This is an article that I’ve wanted to write for a long time, because I want to know if I’m the only person out there who feels this way.
Today I read an article from Computerworld called “Five Reasons Why Vista Beats OS X;” the article made a pathetically weak case for Vista and incited the ire of the blogosphere. As an aside, I plan on doing my own “Vista vs. OS X” post later this week simply because the case for Vista was made so poorly by Preston Galla and I think the issue would be a lot of fun to write about.
However, back to the point: the blogosphere’s reaction. Social media and blogs are dominated by Apple fans for the most part; this truth is so observable that I feel comfortable saying it without backing it up with statistics.
I look at some of the reactions from Mac users and groan; many of the pro-Windows comments on Digg have been buried and angry Mac users even tarnished the article’s rating within Computerworld’s own internal rating system:
-184? The article was not well-reasoned, but come on! My gut tells me that most of those votes came from the same sort of pissed-off Mac acolytes who buried Pro-Windows comments on Digg.
Here’s something I know from experience: Dis Apple or Steve Jobs publicly, even in a mild way, and the Apple Cultists descend on you like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead. Or maybe the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz. You get the picture. Nail Apple in a public forum, and you can depend on your in box filling with nasty-grams from dot-mac addresses.
The Cult of Apple
I admire Apple for being able to build a product and a brand that people feel connected to at a deeply emotional level; Apple users are among the most vocal and passionate customers across all industries.
Apple users, as I have claimed before, proudly boast their brand preference with “colorful” displays of passion, such as web celebrity iJustine’s “Apple” tattoo:
If you’re not at least a little creeped out by that video then you’re probably a Mac user.
And this is what I’m getting at: are Apple fans a little bit too passionate, a little too deep in the product myopia?
An example: one of my college friends was among the first group of people to get an iPhone, and he has not stopped talking about the iPhone since. Every single meeting with him means that I have to spend at least 5 minutes watching him perform some mundane task on his iPhone or watch some lame YouTube video on his tiny screen.
Within a few weeks of owning an iPhone he started to make fun of his other friends and I for using Razors, Treos, and so forth. Nothing, however, topped his attempt to pick up girls at bars by showing them his iPhone; a few of my other friends and I stood back and watched, all of us thinking “an iPhone would be cool were it not adopted by people like who think that an iPod with a touch screen and 2g wireless will get girls into the sack.”
The Apple Community: A Sales Deterrent?
Apple acquires new customers (”converts”) every day, but something about buying a Mac transforms many of those customers into smug, annoying jack asses.
I and others like me will never buy a Mac product other than iPod just because we don’t want to be associated with the same sort of smug “know-it-all” fanboys who try to pick up women at bars using an iPhone!
This post isn’t about “why I use Windows” or “why I think Windows is better than Macs;” it’s “I won’t buy Mac products because I think Mac users represent a social movement that is profoundly annoying and I think I’m not alone on this one.”
Are there people who don’t buy Mac products because they don’t want to be in the community, and are there enough of them to curb Apple’s growth?
You tell me.
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Comments 18
“smug, annoying jack asses” seems a tad harsh
Though I have to admit part of my reaction is based on me mentally scanning the last few months trying to see if I have been a smut, annoying jack ass about my iPhone. I’ll be the first to admit it has come to a point where I’m not allowed to take it out when I’m with my girlfriend and in public (an edict set down by her).
I mean…I don’t know what to say, the device has literally changed my life. I’m typing this very comment right now because of it (it’s so easy to browse the web on it that whenever I can’t sleep I reach over and read a few feeds off Google reader). It changes your perspective and it makes you a little fanatical. I’m actually on the edge of buying a Macbook Pro and learning Objective-C/Cocoa just to develop applications for it which is a lot of time and money to spend on one device with such a limited user base. What can I say? It makes you a passionate fan and I’m honestly not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.
Where I do think a fanatical fan base hurts Apple though is in the way it influences their actions. I made a post in November titled “Learning to be an Apple User” where I said (excuse the quote, but it says exactly what I wanted to here and I didn’t want to retype)…
I have to say that one of the most interesting things about owning an iPhone has been seeing firsthand how Apple treats its customers. Honestly, I’m not impressed.
Take today, my iPhone just updated itself to firmware version 1.1.2 and after looking around on the web for about 10 minutes I still have no idea exactly what was done to my iPhone. There’s certainly no official announcement so the best I have is picking up random discoveries from other users.
