For a long time, Apple has been the darling of business journals and hipsters everywhere. From an investment perspective, Apple provides a solid business model based around concrete products, strong marketing and a messianic chief executive. For hipsters, Apple builds sleek products, dripping of individualism. Their advertising centerpiece features a counterculture youth battling a lame nerd in an inexplicable white space. Apparently, Apple found Cream’s “White Room.”
Apple positions itself as a pioneer and a maverick. After all, when young Jobs was creating the original Macintosh computer, he flew a pirate flag above his building. And perhaps, at the time, he was a bold innovator seeking new territory. He said, “It is better to be a pirate than join the navy.” The skirmish in Somalia aside, this is the tone Apple has taken: it’s the outsider, not a soulless corporation like the evil Microsoft. Apple has also associated its products with quality and user-friendliness, which is why it is often a first-time buy for students who don’t want the hassle and headache of a Windows machine.
Apple began its entry into the tech world in a narrow, unique space with the Macintosh personal computer. Despite its growth, Apple has managed to maintain its image as a unique product. So enters the iPad, a product whose reputation exceeded the reality. Fortune gushes about how tablet computing could revolutionize the industry, but without some changes, it won’t be Apple that is leading the charge. For example, Jonney Shih, chairman of Asus, “ticks off the features the iPad lacks and that others…can add to attract customers: a camera for videoconferencing, the ability to multitask, and an operating system that runs Adobe’s Flash.” Shih, additionally, is “puzzled” as to why Apple would not have included these features in the first place. The product has finally seemed to send a message to loyal Apple users who are now finding that not everything the company has to offer is “magical and revolutionary” – Apple’s words, not mine. However, without the loyalty and dedication of users, Apple has precious little to offer.
The problem with Apple is that it is not as benevolent as it appears, and its products are not quite as sensational as they seem. It’s a little absurd to describe technology as “magical” since it’s probably the least magical thing on Earth. Technology is boring and dry. It’s little more than a table of numbers. The fact is, Apple products are not magical, but they are horrendously overpriced. A Dell laptop with the exact same specifications (except for the processor, which is better) as a 15″ MacBook Pro is $759. The Apple? $1,749. Premium pricing may work for Bentley but is a little white Apple logo really worth a thousand dollars? This is to say nothing of Apple’s disregard for personal rights, as the company often unceremoniously deletes applications they disapprove of from their products, destroy the lives of their workers (a Chinese third-party worker committed suicide because he mistakenly leaked the iPhone, jeopardizing the company’s relationship with Apple), and filing patents for software in which “the operating system can disable some aspect of its operation to prompt the operator to pay attention to the advertisement.” When I buy a technological product, it should work for me and make my life easier, not the other way around. Perhaps other tech firms should just continue doing what they are doing, and make quality products for reasonable prices. If Apple does not change its strategy, it will probably destroy itself very soon.