Greateness at what cost?

I have been trying to decide which smartphone to buy in order to join the smartphone crowd somewhat belatedly I suppose. Certainly there is the obvious response - buy an iphone, but I refuse to. I must admit, I am occasionally tempted by the easy user-interface and the ecstatic reports from friends. Yet I have a small problem with Apple and it's products. I think that Apple conducts some of the worst offenses and it's business practices are horrid. The enfant terrible of the tech world produces eye-candy technology of very high quality, but at what price to the people that work for it, the people that revolve in the world directly connected to the design and production of this technology and to the rest of us in this crazy world? So you might say I have principles... not very strong ones (I do use Apple products for a variety of purposes and I do admit their technology is in many ways superior to competitors), but they do exist. I limit my consumption of Apple products out of principle.

Apple is the darling child of the tech community that seems to be able to forgive and forget it's missteps and little crimes in favor of consumption of its brilliance. Some very long time ago, an art history teacher of mine in a class on Russian art told us how one of the brilliant well known artists of the last century was also implicated in occasionally having sex with very young peasant girls (of the pre-pubescent age) and then painting their portraits. He asked us then, whether these crimes had any impact on how we perceived the frankly brilliant paintings now that we knew that the majority of the subjects were also molested by the author. I was horrified, but at the same time, there was a part of me that readily excused the brilliance for having to get inspiration in such a horrific way. As I look on at the enfant terribles of this world - I wonder, why DO we excuse the brilliance for its occasional (or not so occasional) missteps? Why are some vicitimizations and little crimes overlooked when our gains, intellectual or technological, are seen as worthwhile? Is it because the product of that brilliance, no matter its source, is a source of pride and that is important to our little human minds that feel so much smaller in the presence thereof? Is it because the cost-benefit analysis somehow tips in favor of the product no matter its source? I am not sure, but the Apple cultish cabal is sometimes too much conceptually to really buy in to the all-apple product line. Then again, I did just buy an ipad.