The REAL Apple Cultists are the Apple HATERS Ping!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 03/21/2015 1:33:07 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple zealots are one thing, but Apple doomsayers might be worse. This week, on The Network: John Moltz wonders why we ever mixed church and tech.
Stop me if you've heard this one: Apple is just like a relig—
STOP.
Yeah, you've heard it. Apple is just like a religion. And its customers are acolytes, steeped in the heady lore of the Church of Jobs blah blah blah. For certain pundits and commentators, this explains away everything they don't understand about Apple. Why it does so fabulously well, why its customers are so loyal, why the company is able to charge more for its devices... it explains everything!
A little too neatly.
See, if I could add an addendum to Occam's Razor it would go like this: The simplest explanation is usually the right one... unless it involves magic. Frankly, I think that it's much more valid to apply this argument to Apple's critics than its supporters.
Take, for example, those who continuously proclaim that Apple's doom is nigh. You don't have to look far for them: They literally use the word "doom" in their headlines.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying belief in imminent Apple doom is a religion. I don't think it is. You know what is religion? Religion. Words have meaning, that's what they're for. Most of these people who proclaim Apple doom don't even believe it themselves — they're just selling something.
No, I'm just saying one could make a better case that the Apple Doomsday Cult is a religion than making the argument that Apple itself is. Consider it a thought experiment.
The church of Apple
For starters, let's look at the argument that Apple is a religion. We know this is true because researchers in Britain hooked one Apple fan up to a machine and found his reaction to the brand was stimulating the same centers of the brain that religion stimulates.
Oh, you can argue that one is not a statistically large sample or that even if Apple does stimulate the same brain centers as religion that doesn't mean much because lots of things — our loved ones, playing sports, or the rich, creamy taste of Litehouse Ranch Dressing — could do the same thing, that doesn't make them religions. But now you're just hating on science, hater.
Still there is the generic argument about the canonical "Apple zealot". Do these people who think Apple is perfect in every way all the time and will buy whatever product Apple ships actually exist? Probably. When I invented "Artie MacStrawman" nine years ago, it was not without its basis in fact. But here's the difference: The only place the Arties of the world write is in comments or forums or on the restroom wall of the Applebee's they walked into confusedly thinking it had something to do with Apple. They don't write for supposedly serious publications like Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. They don't have positions as big-time Wall Street analysts. They certainly don't get invited on television to make their case and they definitely do not get book deals.
The altar of facts
Are there Apple fans who will take any opportunity to point and laugh and make snarky remarks about Apple's competitors? Haha, oh, yeah. Oh, my god, so many. Most of these people also criticize Apple, too. While we prefer Apple's products and their business model, we're not idiots. But pointing out that Apple makes good stuff and makes a ton of money for doing so — in other words, pointing out facts — does not mean you're a religious nut.
Maybe Apple doom is a thing because our culture loves stories that run counter to what everyone thinks. If you can come up with some kind of evidence that donuts are actually good for you, it'd be a big traffic day on Huffington Post. But this dogged adherence to the idea that Apple will fail runs back to the mid-1990s when it was actually failing. In other words, when Apple was failing, no one was getting cushy gigs telling people how it was actually succeeding. Which is good because it wasn't, but you can't explain the Church of Apple Doom away as simply the novelty of being contrarian.
The sweet smell of success
Now, Apple is so much more of a success story than a failure story that it seems almost impossible on a quantum mechanical level. That's really the only thing you need to know to make my case: Apple's not just successful, it's incredibly, dramatically, wildly, record-breakingly successful. So demonstrably successful that saying it's doomed has gone light years past "not even funny anymore" and wrapped all the way around the universe to "thigh-slappingly hysterical" again.
And yet people still believe it's on the edge of going out of business. Well, as I said, they either believe that or they're just selling that idea to get attention. Which, of course, also goes on in religion. QED.
