There is a tendency to give Apple a pass among the big companies. They sell actual products instead of you, the user('s data). Their logistical chain does not rely upon a system of (often fellow American) warehouse workers who are pushed to the breaking point. [The developing world workforce that actually assembles their products- that's another story, but bogus hoaxes like Mike Daisey's only add confusion and make their supply chain working conditions seem more innocuous than critics claim.] They don't actively contribute to the disruptions and dysfunctions in our society that social networking have brought us. Somehow just by being less apparently bad, people assume that means they're more automatically good. But that's a fallacy; the badness can exist elsewhere, and given a culture of secrecy and silence, can be readily hidden.
They're also hip, maintain some level of underdog cachet, and folks like their products. People wish they could be that, and tend to give a pass to the things they idolize.
You might also imagine that inside a company made of money, there's no need for anyone to be a jerk.
They were clear underdogs in the 90s, and it's maybe only in the last decade or so that they've been in dominant mega-corp territory. I'm sure a lot of people still carry associations from that older time that haven't been completely extinguished.
Yes, that's what I was alluding to "the developing world workforce." For whatever reason, despite reoccurring reports about worker abuses from Foxconn/Wistron, Apple often gets a pass in the discourse- possibly because those workers are out of sight, out of mind.
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