No need to apologise, I don't know what the current multinational account setup with Apple is like since I have never had to experience it myself, I am going entirely off what people like crazygringo have talked about.

I fully understand that licensing contracts from third parties will always make the entire experience suboptimal. I expect hiccups. I don't know if Apple has some sort of system available where upon calling a CS rep they can link two accounts in their system to iron out their customer experience. Something like that seems like it would be a good system that would provide a better user experience while still keeping their system aware of licensing restrictions. I don't know if that exists already, or what, if anything, Apple does for customers in that sort of a position. All I do know is that I have only heard complaints. At least from their perspective, they feel as though they are being ignored.

> Apple doesn't ignore the long tail

I think we will have to agree to disagree there. I don't want to get into some sort of flamewar. I should probably point out that ignoring the long tail is a complaint I have with most companies out there in the consumer space right now, not just Apple. I think it is a reality of having finite resources and rapid release cycles while trying to target the general public.

> nor do they actively try to convince people that they don't want what they want.

I agree. I don't know what causes it, but I think it is a phenomenal that appears by itself. With the copy/paste example, I never once heard the "You are wrong for wanting that" line from Apple, but I heard it numerous times from friends at the pub or whatever when I would poke fun of them for lacking it. (If you want to see examples of it, you can probably find them buried in the comment sections of slashdot on articles from a few years ago. Not exactly the standard of mature discussion, I know..). I think this phenomenon (specifically, people making up poor excuses for a company who they have no association with. Excuses that do not have anything to do with the reality of the situation.) is not something that Apple has deliberately created.

It seems to be something that happens any time people people are loyal fans of something and are exposed to often times very repetitive criticism. It seems very similar to post-purchase rationalization to me, though obviously with a different root cause.

Examples of the phenomenon outside of Apple fans, off the top of my head, may include: defence of politicians (specifically, giving excuses for politicians being politicians. Things like: "He can't follow through with his election platform because he has to get elected again!" or "Well he would, if not for those meddling [other party people]!"), defence of the nuclear power industry (I am likely guilty of this one), and defence of various segments of the auto industry.

Several examples of this in the auto industry seem apparent to me. Telsa fans claiming that going more than 300 miles is unnecessary is probably one that the HN crowd is most familiar with (and one that I think I am also guilty of). (The response you see to 300 mile complaints is not "Well yes, that is the best we can do with batteries today" but rather "You are weird for needing more than 300 miles".) Actually, this is probably the best comparison to the what we see among some Apple fans, since both items are a luxury good that are held back by some technical realities.