I honestly think the big thing was attempting to discredit all of the alternative package manager solutions using half-truths. I remember the big ones were everyone claiming that Fink and MacPorts were nigh unto incompetent for 1) not having binary packages (even though they actually did), 2) packaging too much stuff (which was a hard-earned lesson from Apple breaking their system dependencies and something Homebrew later started doing as well as time went on and they learned the same lesson), and 3) installing to non-standard folders (which Homebrew also finally was started doing as of recent versions of macOS on "Apple Silicon": I set up a new macOS system for the first time in years and I burst into laughter when Homebrew told me where it was installing everything... it frankly should have had a little personal apology to Fink/MacPorts in the console output).