As the reality distortion field around Apple has faded in the past few years, people are becoming significantly less enamored with the company than they used to be.
A survey by The Verge of America’s favorite technology companies finds that Apple, maker of the iPhone and the iPad, could be losing its grip on its fanboys. Amazon and Google, meanwhile, are gaining ground. It’s a problem that seems to be of Apple’s own making. The removal of the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 and a lack of ports on 2016’s MacBook Pro left a lot of customers feeling disgruntled. And the company’s high price tags, including a whopping $1,000 for the new iPhone X, haven’t helped matters.
The survey of 1,520 people asked a number of questions about tech giants. When asked how much they enjoyed using a company’s products and services, Apple came in dead last — with Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft scoring higher.
Asked if they would recommend a company’s products to friends and family, Apple did a bit better, coming in third.
Trust is becoming an issue, too. While CEO Jeff Bezos’ customers trust Amazon implicitly, according to the survey, trust in Apple fell behind Google, which hasn’t made a secret of the fact that it uses customer data to target advertising.
While universal love for Apple might be a thing of the past, the company is hardly suffering. The iPhone X sold out in minutes when it went on sale early Friday. And Delta Airlines recently dumped the Microsoft Surface, opting to provide its crew members with iPhones and iPads.