Apple: the Ultimate Hype Machine

What can one say about Apple Computer? Successful company? Sure. Best mp3 player, that has gone unchallenged by a legitimate competitor since its creation? Of course. Better than Microsoft? Well... for sure not in sales or market share, but in quality of products? Here's where it gets a little sketchy for Apple.

Apple has always been a part of my life in some way, that's not to say I'm an Apple advocate or fan, but naturally, since I'm curious about technology, this has been the case. In elementary school, the Mac OS's since practically the original one were thrust upon me, the reason given being that "it's easier to manage them since all of the parts, software, and operating system come from one company." I always thought that was a cop-out, personally, but that's another story for another time.

Naturally, as I used these OS's, I saw the so-called "progression" of them from one to another, and also curiously noted that they all have looked the same. The defunct GUI of Macs (up to OSX) is unbelievably bad. I can't understand why people would tolerate this Windows 3.1-esque crapola. "Because they're stable, reliable computers." Uh, yeah, bullshit. (Watch this; http://www.drjack.com/macs_suck/)

That brings me to the first component of the Apple Hype Machine; the users. I have never met a more fanboyist group of people (other than maybe Nintendo fans) in my life compared to Mac users. These people will stand until the death debating why Macs are better than PCs, which is really admirable, until you actually use a Mac and realize that this "geat user interface" only serves to limit one's ability to operate on it beyond basic functions. The Mac operating system is very, very limited in what you can do to edit the settings of the computer and when you do succeed in finding the setting you need to edit (they hide them to idiot proof the machine), it doesn't work most of the time.

I see it this way; yes, Windows sucks. Windows whatever is probably a security risk because people actually use it, but at least the level of compatibility is high. (Take for example, the following situation. I was given a task at work to make a networked printer work with a series of PCs. My boss had already set up the stuff properly with the Windows PCs on the network, because it was a simple question of plugging the printer into the place where the previous printer sat, and installing the drivers. The Linux printer was kind of tricky, but nothing terrible. I went to the printer website, downloaded the Linux drivers, and installed it with the CUPS printer function in Linux within 5 minutes of tinkering. The iBook laptop that I needed to install it on was another story. First of all, it took me about 3 minutes just to find the printer setup location, because it's not really put in an intuitive place, then it took me quite a while to figure out how to install the driver, because it kept giving me a cryptic error message that made little sense to me. Long story short, it took about 2+ hours to install the printer on that laptop.)

The next part of the hype machine is the whole "Windows is bad" aspect of things. Apple themselves have been using this in recent marketing techniques, and I pretty much covered it four months ago in my post "iSuck: Debunking the Latest Mac Craze."

An additional segment of the Apple Hype Machine is the whole naming scheme that they use. "iThis", "iThat," what does it all mean? No one really knows. Except that now they have the consumers thinking... "O0o0oh! It has the 'i' prefix. It must be good," because consumers can't think for themselves and are driven by ridiculous marketing techniques.

Which brings me to the final component of the Apple Hype Machine, that being Apple's marketing techniques. Unlike a normal company, Apple does not announce new products prior to their final conception and release. You can buy a 4th generation iPod the day it is announced, unlike say, Windows Vista... which, still is not out, but was announced years ago. Not only is this a bit sketch on Apple's part, it creates this gigantic hype and speculation machine in the (prepare for word to be used that's featured in Maddox article; "If These Words Were People, I Would Embrace Their Genocide") blogosphere and world of Internet forums. People wonder "OMG, like, is this going to be the iPod that can transport me to the moon?! Dude, totally. It has to be, because the press conference invitation mentioned something about free refreshments. And cheese is a refreshment. And the moon is like, totally made of cheese. Yeah, so it has to be right." People draw these completely asinine conclusions and then when the actual press conference happens, it's like, "oh, fakeout, actually, it's about a new MacBook release. Because the first one had major problems. Like the exploding batteries and, oh yeah, the whole 120+ degrees thing under the processor. (I smell a few law suits coming, and their smell is reminiscent of burning flesh.)

This is not to discount the quality products that Apple makes, because like I said, the iPod is unchallenged. I own an iPod, it works great, except for the shitty battery. I think that it is unfair for Apple to put their Hype Machine in full swing for stupid things like having overpriced movies and games on iTunes. I dunno about you, but I definitely want to spend $12.99 on movies that I can only watch on my iPod and computer that are filled with DRM crap, as well as $4.99 games that I can only play on my iPod, with a clickwheel, no less, especially when I can buy a movie legitimately from Best Buy for the same price, copy it to my computer and iPod, and still have a hard copy in case my computer crashes.

Fuck Apple and their hype. Tell me when they develop something that's actually innovative, but does not require 3 re-releases and recalls in order for it not to injure me/kill me/fall apart on me. (Oh, and just as another jab, maybe Windows requires a lot of patches to fix problems, but at least the hardware that I use doesn't require me to buy new versions for it to work without damaging itself.)

Do me a favor, no, do yourself a favor; don't buy this re-release of the iPod, wait until their new shit comes out, because they will no doubt release an updated iPod within the next 3-4 months. And also, boycott those damn movies on iTunes, $12.99 is too much for something made for a 2.5" screen that you don't have full access to.