megaresp
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I'm more amused by your own reaction to this anecdote.
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What's so fantastic about Apple?
- Thread starter Humes fork
- Start date
I'm more amused by your own reaction to this anecdote.
What's good about Apple you ask - nothing that's what good about Apple*.
*(May be a tad biased today as I spent yesterday trying to get my old OSX Mac and iTouch in a fit state to sell, talk about annoying and the sheer arrogance of the company - I can't use my Mac to sync with my iTouch as it requires a version of iTunes that is not available for my "old" Mac unless I spend money to upgrade the OS on the Mac. Never mind the problems getting the Mac Mini to work on the home network.......)
*(May be a tad biased today as I spent yesterday trying to get my old OSX Mac and iTouch in a fit state to sell, talk about annoying and the sheer arrogance of the company - I can't use my Mac to sync with my iTouch as it requires a version of iTunes that is not available for my "old" Mac unless I spend money to upgrade the OS on the Mac. Never mind the problems getting the Mac Mini to work on the home network.......)
Seriously. I'm thinking the students in attendance loved every second of it.
Kid Eager
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Reading back, it's an interesting thread. So, I rant:
Imagine for a moment that the question was "What's so Fantastic about (for example) Lenovo?" Would there be as much over-reacting and histrionics?
Why do you think Apple needs to be defended/disparaged? It's going to be successful whether you stamp your feet or wave your flags. It's only a company that makes consumer electronics....
I think this thread needs to be added to the list of first world problems
/rant
Imagine for a moment that the question was "What's so Fantastic about (for example) Lenovo?" Would there be as much over-reacting and histrionics?
Why do you think Apple needs to be defended/disparaged? It's going to be successful whether you stamp your feet or wave your flags. It's only a company that makes consumer electronics....
I think this thread needs to be added to the list of first world problems
/rant
Marketing - Apple epitomises what all brands strive to achieve. People go on about the quality, the technology and so on but what Apple really should be viewed as the world leader in is marketing. I can't think of any other company that has been so successful at marketing the brand, the nearest would be Coca-Cola but its great days of marketing are all in its past.
(And you will find that some "Apple" folk will find even my very high praise above objectionable. Hats off to Apple.)
Lamuella
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well, I suppose the important thing is that you managed to feel superior to both sides.
Stomatopoda
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...that's the point. Non-brainwashed people would be offended in a similar situation.
megaresp
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I think you're right, but so what? Haven't you ever felt passionate about something?
Stomatopoda said:
I'd have been annoyed if he started prising keys off my keyboard. But as I said above, so what if some Jobs' groupies reacted in this way. Why does it bother you so much?
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Going on your marketing/brand point...And news organizations know an Apple story will get more hits because people are interested in reading about anything Apple (fanboys, haters and regular folk).
Example: accident at a Foxconn factory will generate a "Fire at factory that makes iPads" headline but not a " Fire at factory that makes Samsung TVs"
But what's so fantastic about Apple: I'm an average computer user and I just love the fact that it's so easy to get an Apple product and have it work so seamlessly with my other Apple products. I have little interest in setting stuff up and my last experience with a non-Apple product (Droid X phone) made it easy for me to decide to go back to the iPhone. I guess this makes me stuck in the Apple ecosystem but guess what? I don't care! I love it. It's easy. Take my money, Apple. It's worth it to me.
And again, my iPhone was the same price as my Droid and my iPad was the same price as the other leading tablets (Xoom, Galaxy)
El Greco
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Personally I used to be completely indifferent about such battles, exactly like I am completely indifferent about 15yo battles on whether Game A is better than Game B. But then the whole culture will come and hit me on the head while I'm sitting quietly at my PC drinking my coffee. I mean, more and more people I know come to tell me about their latest iPhone or their latest Mac and how much better it is than the other phones or the other PCs and so on. And those people really can't do 1/100th of the things I do with my PC or phone (this is not an issue of the devices, but rather of the specific persons: they couldn't do too much with non-Apple devices either). I think I've been experiencing too much Apple-related bragging lately, without even provoking it. Some Apple fans will take the simple remark that "there's nothing special about Apple products" as an insult.
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TheL8Elvis
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I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't
Seriously, what version are you on ? AFAIK, leopard (10.5 ) supports the latest itunes ? Tiger (10.4) was released in 2005.
And as for networking ... I'm not familiar with any OS X specific problems that would cause difficulties ....
But that's really only an anecdote and I can swap you one - when I got my new "Android" phone (that was about £20 less per month than an iphone) I was blown away because all I had to enter into it was my Google account details and it was as if by magic completely linked to my contacts, my documents, my calendars and so on all available and syncing, I make any change on the household's main PC and lo and behold it's (appears) instantly on my phone, my laptop and for good measure my to-dos and calendar are updated on my other half's phone. (And even the "Contact Us" email address from the Forum because that is an account I have synced with my Google account.) All from typing in one account name and password. Hard to see how it could be easier.
