The Great Double Standard

Let's face it: Microsoft is not the best example of how an enterprise must act, but the Apple good will is just too much. Here's a great article exposing it, where eWeek states:

Apple it seems can do no wrong, while Microsoft can do no right. If someone passes as in the room, someone blames Microsoft. Yet Apple can "brick" iPhones for which customers paid $400 to $600 and sales just soar.

Microsoft reports solid earnings quarter after quarter—and yesterday beat earnings estimates by more than $1 billion. Yet Microsoft's stock price is stuck at 2001 levels. Apple earnings results are good, but nowhere near what Microsoft delivers. Yet Apple's stock just climbs and climbs—this morning to more than $185 a share, up from about 77 bucks 52 weeks earlier.

...

Apple's success is one of perception, spurred on by some very smart marketing and branding decisions made over the past six years. Apple is a cool brand that people want to be associated with. When people really like something, they also tend to be more forgiving of faults.

...

Microsoft's past behavior has created some perception that its products aren't good enough, that the company doesn't care for customers. Windows Vista is a poster product for Microsoft's perception problems: It's got an undeserved bad reputation.

...

This week, a number of tech journalists gave glowing reviews of Leopard. They received the software on Mac Book Pro laptops provided by Apple. Nowhere have I seen anyone gripe about conflicts of interest. But when
Microsoft's PR agency sent bloggers preloaded Vista notebooks ahead of the operating system's launch, there were ridiculous accusations of attempted bribery. The accusations made it difficult for those receiving the Vista units to say anything positive about the operating system.

Enough is enough. Apple and Microsoft have great and shitty products. We should evaluate them for the value they return in an objective way, not to jump into the hype wagon, trying to reject this very human tendency of techno-religiosity.

[update]
For those that don't know me, the next computer I'll bye will probably be a Mac. And why? Because Apple doesn't allow me to run Mac OS X on hardware other than theirs, and Windows and Linux are not as restricted. So I'm buying Apple to be able to run as many OSs as I can. So the bad guys will won. Again.