The Apple Of My Ire, by Michael Davis – Straight No Chaser #211
March 25, 2011 Michael Davis 1 Comment
Art’s column the other day was great. It was my intention to write about Apple today but I’m glad I read what he wrote first. I’ve been thinking about Apple and it’s marketing approach for a while now and Art made me feel all warm and fuzzy with his point of view.
Regarding Apple’s marketing, I hate it and all those sheep that fall for it really need a life or some pussy.
Yes, I’m a self-admitted Apple whore and I’ve said it many times.
My house, office, studio and opium den is full of Apple products.
The Huffington Post recently quoted an un-named Apple rep that said the iPad2 is not the one you want, the iPad3 is the one you want.
WTF?
I am starting to get a little bit miffed at Mr. Jobs and his boys. It’s not just the speed they are producing new products (iPad 3 is rumored to be out by X-Mas THIS YEAR) it’s how they market the product to make you think you are an ASSHOLE for owning the old one.
I’m in my office at my desk typing this on a 3-week-old Mac, on the right of me is a 1-year-old Mac, and on the left of me is a 4-year-old Mac. Except for the massive amount of shit I have on the 4 year old Mac which now has little memory, it still preforms just as well as the 2 new Macs-which before you ask I use for 2 entirely different things and I need them both.
If my needs had not changed so drastically in the last year I would still be happy with my 4 year-old desk top and my 5 year old laptop. It was just last week I retired that 5 almost 6-year-old Power Book laptop for a new Mac Book Pro.
Guess what? The Power Book is slower but except for no more memory and some stuff I’ll never use it’s the same machine as the Mac Book Pro at least it is to me. I’m sure the new Macs have many more bells and whistles but to me it’s all the same.
I buy stuff when I need stuff but Apple seems to market to people who MUST have the latest and the greatest.
I admit I was like that once … when I was ten.
I still love what they do and can’t fault them for trying to bleed every cent out of every moron that stands in line for a new phone that will drop just as many calls as the last phone, but somehow I expected better from Apple.
Seventeen years ago (when I was 4 Jean) I brought the first Bose Lifestyle Series Home Entertainment System. Seventeen years later I still own the first Bose Lifestyle Series Home Entertainment System. It’s still the best sounding system I’ve ever heard AND it LOOKS better than the new models.
That system would have to explode and kill my dogs before I’d replace it.
Bose has introduced new models over the last seventeen years but I don’t get the impression the one I own now sucks.
I can just imagine what Apple’s marketing on the iPad3 will be…
Apple introduces the iPad3.
This changes everything, again.
Makes you wonder why you dumb fucks ever brought the iPad2 and you idiots that brought the iPad are just Assholes.
The iPad 3! This changes everything…until the release of the iPad4…on Thursday.
Elayne Riggs
March 25, 2011 - 9:32 am
Imagine how bad it is if you’re an unemployed Apple junkie like my husband!
Jeremiah Avery
March 25, 2011 - 10:23 am
A frustrating aspect for some is that the iPhones seem to be unrolling on a yearly schedule yet the contracts are for two years (plus the time you are eligible for an upgrade seems to keep moving).
I had needed a new computer and was looking at a few laptops and a few people I know who are die-hard Mac users kept pushing me to get a Mac. The low-end of Macs cost over twice what some others were going for and had a fraction of the processing power and memory.
If they weren’t so borderline elitist and cultish about their Macs, maybe I would have thought more about one but passed instead. I like my iPhone 3G but I’m not an early adopter, I usually use electronics until they no longer work – growing up broke tends to not make one disgard functioning objects so easily.
Janet Sams
March 25, 2011 - 1:46 pm
I would NEVER stand in a line, let alone camp out all night to buy the latest and greatest whatever it is. I am also probably the only soul left in the universe that has not yet upgraded to a Plasma or LED flat panel TV. I am waiting for my 20 year old (FIRST) color TV monitor to die to justify the expense. I know as soon as I shell out the dough for the bells and whistles, they’ll add another damn bell, making me the proud owner of a costly and new, yet obsolete boob tube. I have a hard enough time pressing the right keys on my teenie tiny cell phone; I would no doublt throw a touch screen through the window after the third attempt to ‘touch’ the right key because I’m more of a grammar/spelling freak and can’t send anything out with a typo.
Janet Sams
March 25, 2011 - 1:47 pm
*doubt!
Mike Gold
March 25, 2011 - 4:00 pm
MOTU, I told you the very same thing about the iPad3 WEEKS ago! Saturday Night Live did a skit about Apple’s incessant upgrading so long ago it might have been back when they were still funny (which was, to paraphrase Bo Diddley, four days before they invented water). The fact is, they innovate like a 14 year old boy at his first orgy. And just as fast.
