"What surprises me is why they would be more popular than ever, after a year with so much bad press."
The fact is, most people are not going on sensationalist tech blogs at all, and those that do are mostly not swayed by articles or nerds on the internet telling them what they can and can't buy. Other people think more independently than people like to believe (there's probably a name for this fallacy), it's just hard for some people to understand that someone else could have different priorities.
Those articles and comments are for and by people who have mostly already made up their mind. Blogs preach to the choir. People read and upvote things that confirm the beliefs they already had. Android fanatics will continue to screech about the lack of a headphone jack on the iPhone or full size USB on the Mac regardless, and weren't ever going to buy one anyway.
Yeah, the headphone jack removal probably put some people off the iPhone 7, even I admit it's an inconvenience and has been annoying. But despite all the bad press, it's just not, overall, the world ending problem that reddit/Hacker News would have you believe.
I won't pretend Apple has never broken the law or acted immorally, but profit and sales reports aren't like anti-poaching agreements. They have to go through so many people who can catch or oppose them, are so regulated, and are so directly and unambiguously illegal, that there's virtually no chance Apple is deliberately and directly falsifying them.
The fact is, most people are not going on sensationalist tech blogs at all, and those that do are mostly not swayed by articles or nerds on the internet telling them what they can and can't buy. Other people think more independently than people like to believe (there's probably a name for this fallacy), it's just hard for some people to understand that someone else could have different priorities.
Those articles and comments are for and by people who have mostly already made up their mind. Blogs preach to the choir. People read and upvote things that confirm the beliefs they already had. Android fanatics will continue to screech about the lack of a headphone jack on the iPhone or full size USB on the Mac regardless, and weren't ever going to buy one anyway.
Yeah, the headphone jack removal probably put some people off the iPhone 7, even I admit it's an inconvenience and has been annoying. But despite all the bad press, it's just not, overall, the world ending problem that reddit/Hacker News would have you believe.
I won't pretend Apple has never broken the law or acted immorally, but profit and sales reports aren't like anti-poaching agreements. They have to go through so many people who can catch or oppose them, are so regulated, and are so directly and unambiguously illegal, that there's virtually no chance Apple is deliberately and directly falsifying them.