Now, say what you will about Microsoft they would NEVER get away with this. I doubt they’d even try. This experience just points back to that age old truth that Apple PCs and support really aren’t that great they just have rabid fans who will love them no matter what.
End Quote
The last few months have only deepened the feeling that Apple really doesn’t care what I think and will do to me whatever they please because they know their core fan base will always come back for more. They don’t need me and they aren’t afraid to let me know it.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 5:34 am ¶Hey Tom,
Might seem harsh but that’s often how they come across when I deal with them in person, even the people who work in the Apple store.
“What can I say? It makes you a passionate fan and I’m honestly not sure if that’s a bad thing or not.”
That’s a great thing! There’s nothing wrong with being passionate about it; it’s the movement to try and convert every one else that ruffles some people’s feathers. But it’s not just the movement to convert people; it’s what they say when they’re doing it.
Take a look at the Mac vs. PC commercials, for instance; PCs are inferior, PCs break a lot, PCs are for dorks, and so forth. If Toyota ran commercials every day called “Toyota vs. Ford” where they featured a burly, masculine guy representing Toyota pick-up trucks and a skinny poseur representing Ford pick-up trucks and a bunch of “Toyota is better Ford sucks” messages, don’t you think there’d be a lot of people, and not just Ford owners, who think “well this is a little ridiculous?”
I think a lot of PC users have a similar sentiment; rather than being shamed into purchasing a Mac by an advertising campaign that tries to tell us that our current solution is inferior we simply reject the cult of smugness emanated by the Apple community.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 12:05 pm ¶Does it deter sales? Obviously. There’s plenty of people like yourself who make purchasing decisions based on what other people might think of them. I can think of several other examples: wouldn’t buy a Hummer because people who drive them are jerks, don’t shop at Wal-Mart because only poor people shop there, buy Prada because some celebrity owns the same purse, buy a Prius so that people will think them environmentally conscious. There’s perfectly good reasons to do the opposite of each of those things but people like you paint everybody with the same brush.
What you buy is not who you are. I know that’s hard for a marketer to understand, but I own Macs because I find them useful computers. Just because there’s people out there who think that owning a Mac makes them better or more special or more cool doesn’t mean that I believe that. In other words, in judging a Mac owner based on your stereotypical view of how *some* Mac users behave is wrong. Not purchasing a Mac because you’re afraid of being judged by that stereotype is strikingly bizarre.
So don’t presume to know exactly what sort of person someone is based on a single purchasing decision. I own a Mac and I’ll recommend it to someone if they ask my opinion, but honestly I don’t care what anyone else does with their money. (For the record, I’ve met my fair share of PC zealots too.) The problem is zealotry coupled with materialism in my view: what I buy is good, what you buy is shit—even though they may both objectively achieve our respective ends.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:37 pm ¶Also, iJustine is ridiculous. If it weren’t Apple, it’d be something else for her.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:41 pm ¶YES.
I will not buy Apple products because of the smugness of their marketing and of their fan boys.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 2:48 pm ¶“So don’t presume to know exactly what sort of person someone is based on a single purchasing decision.”
Bill, I know plenty of level-headed Mac owners; the problem is that the BRAND is what represents the culture, and the brand is defined by both the company’s advertisements (Mac vs. PC) and the way the ownership community represents itself in public.
If you read my language in the post you’ll see that I don’t paint all Mac owners with the same brush, just many of them. I have left some room for exceptions.
For the record, I buy PCs because they offer features that Apple machines do not, but even if Apple did offer the same functionality I wouldn’t buy it just because the brand leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I will be writing a
post tomorrow that outlines it. I could care less what OTHER people would think of me if I buy a Mac; I care about what a Mac represents, and in my own mind what I own is what represents me. It’s the same reason why I won’t buy a hybrid car.
And I’ll contest the “what you buy is not who you are” statement until I die. If you come to work every day dressed in wearing neatly pressed Brook’s Brothers and a nice pair of Ecco shoes, does that not say something about your sense of style, your affluence, or your job? If you drive a beat up old truck, an H1, or a hybrid, don’t any of those say SOMETHING about you? What they say is open to intrepretation, but whether you like it or not, they all say something.
