(10-01) 10:35 PDT San Francisco -- You camped out overnight to buy an iPhone 5, eating lightly to avoid leaving the line for bathroom breaks. You met your girlfriend on Cupidtino.com, the "first-ever Mac-inspired dating site." You have an Apple logo tattoo.

So does that make you a connoisseur of the "insanely great" union of design and technology? Or are you just another "iSheep," gullible enough to hand over your credit card for anything that starts with a lower-case "i" and comes in a glossy white box?

It depends whom you ask: The fiercely loyal Apple acolytes or users of rival smartphones who find them smug and insufferable.

The worshipers in the Cult of Apple were most visible on the streets outside Apple Stores, but on Twitter, Google+ and even on TV, Apple critics and competitors sought to take the lofty brand and its followers down a notch.

-- There is the Twitter hashtag #iSheep, an epithet used to imply that Apple fans are just following the crowd. As news spread about problems with the phone's new mapping software, the hashtag #iLost popped up as well.

-- Fans of smartphones using the rival Android operating system shared derogatory images and videos, from screenshots of Apple's mapping software labeling a church as a Burger King, to pranks on Apple fans, to Samsung's latest television commercial mocking Apple line-sitters.

In the spot's ultimate burn, a hipster toting Samsung's latest Android phone, the Galaxy SIII, turns out to be holding a place in the iPhone 5 line for, wait for it ... his parents. The commercial has been viewed 15.7 million times on YouTube.

Ugly and looks cheap

-- Apple fans struck back, reworking Samsung print ads to highlight what they see as the iPhone 5's superiority, and pointing out that Apple just beat Samsung in a billion-dollar patent-infringement lawsuit. Oh, and Samsung's S III is ugly and looks cheap, too.

"Samsung makes things out of plastic, for God's sake," said UC San Diego student and software developer Josh Cohenzadeh, comparing the Galaxy S III's case with the iPhone 5's sleek aluminum. Cohenzadeh, who created a popular retort to the Samsung ad, says he had to take his iPhone 5 back to the store because of cosmetic damage to that cool aluminum case, but he's still a fan.

He said he tries not to take criticism from Apple haters personally.

"The fact that they hate a company for the most ridiculous reasons, that's what makes me upset and frustrated," Cohenzadeh said.

More than a phone

The culture war between fans of phone brands may be manna for the companies, which get free advertising when their supporters use social media to proclaim their devotion or to diss the other guy. Indeed, Samsung has been an instigator, sending its Apple-spoofing commercial to Android fan sites and using footage of actual sheep in another video. Motorola, another maker of Android phones, used the #iLost hashtag on Twitter and in a recent ad.

But the battle between phone fans is real, not just an advertising stunt - at least for an impassioned minority on each side, said Van Baker, an analyst with researcher Gartner.

"There's very clearly an anti-Apple market out there that's mostly made up of technologists, and then there is a very rabid pro-Apple market that is longtime Apple fans," Baker said.

But why would otherwise sane people get so worked up over the choice between nearly identical products?

Clifford Nass, a Stanford University professor who studies humans' increasingly cozy relationships with machines, says that using brands to express our identity is nothing new - it's just that the phone has taken the place of previous symbols, notably the automobile. He notes that kids are getting their driver's licenses later, but buying cell phones younger.

A phone cradled in the hand feels like an extension of the body, Nass said.

"We know that, for example, in cultures where people hold their idols ... in their hands, people get a special attachment to them," Nass said.

Add the fact that we fill our phones with our appointments and most personal text messages, and that we increasingly talk to our phones using Siri or Google Voice, and it starts to make sense that people see an insult to their phone as something very personal.

'Returning the favor'

Why do Android users pick on iPhone users? Kellen Barranger, a Portland Android user who runs a blog called Droid Life, thinks it's because Android users have historically seen Apple people as looking down on them.

"Three years ago when Android was first starting to grow, that was when Apple was really dominating the smartphone market," Barranger said. "(Android fans) got made fun of a little bit because their phones maybe weren't as good."

Now that Android phones such as Samsung's are acknowledged by reviewers as being pretty much equal to iPhones in quality, Barranger said, Android fans are "returning the favor" by mocking Apple devotees.

A LinkedIn group called "Evil iPhone" described itself as a forum for people who "really can't stand all the hype revolving around the iPhone."

Who's the underdog?

Ironically, Apple fans describe themselves as underdogs, too. Gary Allen, who writes the blog IFOAppleStore.com, describes the groups that gather to camp out in advance of iPhone launches not as people who follow the crowd, but those who, as the old Apple slogan says, "Think Different."

"It's part of that underdog nature, you take it for granted that you're part of a smaller group," said Allen, who loves Apple so much that he celebrated Apple Stores' 10th anniversary. How? He drove from his Berkeley home to the very first Apple Store in Virginia, where he ate a piece of cake with employees before heading back to the West Coast.

Being an underdog is part of Apple's history as the computer industry's smaller competitor to Microsoft Windows. But today, as the world's most valuable company, with a brand so firmly ensconced in pop culture that its ring tones are incorporated into hip-hop songs, the underdog image seems a bit of a stretch.

Apple isn't the global leader in smartphones - Samsung holds 29 percent of the market to Apple's 21 percent, with the other half of the market held by phone makers using the Android and other operating systems. But Gartner expects Apple to dominate by the end of the year once the iPhone 5's sales are accounted for.

So here are two groups of people who really like smartphones and who see themselves as underdogs. Are they really that different?

Really that different?

Baker guesses that only a vocal 10 percent on either side have real cultural differences. The Android camp's main beef with Apple is that its operating system, hardware and apps are all tightly controlled, while Google allows multiple manufacturers and developers to work with its Android operating system.

"Technologists want things to be open as opposed to closed, they want to be able to tinker with things," Baker said.

That Apple fans don't appreciate this difference seems to be at the root of the #iSheep criticism. And when something goes wrong with a product as highly acclaimed as the iPhone, like the flaws in its new map software, it may be natural for nonfans to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude.

In the flesh, fans on either side sound much more conciliatory than they do when they tweet or post. Some Android lovers admit to having friends who use iPhones, and vice versa. Droid Life's Barranger says he has actually recommended iPhones to friends who already use other Apple products.

And that Samsung commercial? Apple fan boy Allen said he found it hilarious.

"I see myself in the commercials," Allen said. "I say yeah, that's me, I'm not embarrassed."

Mocking the cult of Apple

When you publicly worship a product so fervently that the religion center of your brain lights up, it's bound to attract a little mockery. Here are some of the more clever parodies, pranks and jabs aimed at Apple fans:

-- Samsung's "The Next Big Thing Is Already Here" commercial, where a hipster with a Galaxy S III saves a spot in the iPhone 5 line for his mom and dad: bit.ly/QlPcp6

-- The "iPhone 5 Box Prank" from AwesomenessTV, in which iPhone fans believe they're seeing the new phones dropped and smashed: bit.ly/PjfZ5L

-- "Jimmy Kimmel Live" shows people on the street an iPhone 4S it says is the new iPhone 5. Even those who own 4S claim the phone looks "way better": bit.ly/PegWLk

-- Anti-Apple imagery including silhouetted figures connected by white headphones in a chain gang and a swipe at the adaptor needed to connect the new iPhone to old ports: bit.ly/SkKirX

-- On Twitter, Android fans and other critics use the hashtag@iSheep to share their disgust: bit.ly/PLaIF0

- Carrie Kirby

Carrie Kirby is a freelance writer. E-mail: carrie@frugalisticmom.com