Almost everyone deserves respect.
Specfically, and in this instance, we respect the request from groups of people to call them by the name they choose. African-Americans have chosen a variety of labels over the years for their demographic group, and it's taken awhile for them to choose among a handful that are acceptable to them and not imposed by white society. "African-American" and "Black" are still in common use.
Recently, Cory Doctorow resolved not to respect the capitalization preferences of some (all?) corporations when he writes about their products and brands. Apple's "iPhone" will be rendered "Iphone", and their "iOS", "Ios". Some may believe that this shows a dedication not to kowtow to corporate marketing departments' determinations about trademarks, logos, and brands, that it's a subversive rebellion against The Man. I was reminded of this when seeing it in a more recent post, and I almost can't disagree with this approach more.
I could go on at length about how I find this rebellion childish and petulant, but I wanted to point out that what really bothers me is when InCapping (which is what this is sort of capitalization is called) runs up against an acronym or initialism. Rendering iOS, which contains the acronym/initialism "OS" which stands for "operating system", as "Ios" strikes me as wronger than the original. Whatever your feelings about shilling, promoting, or kowtowing to corporate overlords, lower-casing "OS" in "iOS" robs it of informational content. It makes it harder to determine that we are talking about the operating system of the i-type devices which are associated with Apple. We might be momentarily confused enough to wonder whether a collection of Jovian moons or nymphs was being discussed.
Deliberately writing "Iphone" for "iPhone" shows the stuffy lack of respect for the choices of a corporation, for a group of people who have gotten together to promote the product of their labors under a banner of collective action. It shows the churlishness of the prescriptivist Defender of the Rules of English Usage which I don't normally associate with Cory Doctorow. We don't generally put up with folks who hold to ancient terms like "colored", and I'm not inclined to give this a pass.
