The AAPL Church, Forums, and the Unbearable Need of Being Holier than “Right.”
This is not just about Apple. It’s about the culture of discourse collapse, and passive censorship by conviction. WWDC25 didn’t just spark debate—it lit a bonfire of tribalism. From a pulpit, dissenters weren’t debated—they were excommunicated. Discourse dies one holy rebuttal at a time.
Published on tommo.fyi, June 2025, by Tommo_UK
“You don’t have to be right, just loud and long enough that no one notices you aren’t.” — Modern Forum Logic
Firstly let me make one thing clear: this article is based on an actual comments thread, but all participants have been anonymised along with with site, and the comments paraphrased when used.
And it goes without saying that no references to actual people are made, or comments attributed to.
So if you feel insulted by this post, before you open your mouth, close it and think: you've only got yourself to blame, if this seems to hit as a home truth to you.
"No commentators or bloggers were injured in the writing of this article."
Something curious happened in the aftermath of Apple's WWDC25 developers conference.
Not the keynote itself, which was essentially a software soufflé presentation trying to build on the collapsing foundations of last year’s promised vapourware — no, the truly revealing spectacle was in the comment threads.
One in particular, over on very well known and highly respected blog, began like a conversation and ended like a sermon. A well-meaning, intelligent blog post — summarising Apple’s awkward PR dance around last year’s Siri “not-faked-we-promise” demo — gave way to a slow-building flame war. Except this wasn’t just your usual spat between bulls and bears.
This was a heresy trial.
One poster in particular (let’s call him Blandon) took it upon himself to defend the faith, declaring that anyone with doubts about Apple’s execution, vision, or honesty should simply “invest in something else.” In other words: leave the church if you’re not here to pray.
It was, in many ways, the most Apple thing Apple could have inspired — a holy war of vibes over facts. And it’s worth unpacking, not just for what it says about the stock, but for what it says about how we talk to each other now. So let’s walk through this miniature collapse of discourse — and what it reveals.
ACT I: The Council Gathers — A Rational Debate Begins
The early voices were largely balanced
Don S. raised fair concerns: What if Apple’s AI is late? What if it misses the inflection point?
Lex L. chimed in with philosophical calm: Succession planning, internal shifts — we’re watching a slow-motion pivot.
Jo D. was candid: I’ve held since 2001. I’m not selling. But AI feels different. The urgency is real.
Greg L. took the operational angle: Craig is sharp. Tim’s a logistics guy. It’s not the same Apple as it was.
These were thoughtful investors — some very long-term holders, even — raising concern without panicking, trying to untangle signal from narrative. The kind of exchange you hope to see after a major event.
And then… it was full-on Darth Vader. Breathlessly slaying the infidels with his light sabre of holy truth.
ACT II: Blandon Enters the Temple
Without warning, the mood shifted.
Blandon, High Priest of Eternal Conviction, stepped forward.
“If you’ve lost faith in Apple, you should invest in something else.”
“I’ve seen this all before. Every time people doubted Apple, they were wrong.”
“People are judging Apple before the facts are in.”
“We don’t know how bad the Siri thing was.”
and this classic sowing of FUD... curse this Judas!
“Gruber was probably manipulated by an insider Iago.”
There it was — the full sacramental rite of the AAPL Faithful:
The Three Commandments:
- Dismiss history: in favour of anecdotes.
- Conspiracy flaming: attribute all criticism to betrayal or conspiracy.
- Gaslight: never engage the substance, only the intent.
When Step G. calmly noted that Gruber, one of the most respected Apple defenders and critical thinkers for years, had every right to question a clear misstep and vent a personal outrage on his blog?
“He went way overboard,” said Blandon. “And he relied on insider information. That really pisses me off.”
OOoo errrr misssus. He was "really pissed off." Not so much questioning the veracity of Gruber's article, but its source. Because in a religion, the source can only come from one place: utter faith in a plan we cannot comprehend - except the Pope of course. And nobody is allowed to question him, no matter what the Cath0lic Church may have done in the past (or present) but somehow escaped condemnation for its absolute sins. Why? Because of "faith."
When Lex L. offered balanced commentary about Apple’s missteps, recovery, and the value of critique?
Blandon: “Be careful, Alex. Maybe Gruber’s been manipulated. Ever heard of an Iago?”
Oh my... he's been corrupted by the devil and has been misled into taking a bite out of the Apple, just like Adam. Ye shall be cast out of the Walled Garden!
Yes. That’s where we landed. Shakespearean treachery inside Apple, deployed to sabotage a blogger. The paranoia wasn’t even original — just loud.
And each time someone tried to bring the thread back to reality, he’d dismiss them, subtly or not, with some version of:
“Stick to your knitting. Or leave the church.”