Is Apple always a success? No. Will it always be a success? Given what we presume is the infinite nature of time, probably not. Some time before the sun burns out, Apple will probably again get the kind of managers it had in the mid-1990s, an assortment of clotted meat products in suits who believe that market share is incredibly important and that chasing the lowest common denominator is a sure-fire way to win.
But we're nowhere close to that point yet. So to buy into the idea that it's happening right now, you have to take a lot on faith. Certainly a lot more than believing Apple is a success.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
In b4 the haters! BUMP
That was excellent!
If Apple can maintain its margins as it starts to build more of its products in the US — and presumably pay more income taxes in the process — it’ll be amazing. But it won’t be the first time I’ll be amazed. :’)
I think the new sphincter-shaped campus building will be a huge mistake, unless Apple has some new category-killer product lines coming. But again, won’t be the first time I’ve been amazed.
Do you have any thoughts on the auto project? Another Apple success in the making or something else?
You are aware that Apple is the only major computer maker that makes any of its computers in the USA, aren't you? Were you also aware that Apple pays 2.5% of all US Corporate income taxes, with an effective tax rate in the last tax year of over 28%? These are facts, my FRiend.
I would be extremely surprised if Apple were designing a car. I think it would kill their Apple CarPlay business to compete with the forty car makers who've signed up to install CarPlay in upcoming models of their cars. I think Apple is designing SOFTWARE for automakers, not their own cars. . . nor will Apple buy Tesla for the same reason. They don't want to be competing with their customers for a marginal profit business. Tesla has yet to sell a Billion dollars worth of cars! Apple CarPlay will easily be a $20 billion component of Apple's product mix in five years.
ok thanks....as always time will tell
Care to insert a link to those facts so we can all see them? Not that I doubt you but this whole Mac vs, PC thing has gone on as much as the Republicans vs, the Demodrats; Gators vs. Bulldogs; Notre Dame vs. USC; yadda, yadda, yadda.
I could really care less for any of it. I do my own research, buy the best possible product at the best possible price to perform the best possible service that I need.
Those who choose labels over anything else are just as hypocritical and misguided as those who chose the Golden Calf.
What percentage of total Apple production is in the US right now?
You know if I posted them AGAIN, it would be about the twentieth time I've posted the facts, quotes, and links on Freerepublic as to Tim Cook's testimony before the U.S. SENATE a year ago in which he testified under oath as to the facts of Apple's Tax situation and paying $1 out of every forty dollars of US Corporate Income Taxes, and provided the tax returns proving it. . . after facing down the Democrat Senators accusations of not paying any US Income Taxes. His testimony is available online in a video.
As for making computers here, ALL of the Apple Mac Pros are made in Austin, Texas, from a majority of American made parts and components. The Apple IMacs are assembled in Elk Grove, California, using a good percentage of American components. Apple does not, and never has, provided a percentage break-down by model of their computer sales.
This is exactly the problem with the Apple haters. They are jealous of a successful company.
PsyOps, preaching to the ecosystem.
It is a little weird. Are they jealous of success? Do they wish for failure in others?
The Apple turn-around story of the late 90's is the very stuff of free enterprise capitalism and the power of the individual.
Here is a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy. The founder of the company returns, and with individual vision, against the prevailing group consensus of the day, he turns the company around, saves it from bankruptcy, and it becomes wildly successful. This is a textbook example of the individual making a difference; of vision, of creating a product that is not the usual committee-designed bland beige dreck produced by so many companies.
I love the fact that Steve Jobs returned to save his own company and prove the majority wrong. Consensus is what gives us the US Post Office or Healthcare.gov. Individualism gives us the likes of Apple.
I think that everyone, Apple lover or not, should shut off their damned electronics and go outside and do something like I am right now. Put a limit on staring at screens. Fishing is fun for example. Or hiking.
When you build a better, people will buy it.
It's amazing to me that people can actually put forth statements like this while every Apple print advertisement and broadcast commercial, every dollar spent by and even the existence of a Marketing department at Apple stands in contradiction.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