I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't
Seriously, what version are you on ? AFAIK, leopard (10.5 ) supports the latest itunes ? Tiger (10.4) was released in 2005.
And as for networking ... I'm not familiar with any OS X specific problems that would cause difficulties ....
Yep on Tiger, didn't need any of the new features so never updated it beyond the many security patches. My annoyance was that what used to work together (i.e. my iTouch and Mac) no longer will. As for the network stuff - please don't ask it was a bloody nightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zelenius
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I think Apple's incredible comeback, from struggling to stay afloat in the mid 90s to becoming the most valuable company in the world about 15 years later is testimony to it's marketing genius. Most of this success can be attributed to Steve Jobs. The Steve Jobs/Apple comeback story - super-fantastic!
If in the late 1990s someone had said Apple would be the most valuable company in the world in 2011(or second only to Exxon), they would have been laughed at and ridiculed. And certainly, they should have been, as I don't think there was any strong evidence that they would become super-successful, with their declining market share and poor leadership during most of the 90s. I even remember some of my friends and co-workers in the computer business back in the late 1990s expecting Apple to go out of business by 2000 or a little later.
Besides his obvious entrepreneurial talents, Steve Jobs mystique contributed immensely to Apple's mystique and popularity. Jobs is Apple.
The brilliant, bohemian visionary who co-founded the company in his garage in the mid 70s is one of those quintessentially American entrepreneurial success stories. That he was exiled from his company in the mid 1980s, only to return to his impoverished
Most companies just have customers - Apple has cult-members. Apple cult-members weren't just buying gadgets or computers they were buying little pieces of rock-star CEO Steve Jobs, hoping that Jobsy-artsy-visionary-brilliance rubs off on them just a little. Buying and using Apple products truly is a religious experience for many users, as the OP suggested(although I think we need better controls and a better study).
This is how I see things from the outside. I never use Apple products and find the cult-like devotion of it's loyal customers both amusing and disturbing. How Apple managed to pull off this ruse is fantastic, especially when you consider how the company almost died. It's even more crazy when you consider how big of a jerk the private Jobs was, compared to his public persona.
richardm
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Not for a long time - I remember that there was a lot of it about in the 1990s when Windows 95 was lining up against OS/2
I'm not quite sure why a PC from 40 years ago stops being "the first PC" just because it wouldn't be considered very useful today. It was a PC then and useful at the time - and if we're talking about "first" then "at the time" is surely all we care about isn't it?
TheL8Elvis
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And we find your over-the-top stereotype of apple customers both amusing and disturbing.
That's the magic.
You sure put a lot of thought into a company whose products you don't use
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When other companies have loyal customers they have "loyal customers".
Apple's are cult-members?
Believe it or not most iPhone users don't have statues to Steve Jobs in their living rooms or blog incessantly about how great their Mac is.
Or am I just saying this to lure you into the cult?!
Apple's are cult-members?
Believe it or not most iPhone users don't have statues to Steve Jobs in their living rooms or blog incessantly about how great their Mac is.
Or am I just saying this to lure you into the cult?!
Zelenius
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And we find your over-the-top stereotype of apple customers both amusing and disturbing.
That's the magic.
You sure put a lot of thought into a company whose products you don't use
It is difficult to overstate the devotion of their cult-members, uh I mean customers. This is one of the main reasons for their phenomenal success, and many years ago I sort of used to be one of them, but I outgrew it(I was still a kid at the time). Threads like this just remind me so much of my first computer, a Macintosh, and how cool and fun and user-friendly it was. There are still a few cult-members in my family.
The Shrike
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Long time Mac fan here, because my first introduction to computers was on Macs in the 1980s. DOS-based machines mystified me, and they still do. The first time I ever had to use a PC I remember thinking "Why can't I just click on it?"
For someone not tech-savvy like me (which amounts to a heck of a lot of people), Apple products tap into some user interface designs in software and hardware that I do think are superior, though that gap has closed tremendously since the '80s. I think the main reason I've been loyal to the brand is that over about 27 years of using Macs, I think I can count on one hand the number of times my computer has "crashed." In my experience, I've enjoyed using Apple products, and they've been really reliable.
For someone not tech-savvy like me (which amounts to a heck of a lot of people), Apple products tap into some user interface designs in software and hardware that I do think are superior, though that gap has closed tremendously since the '80s. I think the main reason I've been loyal to the brand is that over about 27 years of using Macs, I think I can count on one hand the number of times my computer has "crashed." In my experience, I've enjoyed using Apple products, and they've been really reliable.
CynicalSkeptic
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Well, the 47% who do sure give a bad name to the rest of them.