone downhill.

[cramjabsyn]

Oh please