Posted on 09/29/2015 8:12:12 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The Broadway Apple Store (Photo: Matt Buchanan/Flickr)
In more ancient times, when communal experiences were mediated by religion, crowds used to gather outside temples on feast days. In Biblical times, for instance, on pilgrimage holidays like Passover, Jewish people were supposed to travel to Jerusalem, to be present at the Holy Temple, where the High Priest would make a sacrifice to God.
Nowadays, we have Apple Release Day—the Feast of St. Jobs—when faithful customers gather outside Apple stores and await the renewal of a next generation iPhone.
But is the Apple store really like a sacred space? To find out, Atlas Obscura brought a cultural historian to a Manhattan location for some feedback.
One of the first lessons from Erica Robles-Anderson, a professor at New York University, is that the collective experience of an Apple release does not come about by chance. Not far from the Apple Store in SoHo, one of New York’s high-end shopping districts, a Samsung store opened recently. “They had giant ropes outside, as if anticipating a giant crowd, and big bouncer-looking people in fancy suits,” she says. “And then...crickets."
The problem wasn't just a lack of PR. "It was a deep misunderstanding about special access, as opposed to what Apple has built, which is the feeling of being in it together, as though you were fighting something," Robles-Anderson says, "even though it’s the most valuable company in the world.”
Robles-Anderson studies the role of media technology in the production of public space. Recently, her work has focused on churches, and how they’ve used technology to enhance collective space. “We forget that cathedrals were basically high end technology,” she says. So were Stonehenge and the Buddhas carved into mountains. More recently, the first indoor installation of a Jumbo-tron was at California’s Crystal Church, one object of her study. “People have used technology for a long time to speak to the gods,” she says—to create collective experiences of the sublime.
These days, technology is more often talked about as a way to create personalized, individual experiences, but Robles-Anderson thinks that’s only part of the story. Communal ritual is always a part of technology: Early computers came into group spaces, like families and offices. (Mad Men understood this dynamic: the computer as an event weathered together.) Powerpoint presentations gather people to look at giant screens. Even using an iPhone to tune out the human beings around you requires being part of a larger group.
And Apple, more than any other technology company, has been able to access both these experiences, the individual and the collective. “They feel iconic, like an emblem of the personal,” says Robles-Anderson. “And yet it's a cult. Right? It's so obviously a cult.”
An Apple store in Paris (Photo: Mikhail (Vokabre) Shcherbakov/Wikimedia)
On our way to the SoHo Apple store, just around noon, we pass the beginnings of a line, forming in anticipation of the release of the iPhone 6s. Within the next twenty hours, before Apple employees begin selling phones, at 8 a.m., it will extend down the block, around the corner and on down the street.
It’s kept, though, neatly out of sight from the gates of the Apple store. This one was built in a former post office, another collective space, which, Robles-Anderson points out, enabled the packaging and transit of information. The old designation, STATION A, is carved in stone above the giant doors, edged in black.
“The oversized doors are fantastic,” says Robles-Anderson. “There’s no reason for them.” They’re there only to communicate that this place is important. Also, they’re heavy, like church doors, to give purpose and portent to the entry into the space.
We walk inside. It’s light and bright, and immediately in front of us, a wide staircase of opaque glass sweeps up to the second floor.
This is an old, old trick. “It’s used in ziggurats, even,” Robles-Anderson says. “It creates a space that emphasizes your smallness when you walk in. You look at something far away, and that makes your body feel like you’re entering somewhere sacred or holy.”
To enter that sacred space, first we have to walk up a few stone steps. They’re wide and deep, enough that you have to slow down just a bit to walk up them. Steep and narrow steps create the same effect in that they make your body feel as if something important is happening. Above, a massive skylight, stretching the length of the room, lets in the light. To the right and left are the tables with phones and watches arranged around the periphery—a clue that this is not supposed to be an individual experience. Even when you are holding the phone in your hand, you are gathered around a table with others. There are no aisles here to sequester yourself in: thanks to the open floor plan, you experience the phone together with everyone in the store.
“They have this beautiful, excessive use of clear surfaces,” Robles-Anderson says. “You’re always seeing others and being seen by others. And the ways that any employee can serve you feels personal, but it’s going on all around you, in a cacophony of like-mindedness.”
We ascend. To reach the second floor, we must pass under a walkway that crosses the entry’s vertical expanse. This is another strategy borrowed from holy spaces. “You slightly drop the ceiling, so that when you come out underneath it, you have the feeling of the sublime and this massive expanse opens that feels awesome, literally—psychologically and in your body,” Robles-Anderson explains. And as we walk under the walkway and up the stairs, without even thinking about it, I look up and straight into the sky.
