I suspect a lot of it has to do with Self identification with Steve Jobs and people like him, so an attack on Jobs is an indirect attack on them.
Personally I think Jobs was an over hyped marketing manager (with perhaps a true gift for getting talented people to do the work).
There are dozens of people in the computer industry that I respect far more who will never get 1/100th of the adulation (and I'm not sure most of them would want it).
Look at the contributions of people like John Backus, Edgar Codd or Maurice Wilkes and of course Kernighan and Ritchie, those people (to me) are worth far more respect.