ACT III: The Heresy Trials
A few tried to bridge the divide.
Tim N. dissected the language:
Was it really “faked” or just “vaporware”?
On this note: does it really matter? It didn’t ship, it was a totally fabricated delivery timeline and spoken with all the marketing conviction and CGI of a Hollywood production - and turned out to be more Pulp Fiction than anything resembling reality.
WWDC2024 last year also encouraged people to upgrade their iPhones to the iPhone 16 to ”cope” with the new AI and Siri (still not delivered a year later) with its replacement- the iPhone 17 - or whatever nomenclature Apple choose - waiting to be launched in the wings in a few months. Last year the faithful had been told their old handsets wouldn’t be compatible with last year's NewSiri and AI. I suppose this year it will be the same old rubbish, without NewSIri or NewAI even having made it to the launch timeline but just another WWDC demo. Again. Talk about a bait and switch schtick.
Ben L. laid out Gruber’s “four stages of doneness” to show Apple hadn’t even hit stage one. But Blandon’s countered:
“Would you like some cheese with that whine?”
Welcome to high discourse, 2025-style.
It no longer matters how well you argue, how calmly you present your case, or even how loyal you’ve been (Jeff D. held since 2001!). Once you’ve questioned The Holy Narrative, you’re on trial.
When I finally stepped in after having not read this avalanche of discord for the entire day — after years of documented, accurate warnings about Apple’s internal dysfunction, creaking OS stack, failed car project, and overhyped AVP and my own warnings about AI and internal corporate dysfunction — I attempted to demonstrate than my active participation in many controversial and touchy subjects which universally were proven to have merit with historical hindsight, showed clarity and understanding. I really can't help being 100% right, most of the time but apparently that means I am cursed with showing arrogance. There really are no winners in this, except the people who bought AAPL 20 years ago and can afford to preach to those not so fortunate and who are worried about their investment which may be a little more recent, or they need to see mature a little more quickly than a fine bottle of vintage wine might take,
Importantly, and the point, was that unlike The High Priest who claimed nothing was possible to predict; that there exisits no means to track the trajectory of the company and its execution ability. The Priest of High Denial was adamant this could not be. Because who knows “God’s intention, or His true plan - "Only God (ie Apple) knoweth the truth, and they hath not spoken." No they let their actions speak much louder than words and if they've spoken, it's only been during confessional I'd bet.
Instead, I got:
“Afternoon, Tommo. Slumming it, are we?”
Because once the Holy Grail is challenged by someone just speaking the truth and putting matters in context, facts don’t matter. It's Commandments time.
Only faith is tolerated. Critical thinking is discarded as offensive.
ACT IV: What This Really Means
This article isn’t really about Apple.It’s about how we kill conversation. It’s about how a small handful of dominant voices can turn a vibrant forum of dissent but broad tolerance and critical thought into a lecture hall — where dissent is disallowed, jokes are suspect, and the only valid position is fealty. It’s about how forums are no longer places to test ideas — they’re pulpits.
And those who ask inconvenient questions are labelled heretics. This isn’t censorship in the classical sense. No one’s banning posts. But it’s censorship by culture — a chilling effect driven by performative certainty.
It’s happening everywhere, from investing boards to academia to AI debates to politics, where the rati0nal are told to be quiet and the preachers (like Trump, and some of the online commentariat) are allowed to shout down and hurl insults at anyone, warranted or not, with no explanation or cogent argument, with little flinching because the public have learned to tolerate it - or rather, trained to.
If you’ve wondered why intelligent people now hesitate before speaking — this is why. If you’ve felt that criticism, however careful, is treated as betrayal — this is why. If you’ve been told to “move on” rather than “explain further” — this is why.
Conclusion: Bring Back Argument
The real risk isn’t to Apple. The real risk is to thought. Because when one voice dominates a room with feeling instead of logic, when dissent is met with dismissal, when engagement is replaced with “well sell your stock then” — we don’t just lose a debate. We lose the ability to have one at all. So let this thread stand as a parable.
A simple comment stream — a casual blog post — turned into a microcosm of our times: Where wit is mistaken for attack, where conviction outruns cognition, and where forums built for ideas become congregations built on compliance.
As for Apple? It’ll recover, or it won’t. The market will sort it out. It still has the potential to become the success and innovation story it once was, actually delivering new products rather than iterative updates, new products people actually want to buy. Could AAPL hit $400 by 2027? Sure, I've even made an argument for that before. But it depends on execution, and that's what the debate is about. Or rather the stifling of one, very often
If we want to reclaim real dialogue, we’ll need to do what Apple’s AI, Siri, and seemingly Apple's management couldn’t:
