The Mail app on the Mac comes with an RSS feed entitled Apple hot news which as you might expect is full of feel-good, brainwashing nonsense about all things Apple.

Some of it's interesting - for example in a consumer survey by Changewave - 35 per cent of respondents who plan to buy a smartphone in the coming quarter already want to purchase an iPhone. 10% of them point to the SDK and new iPhone 2.0 software as the biggest reasons for their decision to go with iPhone. I'm not that surprised - if Apple can add a little missing business functionality and STOP THE SODDING THING HISSING then it would be a complete show stopper.

I don't really do brand loyalty, I just think Apple do a better job of offering a product that works for me than the competition at the moment. Leopard has some excellent features and some which are frankly insane - translucent menus for example.

So - being such an anti-brand-marketing-loathing-grumpy-old-man,  this item in the RSS feed caught my attention and had me raging -  Survey says Apple brand has biggest consumer impact.  Apple was voted most inspiring brand and the one readers cannot live without. Really? Cannot live without? I can't live without food, water or shelter. I can probably survive without an iPhone.

Microsoft were also in there as the brand most readers wanted to argue with. Well, is that  a bit harsh? Some of their free offerings like the Express editions of their dev tools aren't bad, even if they're only free to GET YOU HOOKED. Indexing service is excellent - it drives our search engine. Our own Fintech indices tables were a doddle to do with their technology. Then again on a daily basis I grapple with their terrible take on user interfaces. And security. And Vista actually drove me to the Mac in the first place.

So ok yes - I'd maybe get into an argument with them too! Who knows. Maybe they'd listen.