I think I am the only person in the universe immune to Apple hype. I see pictures of a huckster selling yet another pointless gadget that does nothing new, but is packaged in a pretty shell.
Apple produces status objects. Were it not for DOS and IBM-clones, there would not be anything like the tech industry, the internet, or the inflated housing market in Califonia. Apple, like George Bush, needs to have an evil boogey monster out there against which to compare itself. Think about it - every Apple ad campaign is, at base, We're not Microsoft. The great irony of the "1984" ad campaign is that Apple is the most rigid, regimented, Big Brotherish of all the major OS producers. Control at all costs. Sell your product by inciting insecurity and status envy in the user. Structure your products to obsolete themselves on a regualr timetable by deliberately preventing backwards compatibility.
iPods are MP3 players with pretty cases. iMacs are underpowered computers with limited and over-priced software. iPhones are just another beeping monster to carry around in your pocket and annoy me with at the movies. If you buy the hype, you demonstrate your frantic desire to appear cool, not that you are cool.
Anglachel
3 comments:
I have an Apple laptop. I bought it when I needed a new machine and wanted to see whether it was all some friends seem to think it was. It's okay, a fine machine and it does what I want it to, but when I bought a new desktop, I went back to Windows. I can see benefits of both, and really, the kinds of things I want to do aren't incredibly demanding. *shrugs*
As for the iPhone, the only thing I can think of is that it is for people who still are having a hard time making their phone do what they want it to. My dad still struggles to do anything other than call people, and it looks more luddite-friendly than the cell phones currently out there. But certainly not worth all the hype.
It's not just you... but then I also think most Apple design is horrendously ugly.
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Nath
Hi folks,
Macs *are* fine machines, and definitely the first choice for any multimedia professional. However, if what you do is word processing and spreadsheets, then it makes more economic sense to use a cheap PC and an older version of Office. I've used an iMac (the kind with the integrated CPU and screen) and was continually frustrated by the inability to resize windows as I pleased, the dopiness of the "Dock" and the difficulty to access a file folder structure. It didn't work the way I was used to, so decreased my productivity.
I don't think Apple design is ugly so much as it is dated. It looks so, well, 1990s. White and chrome, like a bad Sci Fi flick.
My question about phones is, um, why *should* a phone do anything except, you know, make phone calls? I like integrated phone books, but I would never text message, photograph, download shit, etc. I have a PDA that handles everything else and synchs with the computer. I think the desire to have an integrated device is overrated outside of the gadget-freak community.
It's not the Mac itself that annoys me. That's just another computer choice out there. It's the breathless hype of what is, in the end, a not very innovative product through a thoroughly mendacious smear campaign of a competitor. Apple *IS* a marketing gimmick and little else.
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