That Mac you just bought? Check and see if it’s got Thunderbolt installed. It’s in the new MacBook Pros, and it’s in all the new Macs made from March forward. If you’ve got Thunderbolt, before summer you’ll worship your new machine. If not, well, you’re fucked. WAY behind the curve.
As for the iPhone 5, if it’s half of what it looks like it will be, you’ll love it almost as much as bacon.
I buy Apple because they fit both my needs and my sense of wonder. Not a lot of shit does that. But I’ve got my problems with them — as you’ll see in Brainiac On Banjo this Monday. I’m too much the atheist to worship ANY corporation.
Oh, by the way. The iOS was upgraded today. It’s a free upgrade.
MOTU
March 25, 2011 - 6:04 pm
Free? FREE???
Doug Abramson
March 25, 2011 - 7:24 pm
Maybe I’m just too obstinate, but I’m just not that interested in any Apple products right now. I’ve been using a prototype Google Chrome laptop, with the new Chrome OS and browser, since December; and I’m very happy with it. It has had fewer issues than any computer that I have owned, with a preproduction and buggy OS. When the OS is finalized, it should be a dream. As for tablets, the Web OS machines from HP are looking very interesting.
MOTU
March 25, 2011 - 7:50 pm
Doug,
I’ve owned a LOT of Macs over the last 17 years and except for a broken screen, which was my fault, the only other problem I’ve had with any of them was an application that mysteriously vanished from one of my lap tops. A quick visit to the apple store and it was back again.
I’ve owned ONE PC…HATED IT. I gave it away a month after I brought it.
Vinnie Bartilucci
March 25, 2011 - 9:36 pm
I’ve been trying to find a copy of that Bloom County strip with Oliver watching a commercial about the new computer “Now with TINT CONTROL!” and throwing his old one away.
This is not new.
The Mac/PC dichotomy has been there since the beginning. The visual interface and its strength in graphics applications made it appealing for artists, and the PC was better for facts and data-based applications. The PC was and still is better at numbers, and the Mac is better at curves. The two have grown closer in what they can do, but in pure processing power, PCs still have the headstart. It’s just that a lot of that processing power is spent mimicing the interface that the Mac was designed to use. That and anti-virus software. I tell you, Anti-virus software has the same effects on a PC as paint chips on a three-year old.
I’ve been tempted by the Chrome laptops they’re teasing. There are Android-based netbooks out as low as $99 already, but based on the reports I’ve seen, you get what you pay for.
I still think that a low-price netbook or tablet with some open-source software is the best potential comic book reader. a $600 device to read comics or other such uses is mad, but a hundred bucks sounds more reasonable.
Apple’s strength is they sell you a whole experience. You buy their computer, with their software, at their store. Sony’s tried it and failed, Nintendo has one location, and it’s…cute.
Reg
March 25, 2011 - 10:39 pm
Both Art’s and da mOTu’s columns are timely as heck. I’ve wanted an Apple for as long as I can remember, but due to biz world constraints, I’ve only swam in PC waters.
The stability of the OS is what I yearn for (6 years and no problems??!!) …and this discussion has made the next ‘yes/no’ upgrade decision much easier.
Thanks to all.
Doug Abramson
March 25, 2011 - 11:37 pm
MOTU,
Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT knocking Apple products. They make a great product and I’d take an Apple machine over a PC running Microsoft software ANY day. Most of the technical details are beyond me, but my Chrome laptop is not a PC (PC’s having hardware evolved from IBM designs and Microsoft software), Google is trying to do something new. The HP tablet is also new with an OS designed for tablets instead of cell phones. Blackberry’s tablet will also run a tablet specific OS, but I think that HP’s looks more interesting.
Doug Abramson
March 25, 2011 - 11:40 pm
Vinnie,
I love your line comparing anti-virus software to lead chips. I’m going to have to steal it! 🙂
pennie
March 26, 2011 - 3:13 pm
MOTU, et al,
I have been working with iterations of non-Apple products since Tandy, Atari, Commodore, IBM PS2’s–all so many decades ago (despite being 29…).
I yearned for Apples but cost and–as Vinnie so aptly cites above–usage (business, spread sheets and data/word processing) commanded my choices.
Like Reg, I am at a tipping point now. As is my wont, I do boatloads of research before leaping. I read AMAP.
Years of IBM and Compaq Workstations morphed into Toshiba then HP laptops. They usually lasted about 2 years, max. All this while best friend Martha lovingly cradled her Mac.
So, I was waiting for the latest Mac Book Pros. We all know they came out last month.
All this while my 1.75-year-old HP lapper’s display spins into a dizzying vortex at will making the monitor look like a really bad acid trip where nothing is real–while many things get hung about.
Ready to take the plunge, Apple announces their new OS for Macs will be released sometime this summer, making the current OS obsolete. Sound familiar?
Spend 2-3 times the amount of money for a less powerful machine with less memory and storage(but it’s an APPLE!), then get to watch as your proud new baby is rendered old and in the way a few months later.
