Battleangel | Personal

I bet you’ve never heard that before. Ok, so you probably have. I don’t claim to be novel but I do dislike Apple and their products so much that I’d thought I’d share my not so novel hatred of the Macintosh and iPod manufacturer. In a way it’s much like my disdain for the United States and Judeo-Christians. All the signs are there. The preaching of the believers. The self-absorbed but empty image. The hardcore users and supporters. And the masses that go along with it because they don’t know any better. On the surface it seems like a good deal to them. At any rate not worse than the alternative. The product, be it American foreign policy and “democracy” or the iPod has been geared to be above all else visually and “interfacially” pleasing. And it is presented with a barrage of marketing and deceit. Even a mere critical examination of features or policy reveals a chasm between perception and reality. So maybe I should lay off the political metaphor already.

Anyway, here is how I see it as one who does not own Apple hardware and would never out of his own free will acquire any.
It has been argued that Apple is making the same flabbergasting anti-consumer mistake (and only slightly more successful) with the iPod as with their old Mac line in the 80s. Just to recap the critique: Price is too high and doesn’t come down. Quality is dodgy and doesn’t improve. Corny with standards and not in the nice open-source way but rather in the syndicate proprietary fashion. Basically consumer demands are not met.
Now what happens with a company like that in a market driven economy. Well the best thing they can hope for is being reduced to obscurity like after the initial Mac failure. With the massive investments they’ve made this time however, it could spell bankruptcy. But that is not really my problem and even though I hate free markets per se, I don’t lament their sometimes disastrous effects on corporate players. They chose their path. Unlike consumers.

So why is Apple a “demon of stupidity”? Even granted their eventual demise and consumer freedom. Well, much like Scott Adams’ original nonsense-spouting Unix guru that gets himself exorcised, Apple is a danger to the high tech industry and in fact modern civilization as I envision it. Does that sound paranoid? Well, allow me to at least sketch out the case against Apple. Others are surely more qualified and motivated to handle the indictment.
The number one reason that Apple is dangerous is the hype and transformation they bring of the sector that they are in. Everyone hates marketing obviously, but Apple takes the hype even further, twisting and turning ads into culture phenomena and memes rather than a serious take on the product. And worse still, their dark influence on the style and features (or lack thereof) of home electronics is just staggering. A product needs to be functional, sturdy and competitive and Apple is none of those things. Yet it prevails (for the moment). Now that must be a sign of either a stupendously cretinous consumer base or marvellous marketing. Or both.
Take the iPod specifically. It’s like a theme from a dystopian sci-fi film. A bleak cityscape under a steel sky. People are gray, mindless automatons. The only light of their lives is that they can have their very own “unique” and colorful but featureless and monotonous iPod.
Some argue that Apple has brought innovation to the market. If so, it’s really crappy innovation that stopped being novel with the first generation iPods. My main concern is that it is spreading. The “easy life” that is. The sort of featureless, colorful, bland lifestyle that Apple stands for. Not that they’re alone in this either but they have done more than anyone to perpetuate it. They are to personal electronic what war and pro wrestling is for America. A sick and endemic culture, not because war, ipod or pro wrestling are wrong per se, but because they each have taken on a life of their own. A mythos and a culture that instills them with meaning that just isn’t there and that appeals to the darkest impulses of human nature at the same time as it molds societies to accept its future product line. But I digress.

My point is that marketing, hyping and brainwashery are not free market phenomena. Or at least they shouldn’t be. How can technical product selection work if flawed products are propped up and hyped to sell, not for their intrinsic functionality, but rather for their popular image. That, in conjunction with their courting of intellectual and proprietary property, threatens the entire entertainment sector. In fact there is an entire iPod generation that we can soon think of as lost just like the console gamers (nintendo generation). In fact, gaming consoles is another great example of this trend and its costs and perhaps a better metaphor still. Because like with Apple’s products, they exist on a market that is for all intents and purposes a zero sum game. And even though both the PC and consoles have coexisted for a long time, there are clear signs that this is about to end. One reason for this being ever increasing development time, costs and porting difficulties (although this varies greatly of course). Basically, most people will only buy one gaming rig, be it a new PC or an XBOX 360. If enough people start buying XBOXes, and development shifts to console platforms, over time the PC industry will shrivel and die. Or indeed become for gaming what the Macintosh is today. Regardless of the PC clearly being the better alternative and being as capable or more so than consoles. Hence the demon of stupidity has prevailed.

Plus obviously, the “persecuted Apple user” has a lot in common with the Judeo-Christians reasoning mentioned above. They’re proselytizing and stuck-up. Socially adhesive and coherent. Even more so than the Unix crowd and that is saying a lot. It’s a wonder they haven’t managed to enact laws against Apple-denial and anti-Appleism too. Linux is a good example too. Because of lousy marketing (thankfully!) they have gotten nowhere in the last couple of year. They have their own culture, their hardcore fans, but they can’t quite get over the fact that Unix or Linux just isn’t very good. But had Linux had Steve Jobs, we could all have been back to the command prompt by now and reinventing every piece of software that has ever been done. In fact, Linux is a lot like Apple. Only the exact opposite. It’s cheaper than Windows but is at the same time the worse product of the two or so we assume. Even if the programming shines. The GUI does not. Apple and its OS on the other hand are supposedly better in terms of GUI (but have the same software deficiency). On the other hand it costs many times more to get on the Apple train pound for pound so to speak. So even though diversity is supposedly good, it does not excuse products or life style choices that go against the common good as it were. The common good of course being technical complexity and breadth by my definition rather than simplistic and singular diversity.

Here are some thoughts from the wired world who do a better job perhaps of summing up the problem.

Underscorebleach - I hate the Apple thing. It’s a “cultural problem.” More specifically, the turtlenecked, Steve Jobs, thumb-up-the-ass, liberal-with-too-much-money “cultural problem.”
The ramifications? Well, ridiculously expensive hardware, for one. A CEO cast in the image of L. Ron Hubbard. A collective arrogance among Apple owners that “we know better,” quite similar in fact to the tilting-at-windmills of Bose WaveRadio™ owners (ha!). And maybe the worst? The worst? The advertising.

(Commentary) - I generally despise Apple users. It’s like they are asking if you want to be Saved by Jesus when they find out you are a sinful PC user.

(Commentary) - Hey man, when Steve Jobs hands you the cup, drink the Kool-Aid. Don’t ask questions. And I guarantee that it will be a very mod, very stylish cup, perhaps signed by Bono, so it’s got to be the right thing to do.

(Commentary) - Finally, another blog (a design blog at that) that doesn’t kow tow to Apple. I can’t make myself pay two to five times more for a similar product just because it might work slightly better. The cult of Apple scares me and I fear that iPods are just designed to brainwash the masses in to buying Apple products. Be afraid PC people, be very afraid.

Here are just some of the consumer experiences I found while Googling. Many of whom are actual Apple users who seem stuck in a schizophrenic existence between hating the brand and having to (because of work or culture) stay with it.

A Bad Apple?; Mac Sucks; Apple Sucks; Another Reason Why Apple Sucks; A Contrarian View of iPod and Apple; Apple Sucks; ChrisNet’s Anti-Apple site; Did you know Apple sucks?; Why Apple Sucks etc.