Part One: Apple, Bees, Hammers and Shorts
The mere thought of Marmite makes me nauseous.
Or maybe I hate Apple in the same way that people who love Apple actually love Apple, which is, rather stupidly. Whatever the reality of my emotions, it is, after all, just a company who make lots of stuff that lots of people like, and so maybe I should just get over it.
Once upon a time I actually liked Apple. It was 1984, when Ridley Scott directed that magnificent advert for the Apple Mac, the one where the woman with impressive norks and tight orange shorts runs towards a screen and flings a hammer at it to stop some rambling old git from oppressing a load of dusty, brainwashed proles. Yeah, that was cool.
For me, that sums Apple up. The best thing about them was a glossy, sexy, and very expensive advert that didn't make a whole lot of sense when you stopped to think about it, and certainly didn't actually, you know, tell you anything about their product. Luckily, in those days I was far too young to buy a home computer (£1 a week spending money doesn't get you much more than sweets, and I didn't have a whole lot of use for a PC running just MacWrite), so for me Apple was just an advert off the telly. It may well have been Battle of the Planets for all that I cared.
Fast forward 25 years, and really, has all that much changed? Instead of the woman with the tight orange shorts wielding a hammer, we now have Steve Jobs in a black polo neck waving an iPad. Instead of a telly ad (first aired during the Superbowl, according to Wikipedia - plus ca change), we have live streaming conferences over the internet. And instead of the Apple Mac coming to revolutionize our lives, it's the iPad. Same hype, different products.
And yes, they are rather nice products. I'm not disputing that Apple have a knack for making things that people really seem to want (and will hand over silly amounts of money for); it would be churlish to insist that everyone is wrong and actually Apple stuff is clunky, amateurish crap. It clearly isn't.
But there's this other thing. Despite my own, personal reasons for disliking Apple, which I'll come on to in future posts... (see, I've already watered it down from "hate" to "dislike").... it just pisses me off that you can't have a sensible discussion about Apple without people taking sides as if it was the French bloody Revolution all over again. Why do they inspire such tribalism? Why do people who use Macs feel the need to go all Big-endian about it? Is it not enough to just own Apple hardware, without it having to be absorbed into your sense of identity? Why are you Apple users forever evangelising about their products?
Is it because, deep down, behind that mesmerising glowing-white apple logo, you feel the slightest nagging sense that you may have been conned? Not in the snake oil / homeopathy / Nigerian bank draft sense, but in the same way that as a small child I thought the 1984 ad was just the coolest thing ever? You've not just chosen a brand. You've embraced a lifestyle. And that's kind of embarrassing, isn't it? You seek reassurance among your fellow Apple tribe that all this fancy, sexy hardware is genuinely amazing, and you have all collectively chosen most wisely; such a choice therefore identifies you as a discerning, knowledgeable member of the cognoscenti. And that means... if Apple tells you that this next new thing is what you need, then that is, by definition, what you need. And if it looks great, feels oh so perfect in your hand and has only one button, then all the better. It must be the best thing out there.
Did we ever get so moist and religious about Microsoft? Why have Microsoft never inspired loyalty and affection and slavish devotion? How did they end up as the uncool playground bully while Apple was the trendy hipster kid with a satchel full of achingly hip vinyl and next-week's-trousers?
Well, maybe this has something to do with it... I don't remember any Microsoft ads. Where was the MS woman with the tight shorts and jiggly babylons? Nah, Bill Gates was too busy sitting in his little nerd-pod writing a billion lines of code to care about ads. He'd probably never even heard of Ridley Scott.
Perhaps this was deliberate. Maybe Bill saw that ad and snorted in derision, scoffing that people weren't going to fall for a flashy 2 minute video. Let Apple appeal to the trend-setters, while Microsoft would focus on writing great, boring software and conquering the world, one geek at a time.
Trouble is, in the modern era, we're all about the image. Yes, the geeks have inherited the earth, but now they want to be hip too.
--------------------------------------
None of this is the reason why I really hate Apple, by the way. I'm coming to that later. This is just some mood music, to set the scene for the events that truly set me on the path to enlightenment. But it's bedtime now.
If you really want to understand the way Apple works (and inspires loyalty), may I go to suggest you take out a few minutes and check out Simon Sinek's presentation on TED.com? It can be found at doesn't even last 20 minutes and gives a good theory about the focus of the company.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Konrad. I'll check that out.
ReplyDeleteI'm not one of those people who is so determined to rant and rail against something that they aren't interested in alternative points of view or factual data.
It's not about the advertising. (I'd point out that your post asking why everyone has to treat the discussion as though it were the French Revolution comes over more like the French Revolution than a discussion, but..)
ReplyDeleteWhat's the product - any product: a bike, TV set, doorknob, anything - that you use and can't help yourself enthusing about? There's bound to be one. Why do you enthuse about it? Because you like the experience so much, in a midst of so-so rubbish, that you want other people to get the same enjoyment. (It's like people telling you to listen to their new favourite band.) Computers tend not to be like that: they're often frustrating, perplexing, don't communicate well.
Apple products seem often to give people the impression that they're not having to struggle with the machine. It's like the doorknob that's always just under your hand, that opens just nicely, the door that shuts just right. That's user experience. It's Apple's USP. Microsoft doesn't offer that. It offers something different. Valuable, but different.
It is nothing about the image. If it were, then Apple wouldn't get return customers, because nothing dispels an image more than having exactly the same thing as loads of other people.
It is all about the user experience. If that goes, Apple will fall. It did go in the mid-90s, and Apple fell. The machines were junk; only the software kept it going.
Still, part 2 is going to be interesting now, isn't it?
Hi Charles,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the interesting comments. Yes, I was aware when mentioning the partisan nature of the debate that this blog post was a perfect illustration of what I was deriding! My dig at OTHER people who had the temerity to rant or rave about Apple was slightly tongue-in-cheek.
You're dead right about the usability. That is of course the secret of Apple's success, and it's a lesson that many other companies would still be wise to learn. I meant to discuss the issue of usability in more detail but to be honest, I started writing about the 1984 advert and then got side-tracked somewhat. In the end, the company image is far less important than the fact that their tools are incredibly intuitive and easy to use. I wonder if their competitors are slowly catching up in this regard, though? I now know more people with Android phones than iPhones, and they love using them too. So their USP is maybe now a slightly less-U SP?
In my case, the company I might occasionally (when drunk) claim to "love" and enthuse about is Nintendo. I have always bought their hardware, and exhibit some of the loyalty and emotional attachment towards 'the big N' that I'm criticizing in Apple devotees. So I understand the principle of wanting to evangelize a positive experience to the world at large. If only Apple had Yoshi or Donkey Kong or Princess Peach, maybe I'd feel more warmly towards them.
Anyway, I wouldn't take part one too seriously. That was just a backdrop to set the context for the rest.
Thanks for reading!