Rotten Apple

So the iPhone 4 is a load of old balls that is so temperamental it needs a special coat before you can use it reliably? Apple selling hyped up stuff that looks neat but doesn't meet expectations? Who'd have thunk it?

Serious question - why are people who buy Apple tech so often fanatic, wild eyed obsessives?

Apple is just another tech company. Steve Wozniak made a great computer back in the 70s (the Apple II) the company managed to produce a great computer, albeit with a near fatal flaw in the 80s (the Mac), but their history is littered with failures and misfires, like the Apple III and the Lisa, which were hyped beyond human comprehension but failed to deliver. The iMac was a gimmick. The iPod was a fricking MP3 player, why is it an object of fascination? Now the iphone over promises and under-delivers.

Apple consumers like to think of themselves as blessed with a special discernment that allows them to see the special 'quality' that makes Apple products better than the run-of-the-mill tat the rest of us put up with. The opposite is actually true - they're labouring under a whole extra misapprehension, specially reserved for Apple users. In fact, they're just magpies on autopilot, grabbing every shiny bauble Steve Jobs excretes in their direction.

What's even more annoying is the tacit assumption among Apple users is that their baubles aren't just technologically superior (the aren't) and inherently cooler (only to deluded poseurs), but somehow imbued with a special moral quality. The idea is that Apple is the plucky little band of techie heroes gallantly resisting the tide of grayish conformity. Bollocks. there's nothing more conformist than listening to Apple fanatics drone on about how wonderful their toys are, and by implication how great they are. Apple is no different from any other company. They deliever gloss to fulfill needs and desires we don't really have, so we can feel good and successful and sexy with out shiny new toys.

But beneath the Apple gloss, their products aren't much different from anything else out there. They are manufactured in the same places by the same exploited workers, at the same cost to the environment. Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates.

Steve Jobs = Satan. The Iphone 4 = Satan's penis. You wouldn't want that anywhere near you mouth, would you?

1 - "Free cases likely for NZ iPhone buyers," unattributed article. Published by the New Zealand Herald, 19th of July, 2010. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/connect/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501833&objectid=10659712)