Apple will most certainly be upset. The have a ton of brand guidelines on how you can display their products in your own marketing. For instance you are not allowed to show an iphone in any direction other than straight on, and you are not allowed to have anything partially occluding the iphone.
But the value of stock images is to use them somewhere else.
Lets say I write an article negatively portraying the electronics manufacturing industry and use these images along with the article. I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't like it if they found out...
You are extending Apple way more rights than they actually have. Trademark and copyright don't exist to keep people from saying negative things about you.
No, but libel and slander laws do exist to keep people from saying untrue negative things about you, so it still pays to be careful if that's what you intend to do.
Libelous and/or slanderous content wouldn't be made any more or less illegal by having or not having identifiable brands in stock photography.
Despite the reactionary comments in this thread, we're not in a corporatist dystopia where it's against the law to publish a photograph of a ubiquitous consumer device.
The number of times I've seen someone say, "Apple sucks", "The iPhone sucks", "Apple are tax evaders" without recourse I seriously doubt Apple can or would do anything when someone is expressing their opinion. Free speech buddy.
Libel and slander laws are more directed at individuals... large corporate companies are free game in my opinion.
Are you a lawyer?
I hope this is not legal advice you're giving, because the general best practices I've always learned using pictures in marketing material: "Never show brands or products names"
It's important to know and understand the reasons behind advice like that. It totally depends on the circumstances, who is doing it and a host of other factors. Best practice? Get a government job with a pension and you won't have to worry about anything. Work for a corporation where they have departments that tell you what you can and should do and worry about all sorts of minutia.
I've used Apple logos in the past frequently as well as other things similar. Large companies don't expend energy and legal time doing anything nasty to small companies without a compelling reason (of course you could show me outliers obviously but you can't make money in business worrying about those outliers). Worse case scenario is normally a nasty letter asking you to stop, if that. The chance of an actual legal claim and money damages (once again in most cases) is minute. You might have to pay a lawyer to write something in reply. So what?
(And yes I've gone up against the NCAA and AMX with nasty letters and made them go away so I've pushed the envelope at least that far..I've also gotten approval in advance from the IRS as well for a project using their logo.)
Perhaps you're conflating - the reality is that it's much more akin to "in a manner that implies a relationship, endorsement by the manufacturer that doesn't exist", and similar.