Yeah, I’m all over that…
What can a poor girl do, but sing in a rock n’ roll band…
Mike Gold
March 26, 2011 - 7:37 pm
Apple always gives free OS updates to those who recently bought new Macs. Downloadable. But from what I understand about Lion (OS 10.7), it’ll be worth the money to those of us who want to use the new features. I love the iPad interface, and they’re bringing it over to Lion. The whole new, and largely free, MobilMe, which was the first major cloud-based service around. Lots of other nice stuff.
Particularly for us Apple scruffs.
MOTU
March 26, 2011 - 7:58 pm
Mike,
I hear Lion is all that. With the OS Mac always gives you some time before they changes cats on you and I WILL be putting Lion on my Macs.
It does seem to me that Jobs and company are running out of cool cat names. I can’t see an OS named Puma, Lynx, Bob Cat or Tabby.
I can see an OS named PUSSY.
That WOULD change everything.
Vinnie Bartilucci
March 26, 2011 - 8:49 pm
I just learned I’ve been living a lie, and that what I thought was a 3g 8GB iPod Touch is a mere 2G, and not eligible for iOS 4.3
Doen’t look at me, I’m hideous…
Doug Abramson
March 26, 2011 - 9:16 pm
MOTU,
Wouldn’t an OS named PUSSY have to be a Microsoft product?
Mike Gold
March 27, 2011 - 6:12 am
Doug, perhaps you’re thinking of the next Windows OS, “Chihuahua.” Hairless little rat that just lies there bitching?
pennie
March 27, 2011 - 9:22 am
MOTU, my OS is Pussy.
Methinks you need to TM that.
Seriously, with the Lion OS due “sometime this summer,” and Apple’s latest window (sorry) for free retrofit updates around a month, I’m thinking of holding off on the MPB purchase until the new OS is launched, if I go that route.
How would I feel if I got one of those new MPBs, Lion roars in June or July and Apple’s free upgrade only goes to those who purchased in May/June?
Not very good.
Doug Abramson
March 27, 2011 - 10:33 am
Mike,
That works too; but a dog (or a Chihuahua) can usually be made to do what you want, with enough coaxing. A cat however, can’t be made to do anything it doesn’t want to and will sit there looking at you with disdain, doing nothing, while you’re trying to get it to cooperate. That’s been my experience with Microsoft.
Mike Gold
March 27, 2011 - 11:43 am
I agree with your analysis completely, Doug, although I suspect my experience with chihuahuas differs from yours. I couldn’t get the little bugger to do anything but shit and bite. and, well, eventually, fly, but that wasn’t his idea. Hence the Microsoft comparison.
Pennie, please email me — mike.gold@mac.com.
Vinnie Bartilucci
March 27, 2011 - 2:30 pm
“I couldn’t get the little bugger to do anything but shit and bite.”
What else CAN they do? Shiver?
Mike Gold
March 27, 2011 - 2:49 pm
Shiver, yes. Beg for food. Chase a fucking ball. Chase cars. Act as though they care about you personally and not just as the food guy.
If chihuahuas had wings, they’d be bats. Without wings, they’re just large rodents with attitude.
pennie
March 27, 2011 - 3:41 pm
Mike and Doug, I must step up and defend the house beast. Flora the wonder dog is an 8-year-old long-haired Chihuahua. We always had dogs and when we moved to CT in 2003, got the 12-week-old to celebrate. Flora has never bit or done anything other than be a wonderful companion who will shower all with kisses. Ask Martha.
She’s never been flying, by our choice or her own.
Doug Abramson
March 27, 2011 - 8:33 pm
pennie,
I’m glad that you have a Chihuahua. I’ve met one or two that weren’t too bad, but mostly I can’t stand them,
mike weber
March 28, 2011 - 12:17 am
I was an Apple partisan in pre-Mac days.
And i really loved my IIgs.
And then Jobs looked at the fact that the IIgs out-performed Macs costing at least twice as much (and the fact that Woz, whose baby the IIgs had been, had left Apple again) … and proceeded to murder the thing.
I’ve never been very impressed with Jobs – Woz was always the soul of Apple in my view – and, these days, i view Apple with slightly less approbation than i do Oracle.
MOTU
March 28, 2011 - 2:22 pm
I hope the people responsible for the following did not read my article the other day:
http://www.morningstar.com/newsview-1/–DJ–201103281622DOWJONESDJONLINE000300_univ.xml.shtml
McCarthy
March 28, 2011 - 6:20 pm
Turns out, no one takes you seriously if you call and make a “death ray” threat.
Vinnie Bartilucci
March 30, 2011 - 6:48 am
The sad part? Nowadays…they WOULD take it seriously. Amazing what becomes reasonable under the umbrella of “You can’t be too careful”.