It touches on multiple axes of discussion that can often be found here:

- The rights of the individual/company compared to the good of the public.

- The right of an individual to control that which they bought. Also, whether and what you buy compared to license the use of.

- Anti-competitive behavior and monopolies (as distinct concepts, whether one applies doesn't preclude a different answer for the other).

- Very large companies and the amount of control they have over individuals and their rights.

These are all vibrant topics of discussion on HN, and this includes, and in some cases epitomizes, aspects of all of those and more.

I think these all also touch on deeper aspects of our personal stories and the emotions we feel about them. See the post about a non-white person viewing it as a battle between an oppressed party and a party upset at being viewed as an oppressed party.

Although people like to believe they think rationally, especially here; the truth is, none of us is capable of doing so all the time. We all bring things to the table. And I think each of the things you mention touches all of us pretty deeply, as it has to do with all of our individual standings in society and our freedom to live our lives.

Plus as it's HN, there's a lot of people who want to have control over what their customers do with their products. lol. It's like those threads where some company is exposed for spying on their users, where a bunch of people argue that it's just telemetry and they wouldn't know what their customers wanted if they didn't spy on them and stuff.

These faction wars exist for most brands that have any adversarial relationship or buy-in.

Another major example is Xbox vs Playstation. Often because mom is only going to buy you one and not both, so now you're part of that faction when duking it out online. That's certainly how I spent my summer at age 15.

Ideally you grow out of caring which corporation stacks more money, though. Very boring hobby.

As a dev I feel very passionate about open hardware platforms. I don't really care about epic, but the fact they are taking on this fight regardless of motives makes me very happy.

That could be a factor.

I think the fact that there are many devs here who deal with and depend on Apple is much more significant though.

It's a topic that most people can relate to and pits two complicated viewpoints ("user/developer access to hardware" and "vendors keeping their platform from becoming a cesspool of spam and low-quality content") with notes of other important topics ("freedom of speech", "monopolies").

Tribalism, sunk-cost etc.

If this discussion was on Reddit or similar is would probably more one-sided both due to the number of people who play games and the proportionally lower amount of people who have spent a lot of money on Apple products than on HN (accidental humblebraggging regarding your credit card bill seems relatively prevalent here)

I can immediately see that you are biased as your comment implicitly implies that everyone buying Apple products is an idiot who buys overpriced hardware on credit just for the status symbol.

Consider that instead we are professionals that need the best tool possible that works and is functional

Both Apple and Epic are exceptionally.... "controversial" companies that people have Thoughts on.

Tie that in with the usual Software Freedoms and people wishfully thinking they one day will be in Apple's shoes.

It's Apple. 'Nuff said.

(More specifically, it's Apple and Fortnite. Two very popular franchises.)