Any company/product I have issues with is because it has given me issues in the past.

Apple - I only had access to a Mac for about a month back in 2005/6, and it was dreadful. The quality of programs I cared about were far better on Windows (Games, emulators, media players, ect.) SNES9x was the only decent working emu, and the sound quality was like listening to static filled AM radio. Most of the apps felt like they had more issues, but were shareware. Setting up the system to compile open source programs was a huge headache and never did work fully right. After a month I was able to be back at my PC again. I gave it a hug and a kiss. I tried an ipod later on to see if things improved. After fighting with itunes, then a 3rd party plugin for winamp that was supposed to work as a replacement, I returned the thing.

Steam - I had an account locked after a payment cleared because it took a bit longer for whatever reason and had to go back and forth to get it opened again. Offline mode worked for me, except the one time I really needed it. Then the most recent EULA. The issues with the service made me appreciate DRM free gaming and vendors that sell them far far more.

Sony - This one has faded some over the years. Them thinking they are important enough to put DRM rootkits on their CDs and get away with it. Also during the PS1 and PS2 years, SCEA actively tried to keep 2d games from being released in America because they felt it made their systems look bad. Between that and not liking the N64, I started gaming far more on the PC. On the console side I went to Sega until the Dreamcast died, then to the Xbox after.

How about their ball-aching arrogance around the launch of the PS3? 'Yeah it's expensive, we think people will want to work extra shifts to afford one', 'we'd sell half a million units if we launched with no games at all' etc... Oh, and the admission that backwards compatibility was really not that expensive, and they took it away to make people buy more PS3 games...

Not planning on buying another Sony console. Ever.

That was part of it too, but I wanted to focus on actual actions done that annoyed me. Their PR arrogance and crap, while disgusting, was ultimately just a big pile of crap in the end. Actually selling rootkits and holding back games were actions they took that I had problems with.

Though I do in part blame the gaming press praising them and eating whatever garbage Sony fed them up in part for killing Sega's consoles (Not to say Sega didn't have issues themselves.)

Against Apple is similar with me. I don't like systems and hardware that is co closed down.

Is it true that bluetooth in iPhone 5 / new iPod will work only via Apple-Apple products?

Funny, I ascribe my latent irrationality to playing Sacrifice in my university years.

You can change stuff. Even big stuff. But you then get fired and blacklisted in a whole sector.

Apart from that, I don't buy games with intrusive DRM and I don't buy any games from companies that went after pirates with court proceedings.

Oh, and I don't buy apple because they are (imo) hindering technological progress with their closed platforms.

I usually don't buy games with any kind of DRM unless they're really really cheap and casual and I mean to play them immediately after purchase or just to try them out (like a demo). I prefer the games in my collection to be independent of third party services, so that I would still be able to play them on a different computer whenever i want to and even if the company who created it or sold it to me was not around anymore or I didn't have access to the internet. I'm okay with permanent offline keycodes or CD checks, even though I don't like them much either, but that's the extent of it. No online activation, please, no begging for more key codes.

And I avoid services that require me to give them my RL name and address and whatnot even though I use PayPal to pay them and not a credit card. I much prefer the way GOG handles it, quick and anonymous.

I hate closed systems, Apple is a perfect example. Way back when the PC was new IBM took all the schematics for how their system worked and published it. Anyone could buy the book, see exactly how the PC worked and start playing around with hardware. A lot of PC standard hardware today was not developed by computer companies but by computer hobbyists with home made circuit board kits. This also allowed other companies to make just components for PC, before if someone had an idea for better RAM they would need to make a whole computer to put it in because the other computer systems were closed to outside components. Today Apple has kept this philosophy and I refuse to ever own an Apple product. I don't even like having to touch them, but half my co-workers have iPhones and they always have issues and they all bring them to me and say "What wrong with it? Can you fix it?"

