My “quirk” on this blog years ago was the fact that I, an Apple fan, would try using Android and Windows devices for extended periods and share my thoughts on those products. Whenever I tried to go all-in on one of these other companies’ products, I’d look around for indie bloggers and enthusiast websites centered on Android and Windows. To my dismay, there really didn’t seem to be much of an ecosystem out there for the type of blogs and communities I was used to in the Apple world. Who’s the John Gruber of Android fans' blogs? What about Windows? Paul Thurrott is all that comes to mind for Windows, but even he has been doing something different than what I was getting from the rich community we had over here in the Apple world.

People who don’t like Apple products would call us part of a “cult,” and while I think that’s an unfairly dismissive way to put it, I do think there’s something to this idea that Apple fans like Apple differently than most people like most companies. As a simple example, I know the CEO of Apple and I could name several of their executives. I can tell you when their new products are likely to come out, and I watch basically all of their product announcements live. And I don’t just know and watch this stuff, I’ll think about it and share my thoughts on this blog!

Meanwhile, I drive a Kia, I like Kia, and I’ll probably default to looking at a Kia the next time I’m in the market for a car, but I don’t know anything at all about the company’s executives and I don’t think about their product line beyond my own personal car. I’m certainly not writing blog posts about how Kia has made some UX decisions in their media controls that I find counterintuitive or that they really need to increase the power in next year’s Sorento. The same goes for Canon, Rode, Sony, and a bunch of other companies that I would say I like.

Apple’s always been a bit different, and they’ve often been the scrappy underdog who was barely surviving. They developed a fan base that wasn’t just buying their products, they often became spokespeople for the brand in general. People would put Apple stickers on their cars, they’d wear Apple shirts, and they’d be quick to tell you why a Mac was so much better than a Windows PC from that tasteless company in Redmond. And critically, a lot of these people were influential — artists, filmmakers, celebrities, and influencers. Most people used a Windows PC, but Brad Pitt and your favorite creators used a Mac.

Hell, Marques Brownlee has made a whole meme of catching celebrities who clearly used an iPhone, but took sponsorship money from Android makers. You can pay Gal Gadot to tweet something nice about Huawei, but she’s going to do it from her iPhone.

The turn

Over the past 20 years, Apple has grown immensely. At first, it was fun and exciting to see the company that had been struggling finally showing everyone that they were legit, but somewhere along the way it stopped being as fun. Record revenues and profits felt like a form of validation for all of us for a while, but today they feel less like something to cheer about.

Part of this is that Apple is no longer the underdog, they’re the biggest fish in the sea. It’s simply not as fun to root for the most successful consumer company of all time than to root for the upstart that’s trying to disrupt the big guys.

But another part is that despite achieving massive success, Apple continues to make decisions that put it at odds with the community that used to tirelessly advocate for them. They antagonize developers by demanding up to one-third of their revenue and block them from doing business the way they want. They make an ad (inadvertently or not) celebrating the destruction of every creative tool that isn’t sold by Apple. They antagonize regulators by exerting their power in ways that impact the entire market. They use a supposedly neutral notarization process to block apps from shipping on alternate app stores in the EU. Most recently they demand 30% of creators’ revenue on Patreon. No single action makes them the bad guy, but put together, they certainly aren’t acting like a company that is trying to make their enthusiast fans happy. In fact, it seems Apple is testing them to see how much they can get away with.

Oh, and this list in the last paragraph is just stuff from the past 6 months.

The decline

I’m sure Apple will continue to be very successful for many years to come and I expect to buy many products in the future as well (after all, Microsoft and Google don’t feel much better). I’ll surely even give some of those products glowing reviews on this very blog. And yet, I do wonder if the Apple enthusiast crowd as we know is in permanent decline.

You don’t need Daring Fireball, Panic, ATP, Birchtree, or anyone else like us to be massively financially successful (just look at Microsoft and Samsung), but I do find it a bit sad to see Apple stroll down the road to being a totally heartless mega corp like the rest. Why does Apple feel it’s worth trashing their relationship with creators and developers so that they can take 30% of the money I pay an up-and-coming creator who is trying to make rent in time each month? This isn’t a hypothetical, I genuinely want to know. Is the goal to turn into Microsoft, because this is how you turn into Microsoft.

And to be super clear, I think the vast majority of folks at Apple are amazing people doing amazing work, especially those in product, design, and development. There’s a reason that I use their products and there’s a reason I care enough to even comment on all this in the first place. The problems all stem from the business end of the company and I don’t know how to convince them that reputation matters. How do we convince them that they need the rebel spark like they used to have? How do we convince them there are more ways to increase their profits than by going after the paltry earnings of creators on Patreon?

It’s a pretty dark place to be when Apple’s biggest, long-time fans are hoping that the US government will step in to stop them from doing multiple things that they’re doing today. Maybe it’s because we don’t think Apple has any interest in people like us anymore as they chase the next trillion dollars in market cap.