So what “owning a Mac” says about you is open to interpretation; you interpret it as a just a functional tool that you work well with – and I respect that. However, I see a great many more people who believe that owning a Mac means that they’re part of some technologically superior, smug social movement where everyone wears pastel colors, dances to Bono, and video blogs all of it as though anyone else will care – that just isn’t for me.
What I was wondering is, am I alone in thinking that the perception of Apple as a “smug social movement” can actually hurt their sales?
One thing that you and I can agree on, Bill, is that iJustine is ridiculous.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 3:06 pm ¶Let’s pick your example of someone wearing a Brooks Brothers suit. How might various people evaluate him:
1) some corporate big shot who’s probably an arrogant jerk
2) a fashionable, successful man
3) some corporate drone hoodwinked into wearing a uniform
4) a guy who doesn’t care about the poor because he’s wearing a several thousand dollar suit
5) an eligible candidate for a relationship
6) he thinks he’s better than me
In reality, he may be all of those things, none of those things, or any of those things. But by basing an evaluation on that piece of clothing, you’re doing him a grave injustice. More importantly, you’re doing yourself a disservice because this guy might be a great friend, awesome boss, perfect husband, or fascinating individual. But you’ve got him pinned down by just knowing one fact about him.
In reality, these stereotypes (including yours) say much, much more about the observer than the subject. When you meet a person and find out that he’s a Mac user, you’re probably letting loose a mental sigh and preparing for an onslaught of Mac paeans. But what if that person was me? It would never come and maybe you’d never even bother to get to know me.
Anticipating a common reaction, you might reply that you certainly don’t judge people like that, that you wouldn’t care whether the person used a Mac or not unless they started the droning. So why do you think that every one of your fellow humans is different? In other words, you’re worried that getting a Mac would engender exactly that response in others even though you yourself would never behave like that. Give your fellow man some credit. Most people, in my experience, aren’t hidebound by stereotypes.
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 4:43 pm ¶Why does the man himself wear the Brooks Brothers’ suit? He could buy similar looking clothing at a lower cost from Macy’s or elsewhere, but why did he choose Brooks Brothers? Probably because identifies himself with the values that that brand represents, in one form or another. There IS a reason; what you’re saying is that there isn’t one nor should other people assume that there is. Sorry, but that’s simply not true.
I wear BitTorrent T-shirts and jeans because I identify myself as a geek and I like feeling comfortable. What does that say about me? Some people might construe wearing a shirt that sponsors a product used primarily as a means for pirating music as anti-establishment or something bizarre like that. Frankly I don’t care what anyone else thinks about what the shirt means; to me it just means that I’m identifying with my geeky interests.
Truthfully, I do groan when I meet someone who introduces themselves as a “Mac user” because, from my experience, the next thing I get to listen to is a song of praise about some product that I don’t have much interest in. The fact is that Mac users themselves created the stereotype. If you don’t represent the Mac user stereotype then good for you, but until Mac users stop getting into people’s faces, people who reject the Cult of Apple are going to keep calling Mac owners “smug jerks.”
Again, I don’t care what other people would think about me if I use a Mac book in public; I run around with an XPS gaming laptop in public now. I care about giving my hard-earned money to a corporation whose values I don’t agree with – integrated design is something that has some merit, but not being able to shut up about it is not. So can you see that what other people think of me bears little into the equation? It’s the idea of owning a product from a brand that leaves a foul taste in my mouth.
Speaking of stereotypes:
“I know that’s hard for a marketer to understand, but I own Macs because I find them useful computers.”
What’s that supposed to mean? Isn’t that a stereotype of marketers? Why would you ask me not to stereotype Apple owners when you stereotype marketers
?
Back to the point though: how much harm can this “mac user” stereotype do to Apple’s sales?
Rather than attack the stereotype [it exists and it's not going to go away] attack my rationale for how I think that the stereotype can hurt sales. Can’t it also bring people in? How so?
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 5:44 pm ¶You know what is more annoying? A VW driving, Nike Wearing, WWF Fan, Mac User.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewJ6Wzmr_V0
Will the “Creating Meaning and Belonging” strategy affect sales. Yes. When you get brand manager’s making the switch into community development the coming groundswell will expose their game.
If you use MAC because of function – Hack your i-phone, scratch of apple and re-skin it. How do you feel now?
Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 7:58 pm ¶I like the parlor trick of attempting to point out my hypocrisy but it falls flat because you took my statement out of context. The previous line was “What you buy is not who you are.” Marketing is about convincing people that what they buy is defining. So my statement that it’s hard for a marketer to understand that is not a generalization about what marketers believe but a statement about what marketing is. Nice try though.
Regarding my Brooks Brothers example, you’ve completely missed my point. I said that he may fit all, none, or some of those evaluations. The motivation behind why he made the purchase is irrelevant to the stereotyper because the stereotyper “knows” why he bought it.
“I care about giving my hard-earned money to a corporation whose values I don’t agree with – integrated design is something that has some merit, but not being able to shut up about it is not.”
What values of Apple don’t you agree with? Integrated design, a simple buying experience, ubiquitous retail stores? You’re conflating Apple the company with Apple devotees. News flash: Apple has no control over Apple “cultists.”
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 1:50 am ¶Well, I have to disagree with this…
What values of Apple don’t you agree with? Integrated design, a simple buying experience, ubiquitous retail stores? You’re conflating Apple the company with Apple devotees. News flash: Apple has no control over Apple “cultists.”
I find the Brooks Brothers example a tough fit because they, to the best of my knowledge, don’t go out of their way to bash the wearers of other suits in their Ads. That’s not true of Apple though.
Apple’s entire marketing message since I was 4 years old has been to portray Apple users as exceptional and PC users as mindless drones. From that original Superbowl Ad to “Think Different” and now with the “I’m a Mac” ads the message has always been one of inherent superiority.
So you can say Apple has no control over their zealots but the truth is Apple designed its marketing to (a) attract those people and (b) enforce their feeling of superiority (which I think is the behavior that Aaron finds unappealing).
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 5:36 am ¶Well said Cameron. That video was interesting too. I picked up this one while I was browsing after yours finished:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F9gdx_LIAc
If you want to see a lot of weird-looking Apple users with Apple tattoos then I highly recommend that video.
And Tom said it better than I could – Apple’s own messaging from Cupertino brought in those kinds of users so they really are in control over their image. Mac vs. PC sums it up pretty well.
I don’t see how I took your generalization about marketers out of context Bill; what context am I missing?
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 8:03 am ¶I’m not so much annoyed with the users as with Apple for marketing themselves as this cool brand that is your friend. I generally find that kind of marketing very patronising and I feel that Apple’s products are more often than not overpriced.
Posted 11 Apr 2008 at 11:01 am ¶I got a good laugh about the guy trying to pick up girls by flashing his iPhone. Reminds me of a guy I knew back in my single days who would always flash his “Beemer” key around in bars.
Yes, I think that certain products and the way they’re marketed cause them to develop an aura around them that can both attract and deter people. Cars have long had this.
Posted 15 May 2008 at 2:46 pm ¶I know exactly how you feel. About 3-4 years ago my wife bought me an ipod for as a present. At the time I was looking at other options. She bought an iphone shortly after they came out and now wants a 3g one. She wants to give me the old one. While it is an improvement over my current cell phone, I’m not sure I really want it( I don’t want to be an http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=idouche ). I would rather get an alternative (tilt), and even though we’re strapped for cash and I’m rather frugal, I will probably suck it up and just use her old one. She wants a mac, and I’ve told her to just get a copy of osx and I’ll just put it on her pc so we don’t have to pay a premium for the hardware. Speaking of which, it costs that much more for the same hardware as any pc, at least that’s my understanding and someone is more than welcome to prove me wrong. Something that I haven’t seen mentioned is about apply “fanatics”, look up the definition of fanatic, look at a definition. I would never want to be called one and would take offense, and they seem to take pride in being an apple fanatic. Every time I see any apple product I cringe and immediately think, idouche.
Posted 14 Jul 2008 at 7:18 am ¶You’re all fools … It’s not even essential in life! It’s just a toy that will not take you anywhere, it takes you instead.
Posted 10 Apr 2009 at 3:35 am ¶Think Different.
Join the collective.
Posted 19 Jun 2009 at 2:40 pm ¶Apple is like the freaking borg, I do not want to join them, thats why I don’t have any apple products, and probably never will ( that is until they stop “thinking different” ) and actually put out some competitive prices.
My two reasons for not buying apple products are, crazy weirdo fanboys, and prices that are two, and even 3 times higher than they should be.
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