Please...stop the madness! The trend of prefacing every criticism or, indeed, observation with an apology to the fanbois or a cheery positive "Apple is awesome, but.." statement has gone too far. It's actually quite amazing how many articles and comments follow this template. And it has to stop. The Cupertino Thought Police is not going to kick your door in and drag you to the Infinite Loop basement for a Think Different session. The Internet won't grind to a halt, you won't be named and shamed...everything will be okay!

Sure some fanbois with advanced symptoms might possibly berate you publicly or even downvote your post/article and that's it. It really is okay to not love Apple. Or point out that Apple isn't perfect. It's even okay to not own any Apple products whatsoever. Full disclosure...I do own Apple products and OS X is my daily driver of choice. But I have no emotional attachment to Apple's products, I don't buy Apple products exclusively and I do not worship at the iAlter or have a man crush on Steve Jobs.

The over-the-top reverence for Apple even by people who are far from being fanatical iCult members really is extraordinary. If you find some of their products useful, great, if their products aren't a good fit for you, that's great too. Apple is not the mafia (yet) and you owe the company nothing.