The SoHo Apple store (Photo: Sarah Laskow)
The second floor has a different purpose than the first. This is the place where Apple’s equivalent of priests—the Geniuses—impart knowledge. Immediately in front of us is a giant screen and a few rows of plush chairs. In contrast to the open room below, it’s dark, inviting, and intimate. This darkness is necessary to create the effect downstairs, too, a contrast to the sweeping space and the light. A Genius is on the platform, demonstrating an esoteric piece of Apple lore, a multiple-step undo. “It also reminds you of Steve Jobs on the stage,” says Robles-Anderson.
Any individual Apple store has to take on this task, reminding its local congregation that they are part of an even larger community, centered on Cupertino and, ultimately, Jobs' vision. Although other stores take different forms, shaped to the buildings that they inhabits, these tropes carry through. On 14th Street, a three-story store in a old warehouse, a see-through spiral stairway right at the entrance pulls you upwards, bathed in light. On Broadway, just north of Columbus Circle, walls and ceilings of glass enclose a cathedral-like space, backed by a beige stone wall, in which the quiet talk of customers is amplified into the noise of a crowd; downstairs, the Genius bar is kept quieter, darker, but when you walk back up that same opaque, spiral staircase, it’s like floating upwards towards a more heavenly realm.
An Apple Store in Shanghai (Photo: Jon Skilling/Flickr)
“There's more and more evidence that we've never stopped worrying about cosmological questions or communities,” says Robles-Anderson. “Technology is part of the fantasy that we've progressed away from those kind of explanations.” But in her ideal world, medievalists who think about God’s omnipresence, his connection to certain physical objects, and the meaning of that material culture, would be hired by cloud storage companies. “They’re dealing with the exact same problems,” she says. “Are you files really on your personal device or are they in the cloud in the sky?”
Apple seems to understand that the people who visit their store are looking for answering to questions deeper than how they should make calls or connect to the internet. On the walls of the stores, framed by the border of a screen, are pictures of planets and star systems—with these flat, luminescent, monolithic devices, they seem to promise, you can understand the entire universe.
Sword, since you pinged me.... he’s just trolling you as usual, bog standard issue blather. I’d suggest you do something more productive and fun. :-)
I find it amusing that he made himself look so stupid in his reply. . . market trends SNORT!. LOL!
>>Overall, NAND performance is impressive, especially in sequential cases.<<
So it might be faster in doing in the current generation what the prior Android generation could do.
You aren’t understanding what I am saying, which is exactly what a cultist does.
Apple is now a trailing “me too” platform. It isn’t originating anything, it is copying what others (Android) did and then maybe making it faster.
But to the point of the article — you don’t see people lining up at midnight to get the latest Android phone which is a slightly better version of other phones.
Only cultists do that.
Just like having a tantrum when it is pointed out that all the Apple products are trailing technology, copying what is already on the market. I 100% guarantee no one buys an iPhone because it is faster (an arguable fact that) — they buy it because they drank the fanboy kool-aid.
The answer is: yes.
“Do you really want to criticize Apple for their prices in light of that information?”
I don’t have an iphone because people assume you are gay if you have one. Especially with their new fabulous color schemes.
A very good company to emulate for marketing and sales
Don’t forget the exceptionally great service.
When I spilled a drink on my IMac keyboard causing it to depart to the great beyond, I went to the Apple Store.
The greeter asked me why I was there.
I said seven words.
He went and got a new keyboard and handed it to me.
Shock and Awe.
I was in and out of the store in under five minutes.
And I didn’t have to buy a new keyboard as I was expecting to.
In a reasonably free marketplace, "over-priced" products do not sell well, because there are similar products at lower cost available. Apple products sell well because they are generally very high quality and are priced properly for the market. That's just common sense. If they really were "over-priced" Apple would be out of business.
Lower priced Androids sell more quantity, true, but only a small fraction of the market's profit goes to Android manufacturers; Apple enjoys a huge lead in profit. Why? Because the Apple products suit their customers' needs better than the lower-priced competition. Hundreds of millions of customers buying Apple's iDevices for more than a decade cannot all be deluded idiots. Apple is providing products that people want at a price they're willing to pay.
Incidentally, that's capitalism, something we on FR are supposed to recognize as a Good Thing.
It's my observation that only a small fraction of Apple customers are "fanatical". Most are simply satisfied (or else they'd be buying Androids, and indeed some do), and "satisfied" is not "fanatical".
For instance, I have a Fujitsu laptop computer that is exactly what I need in a Windows laptop. It was more expensive than a Dell or HP or Asus, but it exactly suits my needs and I'm willing to pay for that quality. I'm "satisfied". Does that make me a "Fujitsu fanatic" because I spent more on my laptop than I would have on a Dell that didn't suit my needs as well? Am I a "Fujitsu fanatic" because I will happily buy my next laptop from Fujitsu if they, again, provide a product that best suits my needs at that time?
The Apple iPhone6 and 6S were BOTH, the last two generations, were faster than anything prior Android generations could produce. Your "catch up" meme is simply wrong. . . the Android's are the true followers.
