OK, let's go through this using mostly basic inductive logic:
You of all people should understand complainers and critics are more motivated to voice their displeasure online than people who are satisfied.
Of course. That's human nature. And/but:
- Over thousands and thousands of decisions that a company makes, there will be situations where the majority of people — be it the general population or the company's own users — don't like some of those decisions.
- There will be others — and literally by definition, the minority — who do like those decisions.
- People have affinity for brands. Hundreds and hundreds of studies conducted over many decades have demonstrated this.
- Some of these people are diehard fans.
- Apple has a reputation for having a non-trivial and noteworthy number of them who have stronger than average brand affinity. Sources: studies of opinion, analysis of repeat buyers, analysis of network effects, people literally saying it themselves.
- Brand affinity guides purchasing decisions for many, even when every other attributes of the product really ought to point a person toward another product. This is why brands are often included in market research when doing conjoint analysis.
The above is a direct quote from your post. Apple does have a reputation where apple customers defend Apple. That is something every business wishes for. A company that "screws" it's customers and the customers come back and throw money at apple. Let me be first in line to start a business where there are rabid defenders of my product and my customers will buy my goods and services just because.
I'm not sure what your point is. Of course this is true. It's almost axiomatic, but it doesn't really have bearing on my point.
You previously used the word "objective" in the context of design choices. I pointed out that I didn't use that word. But I will say that if you read what the best people in Product (I'm using capital "P" to refer to the discipline) write, you'll find they overwhelmingly agree on principles of software design. It's execution where things get murky. Regardless, using those Product rules and heuristics, there are design choices that come about as close as can be to "objective" while still being an opinion on a technical level. If 0.01% of people like a design choice and 99.99% dislike it, I think we are well past the point of saying, "Well, I guess the 0.01% just have a different opinion."
I suppose you could try to argue otherwise, but to reuse another one of your earlier words,
that is semantics. Or you might try to argue that the 99.99% example is a straw man argument. OK, but the fact that it's compelling means that there is
some number at which the conclusion holds. But we don't need to even try to quantify what that threshold "should" be in what is a gray area. The fact that it exists is sufficient to support what I said.
And c'mon. Let's be reasonable. We've all seen bad interfaces.
As far as the "majority" goes, you have no way of quantifying or substantiating that. It's hyperbole.
See above. It isn't hyperbole at all when applied to what I was saying which is the
general point — that there
are decisions on which that situation happens. That they exist.
As for the numbers on any issue, well, this is purely tangential, but we/I/you
DO have ways to quantify and substantiate them on any issue. In fact, they're actually pretty straightforward to get on just about anything as long as you're willing to pay for that information. Market research gets you to market sizing and a zillion other factual conclusions about public opinion. And while you might argue that the margin of error or design bias are at play for situations in the 50% range, once you get to 75% or above, I can't think of a way to torture survey design, instrumentation, and the data itself enough with a reasonable sample to possibly turn a sub-50% number to 75%.
So in light of the above, let's review what I actually said:
- Claim: Apple has a strong fanbase that often isn't critical and in fact is accepting of some decisions. (You conceded the first part for sure.)
- It's recognized by lots of people, including industry experts, financial analysts, and the media, as being noteworthy precisely because it's so strong. Many brands don't have that. You yourself said it's something brands strive for. I think you'd have a really hard time if you tried to prove that it doesn't exist.
- There are boneheaded decisions that exist. (You already conceded this too.)
- There will be people in that strong fanbase who are fine with and even enthusiastic about those boneheaded decisions when the majority (the population, Apple users, whatever) disapproves.
- My only real opinion that I expressed here: that we should collectively strive to call out what we see as boneheaded decisions and avoid the bias that brand affinity can create.
I'm really not sure why you're still trying to defend an indefensible position. It seems you latched onto a couple words but didn't actually read them in my context and instead assumed they or I meant something else — probably things you've read from others that do bother you. Maybe it's triggering to you. I don't know.
I think it's worth asking yourself why this happened. But
that one truly is just my opinion.
