People complain about the products that are best for them. Nobody (with the power to decide what they use) complains about a product long, unless it is still their best choice.
And suppliers of products being complained about are not companies "not worth supporting". They are making the product that is the best fit for the complaining customer! They are not perfect. They can do better. So customers speak up.
Your last point is exactly where I'm coming from here. People complaining about a product is usually a sign of its wide, and possibly avid, use.
After trying UI design tools and web development on Windows and Linux machines and finding the experience very sub-par for my needs, I've found macOS, and by extension, Apple's hardware quality, choice of keyboard layout, ease of use, etc. to be superior for my needs. I have almost no complaints about the Mac platform with the ways I've been able to customize it, and its nag-free experience. As they say, it just works™. ;)
It feels made for UI design & development, with minimal to no configuration, no late nights fixing file permissions or access issues, fixing Linux subsystems, fiddling with very limited terminals, and suffering from buggy piecemeal UI shell packages that prioritize fancy, laggy animations over functionality.
On the contrary, I've found not only doing these tasks and multitasking to be very frustrating when getting serious work done on other machines, primarily frequent interruptions (Windows) and major inconsistencies with global keyboard shortcuts.
For what it's worth, I'm also a staunch Android user, never owned an iPhone, occasionally use an iPad for reading and other content creation, absolutely love my Windows PC for gaming and surfing on my TV, and work exclusively on my MacBook. I'm very particular about using the most suitable machines for the tasks at hand, but well-rounded enough not to be completely captured by Apple.
If it's been a few years since you gave Linux a try, I'd strongly recommend giving it another go.
I had 2 macbooks fail simultaneously over the new year, and instead of laying down the $$$ for a new m3 mackbook, I put a linux station together, with the intent for it to be a windows dual boot.
At this point a couple of months later, windows is no more than a KVM/QEMU virtual machine (and runs its DAW/synth apps, significantly faster and with greater stability than either of my dead m1 macbooks ever did.)
Best tool for the job has changed.
An equipment manuifacturer who's goal is for hw failures to trigger a new purchase and not a repair should be enough incentive to ditch them. We all know Apple has fallen way further than that.
They're a litigious, anti-consumer company that hides behind some fake, faded, John Lennon esque / hipster image.
> If it's been a few years since you gave Linux a try, I'd strongly recommend giving it another go.
I've heard this since around 2004, and did try it every once in a while. And while I have the utmost respect for the Linux desktop developers... the experience was never comparable to me. I'm a sucker for well-thought out and coherent user interfaces, and the rigid principles Apple developers have to follow are no match for a loose group of open source devs.
I will continue to follow their progress, but as it stands, using a Linux desktop on my main machine feels like swapping a Mercedes with a home-built Gokart.
I've been using only Linux (Manjaro) for the last six years, and although there's been marked improvement it's still in many ways buggier and clunkier for everyday use than even Windows.
and they're not "supporting" a company by merely buying their product.
They are deciding that said product is the best fit for price on their individual criteria.
To "support" would require you to make sacrifices - aka, buy an inferior/worse-fit product from a company you want to support, instead of from the company that actually offers the best-fit for yourself.
When I bought my MacBook Pro M1 Pro (ugh, stupid names, c'mon Apple!), it was probably the most confident I felt about a technology purchase in years, at least since Apple finally ditched the ridiculous touch bar and gave us back the Escape key and function row.
Aside from me throwing too much at it (should've sprung for 32GB), it's the single best notebook I've ever owned, and the most reliable.
To say it was the best fit for me is an understatement! It's truly great!
People complain about the products that are best for them. Nobody (with the power to decide what they use) complains about a product long, unless it is still their best choice.
And suppliers of products being complained about are not companies "not worth supporting". They are making the product that is the best fit for the complaining customer! They are not perfect. They can do better. So customers speak up.