Just because the geeks at Samsung, LG or all the other Android phone manufacturers may toss in a useless Blood Oximeter or Atmospheric Hygrometer sensor to their spec list which Apple chooses to exclude does not make them more advanced, it makes them desperate to have a spec list with more items on it.
But to the point of the article — you don’t see people lining up at midnight to get the latest Android phone which is a slightly better version of other phones.
Then you have no proof your Android phones are "slightly better" versions of other phones.
Google just released their latest and greatest phones yesterday. . . and I just don't see anything about them that is "slightly better" than anything.
Just like having a tantrum when it is pointed out that all the Apple products are trailing technology, copying what is already on the market. I 100% guarantee no one buys an iPhone because it is faster (an arguable fact that) — they buy it because they drank the fanboy kool-aid.
Except your claims are totally wrong. . . and you don't even recognize you've been hoist on your own petard. Your claim they are more expensive. WRONG. And that Apple is playing "catch up" is also WRONG. . . you've offered no evidence at all except your opinion. I've shown my evidence. . . which YOU mischaracterized as evidence of MARKET TRENDS. Still ROTFLMAO! You are a clown.
How do explain that the population of LBGT's in the world is under 3% but that Apple has sold 1.2 BILLION iOS devices? Your logic is flawed.
So offering phones in Black, Space gray, white and rose gold is "gay?" Who knew. Millions of very heterosexual men and women are going to be surprised. Do you know of other color schemes for Apple iPhones I don't?
Your “evidence” shows nothing other than fan boy response.
Your data are as one-dimensional as you.
Your assertions about Apple somehow leading are just that, assertions. Your data merely say that you fanboys line up whenever Apple says “new!”
Nothing other than your bloviating has proved that your devices are anything better than trailing technology (faster, even if true, <> better functionality). They are just assertions. There is not a single significant meaningful iPhone function that has not already been previously deployed on Android (and for many of them, multiple versions).
And my thesis (which you tried to bury): Android (Galaxy, LG, etc.) users are mature enough to wait for the new features when the devices become commonly available. Only children answer the “APPLE NEW!!!” bell clang and line up days early. And all that for trailing tech.
Sad, fanboys. Sad.
I think you doth protest too much “swordmaker”....
It is obvious you did not bother to read the reviews at Anandtech or other tech sites or bother to pay attention to the comparison tests of the bench marks. . . or you'd know my evidence is NOT just my unsupported "assertions" as you claim but actual fact. You, on the other hand, don't have any evidence on which to back your bloviating or your posturing.
Send in the clowns, the clones, mindless urban Konformists and the AppleBots.
And I think you ducked answering. Worried about someone doubting your your masculinity?
“Worried about someone doubting your your masculinity?”
Yes, I’m deathly afraid of that. That’s why I don’t have a gay iPhone, I don’t want to be one of the millions of sexually ambiguous men running round with their iPhones - like the new iPhone 6s with the innovative “limp wrist” mode.
>>It is obvious you did not bother to read the reviews at Anandtech or other tech sites or bother to pay attention to the comparison tests of the bench marks<<
You don’t know the difference between benchmarks and functionality. Even your own references just gauge speed. Great, it is a little faster until the next gen of the next phone. I note it does not evaluate the Galaxy 6+ series.
You seem to be deaf. The FUNCTIONS of the iPhone are one offs of the Android applications.
Lagging technology. A little faster but a little less useful than the Android systems. Then the next gen of Android will be faster than the Apple — and so on and so on.
But the usefulness of the iPhones just mimics the already deployed usefulness of Android-based phones.
Speed tests? That is all you have?
I note you AGAIN ignore my thesis — that only apple fanboys line up at midnight to overpay for lagging technology since it is a religion to you. NEW!! APPLE!!!
Adults who have phones from other sources just wait and order them with no fanfare. It is what grownups do.
The OPs thesis is intact — Apple Stores are temples for the brainwashed fanboys.
Do you consider the Roman Catholic Church a cult?
Any organisation who earns half the potential audience, that being somewhere around half a billion, isn’t a cult.
The real concern is the few who feel compelled to devote their time to stalking and harassing supporters. They’re usually psychos. Like you.
When Carousel Mall in Syracuse N.Y. opened, some reporter likewise asked a professor of theology if it was akin to a cathedral. Of course, the prof agreed, and in great detail (”a temple of consumption”).
>>Do you consider the Roman Catholic Church a cult?<<
Congratulations for the greatest non sequitur EVER on FR.
>>The real concern is the few who feel compelled to devote their time to stalking and harassing supporters. They’re usually psychos. Like you.<<
The OP’s thesis is that Apple fanboys are uniquely nuts. I agree and my analyses have yet to be rebutted by any argumentation.
But as a source of amusement, you fan boys can’t be beaten.
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