Apple, Valve, Kagi, GitHub, Mozilla, 404 Media, etc…

Why are people willing to sell their kids to defend the above companies?

  • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
    13·
    1 month ago

    With Apple it’s just sunk cost fallacy / Stockholm syndrome. Maybe you like apple products, that’s fine. But when you’re later confronted with almost £1000 for a monitor stand the mind needs to choose between i) I’m a mug and these people have clearly taken advantage of me or ii) no, this is a superior product, I’m a superior consumer, those poor chumps just can’t see it.

    There isn’t really an in-between.

  • BigSadDad@lemmy.world
    12·
    1 month ago

    Jeez there’s been a shit ton of astroturfing happening lately. I guess Lemmy is finally big enough to be targeted by these guys.

    How much do you all get paid? I’m interested.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    8·
    1 month ago

    I don’t see people “forming a cult”.

    • Apple does a walled garden that I don’t want but some people are fine with. If you give them a bunch of money and these days entrust them with a bunch of your data, they will give you a pre-set-up environment that works well. That’s fine for a lot of people.

    • Valve does a successful electronic storefront that has synergized well with the Linux world. God forbid Microsoft were in their position. They aren’t DRM-free, but you can use GOG if you want that, and the commercial game world was not going to go DRM-free.

    • Kagi takes money, provides privacy for a search engine and some perks; they let their customer be a customer rather than the product. I use it myself, am happy with it. That’s a tradeoff that I’d wanted for a while, and would like Google to provide with YouTube.

    • GitHub wouldn’t be my own choice for source hosting in the Microsoft era, but so far they seem to be getting along reasonably well. They provide functionality that’s needed, source hosting plus issue tracking, and their system is pretty usable.

    • Mozilla does Firefox, which is much more customizable than Chrome. I use it!

    • I don’t know what 404 Media does. Some sort of tech reporting, looks like. Okay, fine.

    If you don’t want to use any of those, you can probably avoid all of them, other than maybe GitHub if projects you use are hosted there.

    I decided in the late '90s, when Apple killed the Mac clone market and took things towards a single-vendor platform, that it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but for some people, it’s fine. Other than 404 Media, which I don’t know about, I don’t have any problem with the others here, and some are companies that I’m fairly happy with.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    5·
    1 month ago

    Apple used to be the underdog in comparison to Microsoft before the iPhone existed.

    Mozilla, well I tend to defend FOSS organizations, but this particular one isn’t very easy to defend.

  • Kairos@lemmy.today
    5·
    1 month ago

    What’s wrong with 404?

    And the answer is marketing. Exploiting our subconscious is down to a science these days.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 month ago

    I think you should reframe the thinking. All corporations are profit driven, and exploiting a devoted fanbase is very profitable. Innovation, customer service, commitment to quality, these are things that cam build loyalty, but capitalism demands growth. If you run out of ideas or saturate the market, the only way to grow profits is to cut costs. Customer service and commitment to quality might be the last things to go, but they will go eventually.