I owned many Apple machines for the first twenty years. Today I find the company and its products a bit cultish.
If anything, apple was “cultish”’in its “midlife” and not now or at the beginning. I’ve had apple products for the last 30 years and have seen the people close and upfront, all during that time.
This is what the Free Online a Dictionary had for cultish ... “adj
1. intended to appeal to a small group of fashionable people”
In the beginning, it wasn’t a small group as Apple had the lion’s share of the market. It wasn’t cultish at that time. They were a large group in the market they were in. They were the market at that time.
When that commercial came out in 1984, you might say it was the beginning of the “Think different” mentality, which was a future marketing campaign. But one has to keep in mind that “Think Different” wasn’t just “marketing” ... it was part of the company mentality.
After that time was when the “cultish look and feel” started to take hold, as outside attacks on those users started intensifying. That caused many to “circle the wagons” and push back. The “Think Different” campaign and mentality was evident.
There was definitely a “Think Different” mentality going on, but that, by itself, wasn’t really a problem ... but with outside market pressures to bear, with outside attacks from other groups against users ... then all that combined to give a cultish outward appearance. The “Think Different” mentality, though is good and has served Apple well in the long run, so, that by itself was not the problem.
When Jobs came back to Apple and turned things around, there had been a long-standing “siege mentality” in effect at Apple, by that time ... thanks to the bad management of Apple prior to Jobs returning.
Jobs took control and took Apple very strongly back to “Think Different” in real and substantial ways, and always seemingly CONFOUNDING market analysts in doing so. Apple started breaking out of its siege mentality, and users were no longer very concerned about being attached from the outside (although they still were) and new customers became a larger segment of the company than the older ones. The newer customers didn’t know anything of the prior cultish behavior or the siege mentality, and today only the few who lived through it all know about all that.
Today the new customers far exceed the old-timers, and Apple is no longer under siege in their marketplace, it is no longer a cultish group, formed when conditions were different ... but it is MAINSTREAM now ... and is a company to be emulated and copied ... which a number of others in the same market try to do.
Apple still has the “Think Different” mentality, along with the emphasis towards excellence and quality ... and that is making it WILDLY SUCCESSFUL ... but it’s definitely not cultish, as it is well into the MAINSTREAM now ... :-) ...
“Cultish” was somewhat true 20 years ago (I really didn’t believe it then). Now? Hardly — they just make great products that ordinary people use. There’s no way a $750B market cap is a cult. It sells,mainstream products and services.
You only get the impression of cultish if you read the occasional article written by a kook. Or are swayed by the insane rants and accusations that are tossed out by lunatics who insist on showing up on Apple threads.
I think you should reconsider that consideration. There are over 1.2 BILLION iOS devices sold, almost 100,000,000 OS X Macs. . . and close to selling seven million more each quarter. That's a pretty damn big "cult."