I also dislike consoles for the same reason, at least for the PC there are emulators to allow 1 device to play all games. Could you imagine if the Film industry was as petulant as the Console industry? When going to buy a DVD you would have to check and make sure it would play in your player as some studios would sign exclusive contracts with the DVD player makers. Some movies would release for all DVD formats but maybe the Sony DVD player gets it first for 90 days or the RCA DVD player gets an alternate ending. And film series would be a nightmare, Parts 1-3 are available on one player, 5 & 6 are on a different player and good luck trying to watch part 4 because the licensing for the DVD format for that one is tied up in bankruptcy proceedings because that DVD player company went out of business. Someone would eventually come along and write some codecs that allowed you to play any DVD format on your computer, but using it would be called Piracy even if you are watching the discs you bought. You would either be watching way fewer movies or need to have 2-3 different brands of DVD players. I doubt there would ever be more than 2-3 brands as exclusive title contracts would push smaller companies out of the market.

Speaking of exclusive titles...Steam, Origin and any other service that say "We don't care where you bought it you are now our customer." I say that if a game company want's to make a game exclusive to one service then they should not be allowed to sell it outside of that service. That way I can go to another service, or even a retail store, and not have to worry about whether or not I'm going to have to read all the fine print about service contracts for every single game, just the one for the company I'm buying from. I'm a gamer in 2012, I've heard of Steam. If I'm not already buying all my games there then I obviously have a reason for it, I don't need some shiny new title to encourage me to check it out. As a matter of principle I don't buy any games that force you to be a Wizard or to have to use Magic. Dabbling in the mystic arts should be my choice!

Rentals are the way to go. It's the only reason that I'll be buying a Wii U eventually, the rental situation is much better on consoles and I can't stand the antics of MS and Sony.

I think they tried that too somewhat. E.g. I think it took some time before Disney, and probably some others (LucasArts?) were willing to release their precious movies on DVD format. If I recall correctly, they first wanted to promote the competing "Circuit City DIVX" format that had more DRM than DVD, and gave them more control on how the media can be used, also "pay per view" models etc. That format fortunately died an agonizing death, and I guess it would be obsolete by now anyway because we have video-on-demand now and such.

EDIT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX

According to that: I'm not sure if the old "Betamax vs VHS" format wars apply though, ie. whether there were lots of movies that were deliberately not published on one format in order to promote the other.

And yeah, it sucks. I wish Nintendo would finally leave the whole HW business and start making Mario games for all consoles, PCs and tablets. Sega did that already, after Dreamcast. I've even played legit Sonic Hedgehog on my ancient Nokia Symbian phone.

UbiSoft: DRM policy, sequels after sequels (i lost count of Assasins Creed and Tom Clancy products) and many oportunists products (imagine crap for DS). Also i dont really like his gaming savoir faire... over-hyped shitty games IMHO...

I dont think the old Apple was a bad company, but the last decade Apple is also very regrettable, overpriced products only by design (not by real hardware values), pity and crazy... the closed policy its not a valid argument for me... consoles are closed, windows and many other products, that dont makes them worse in general.

Basically, DRM'ed games (the offline product key being the exception), titles without a good single player campaign, or those who require internet to enjoy all its features in SP.

Also as a rule, proprietary hardware.

Oh, and products from Creative Labs: for their laziness to update sound card drivers and particularly for the stab in the back that represented for their customers the refusal to create Windows Vista drivers for sound cards existing prior to the OS release (no problem for me, since I still have XP, but I found it shameful on their part, anyway).

As a matter for the principal, I ignore minor typos.
I used to love their products, but at this point the products aren't really that great and the software is horrible for them. Back during last decade the hardware was substantially better than Apple's for a much lower price, but the software was just unbelievably bad. My JB3 was one of the few times when I had to buy a 3rd party utility to make the device useful.

Oddly enough, the did eventually go out of business making the utility worthless as it can no longer be activated. In an even more ironic turn, I think it was trying to support iWhatevers on that low price with unlimited updates which did them in.

Fortunately, since their period of reign in the sound card industry (at least for non professional environments) has come a long way and now Creative have competitors that produce better hardware and software for less. :)