Imagine for a moment that your three year old daughter has a disability that stops her from using her voice to communicate. Then imagine that a combination of an iPad and a specialized app gave her the ability to talk to you, requesting things, express her needs, and even say, “Daddy, I love you.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d see that iPad and app as some sort of technological miracle.

Now, imagine that the app was pulled from the app store.

The lovefest known as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference starts Monday. As with any such event that involves Apple announcing new products, the global outpouring of love will be matched by a rising outpouring of hate.

Some people hate Apple. Other people hate people who hate Apple. Many of these haters have turned pro, leading to a lucrative “hater industrial complex.”

I know, because I’ve been the target of hate from both sides. I’m on the hate list of both the most extreme anti-Apple haters and pro-Apple haters.

Passion in technology, flame-wars, fanboyism and its discontents are nothing new. But in the past couple of years, something new has happened: The loudest, most insistent hate is now coming from the anti-Apple crowd, rather than the pro-Apple people.

I’ll tell you why below.

Also, it needs to be said: Haters are rare. The vast majority of users — and the vast majority of bona fide fans — don’t fall into the “hater” category. But haters appear to be everywhere because they’re active and vocal, and their rants memorable.

But first, let’s understand once and for all who hates, how they hate, and why.

MG Siegler posted a scoop on TechCrunch yesterday about the “relationship status” of Apple and Facebook.

Now the echo chamber is talking like Facebook is suddenly BFFs with Apple, similar to Apple’s relationship with Twitter.

That’s not true, and would be bad news if it was true.

Facebook is a lousy partner for Apple. Here’s why.

Apple has begun a hiring push to find lead design engineers to help them make the long-rumored iPizza a reality, Cult of Mac has exclusively learned.

The advert, posted today on Apple’s jobs board, calls for a candidate with at least four years experience in the Neapolitan supply chain. Intriguingly, one of the skills required for the position is the “ability to hand stretch the pizza (without using a rolling pin),” suggesting that the new iPizza will be built with a revolutionary new manufacturing process.

Talk of an iPizza is not new. Over the years, Steve Jobs was spotted many times in Silicon Valley researching slices of pizza, leading to ongoing speculation that Apple was interested in entering the saucy Italian pie industry.

We have yet to see a full video of Tim Cook’s interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at last night’s D10, but this 17-minute video contains most of the highlights, including Tim Cook talking about how Apple names products, what Apple has planned for Siri in the coming months, Tim Cook talking about possible future Facebook integration, what’s coming up for the Apple TV, and why Apple thinks patents are a huge pain in the ass.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been challenging Apple to higher standards for quite some time. Carrying the slogan “defending your rights in the digital world,” the EFF frequently calls out tech companies and related policies when it thinks ramifications could be negative for consumers. The EFF challenged Apple to defend its third-party developers against the Lodsys patent troll, has repeatedly addressed the company’s “anti-competieve” strategies, and so on.

In a new post today, the EFF has proposed that Apple let users of its iOS platform break through the “beautiful crystal prison” and have more control over the OS. The EFF also argues that OS X is becoming more of a restricted platform on the Mac, and that Apple should pave the way for a more open culture leading into the future.

The site Patently Apple Wednesday posted a detailed analysis of a new Apple patent application for an iPen, a vibrating pen that makes noise.

The application describes a haptic stylus containing a tiny speaker, which is designed to be used on touch screens.

Apple watchers are scratching their heads over this one. Apple is going to sell tablets with pens like the Microsoft Tablet PC, or phones with pens like the Samsung Galaxy Note?

Not exactly.

But the iPen patent does hint at amazing and brilliant things to come — for Apple and the entire PC industry.

A warehouse nestled in the heart of Louisville, Kentucky is home to hundreds of unnamed machines. Each white box gently wields a robotic arm that grips a normal-looking pen. As I walkdown the aisles separating the machines, disjointed sounds of clicks and squeaks fill the air. I’m in the home of Thank You Pen, a new startup that aims to blend technology with good, old-fashioned, dead-tree communication. “And while the service’s creator modestly says he can’t compete with Apple, Thank You Pen is doing what Cards can’t: putting love, care and soul into every card sent.”

Lightroom-using iPad owners, get ready for some good news: Photosmith 2 has just launched a few hours early, and is just as amazing an update as we hoped it would be.

Photosmith is a combination of iPad app and Lightroom plugin (Mac or PC) which will sync photos between the two machines, and let you edit metadata, add keywords and otherwise triage your photos on your iPad before sending them off to Lightroom for editing.

V2 adds batch tagging, two-way sync (for sending photos from your Mac to the iPad), smart groups, metadata presets and a lot more. A full review will follow, but our first impressions are below.

A host of Hollywood celebrities payed special tribute to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs tonight at the 2012 Webby Awards. The special segment of Monday night’s show was introduced by the actors from Apple’s famous ‘Mac vs. PC’ TV ads, Justin Long and John Hodgman. Richard Dreyfuss, the actor who narrated the original Apple ‘Think Different’ ad, also took the stage to honor Jobs’ legacy.

Celebrities like Bill Clinton, George Lucas, Adrianna Huffington, Bono, Al Gore, Jimmy Fallon, Steve Colbert and John Stewart payed tribute to Jobs in a short video clip. The mashup ended with President Barack Obama saying, “We only need one word to describe Steve Jobs: amazing.”