The religion of Apple

There’s a NY Times article about how people get angry when there is even the slightest negativity about an Apple product:

Anybody who has ever written about Apple products will tell the same story — introducing even a hint of negativity into a review or article will bring down the wrath of Apple’s most fanatical fans.

. . .

[M]any Apple fans “care little for honest opinion,” Mr. Manjoo writes. “They want to pick up the paper and see in it a reflection of their own nearly religious zeal for the thing they love. They don’t want a review. They want a hagiography.”

This phenomenon was already documented at the Stuff White People Like blog:

Plain and simple, white people don’t just like Apple, they love and need Apple to operate.

On the surface, you would ask yourself, how is that white people love a multi-billion dollar company with manufacturing plants in China, mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices?

Simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

Liking Apple is apparently part of the religion of the supposedly secular upper-middle-class left. The reaction of Apple fans to negative remarks about Apple products is similar to the reaction of Muslims to negative comments about Islam.

Comments

[Peter]

All those black, brown and yellow people I see with iPods must be just figments of my imagination.

[Anonymous]

I'm Asian with a iPod and Macbook. My family members own a handful of Macs. Surely, we're secretly white.

[bobvis]

I know it proves nothing, but I am a brown man posting from a G4 ibook. (I've got a 30Gb iPod classic.)

[SFG]

Oh come on. He's got a pretty good point that the whole artsy-upper-middle-lefty contingent digs Apple even though they're not really that ethical a company.

[David Alexander]

Surely, we're secretly white.

David is obviously low IQ and black because he owns three Thinkpads and a four year old Dell desktop that will never be replaced by a Mac until the price of a Mac Pro drops to something that's remotely reasonable. $2800 for the flexibility of a tower is just too expensive. The ThinkPads will always be purchased because I prefer the design and trackpoints of the ThinkPads.

BTW, David's afro-centric cousin owns a MacBook, and she is a "creative" type with her afro-centric health magazine.

Disclaimer: David owns a 30GB iPod video, and may replace it with a iPod touch or a iPhone...

[Cameron]

All those black, brown and yellow people I see with iPods must be just figments of my imagination.

Simple explanation. White people love Apple, but black, brown and yellow people do too.

Simple explanation. White people love Apple, but black, brown and yellow people do too.

Apple products will bring people of all colors together in harmony. Just like Barack Obama.

[APH]

One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't

[Mark]

Apple products are usually quite lovely to look at. Unfortunately for most of the world, they don't work very well with Windows pc's.

Also, Apple's longtime trend toward closed boxes will ultimately undo the company unless they can change their culture.

[GOP Lurker]

There was a time when Mac was clearly better than Windows. That was right up until WinXP service pack 1*. Now they suck about equally, and certain Linux distributions are a stone's throw from sucking as little as Windows or Mac.

* -(One can make a good case that Windows 2000 sucked even less than XP, but it was not typically available to a non-business user.)

[Nathan]

Yep. White liberals need to have their Apple products. Why do they need to use their Macs at the coffee shop though? I think it is to "show off" how cool they are, but who knows.

[RottonPickle]

Even if you throw out stereotypes, I can tell you for certain that in Atlanta there are just as many folks carrying Apple laptops in coffee shops as PCs, if not more.

But the folks are not of the same ethnicity...There are just as many Asians with them as there are white people.

[meep]

The reaction of Apple fans to negative remarks about Apple products is similar to the reaction of Muslims to negative comments about Islam.

Well, I won't want to behead you for putting down OS X....

And some of us Mac fans can smell Steve Jobs' crap -- the iPod manufacturing has been spotty, and they really didn't think through durability on some of those suckers. I wouldn't be able to use an iPhone because my normal use of gadgets would mean it would have been completely obliterated within one week. I like my cheap, disposable pre-pay cellphone. I think the iPod nano looks cute, but I wonder if it would survive an encounter with me.

But maybe I don't have the knee-jerk reaction because I have an actual religion, not one based on consumer products.

[Dave]

I will always buy the computer that has more power for the dollar. My dell had the same processor, same memory, same hard drive, and a higher resolution screen than the "equivalent" 17" Macbook pro, and it was nearly half the price ($1700 vs $3200).

If I want to run the MacOS I'll just load hackintosh. But I won't, because I use apps that just aren't available in the Mac world.

Apple gets fawning treatment from the press too. How many other companies get breathless coverage of everything they do? Even product updates get headlines from the mainstream media. If my company got that kind of free press, we would surely be able to get 5% market share even if our stuff was way overpriced.

[agnostic]

Just about everyone flunks basic reading comprehension (in the comment section of a blog? no way dude). Half-Sigma and the SWPL entry are talking about "the religion of Apple" -- not "people who own an Apple product or two." Slight difference.

It's true that East Asians are as likely to be Mac masturbaters though. Like wearing an Armani Exchange t-shirt and sporting a Macbook are really going to make your penis bigger. Please.

It's not about individuality, but conspicuous consumption and class. If it were about individuality Apple users would go the nerd route and build their own machines.

-socket 939 DFI Lanparty Ultra-D, 2GB OCZ Platinum, EVGA 7600GT, Opteron 165 'clocked@2.9Ghz