I think right now Apple (and Google) can polarize individuals. I can love each one minute and hate each the next -- they're both capable of delighting and infuriating in equal measure, even within a single product. (Love Chrome, hate the anti-h264 move. Love iOS, hate the App Store approval process and the kludgy mess of certificates.)
What's wrong with anti-h.264? Firefox was never going to support it, nor was Opera, so as a web developer you would have had to implement something else anyway, likely flash. Now you implement WebM instead of h.264, and you still have to implement flash because 20% of the people out there are still using ie6 and 7/8 aren't a whole lot better on this front.
Basically, you're replacing a closed codec with an open one. MS and Apple will put WebM in IE and Safari if there's sufficient adoption, as it doesn't cost them anything to do so.
You may not care about open codecs that aren't laden with patents, but I can't see how this makes things worse. All of the kvetching about this move extending Flash's lifetime is pointless given the fact it wasn't going anywhere anyway.
And both are getting scary powerful.