Samuel Riggs | Editor
I am a changed man, completely converted. I have seen the light, and it is the glorious retina-display of a brand new MacBook Pro. It is the twinkling screen of an iPhone 6 Plus, all 5.5 inches of it, full of apps that will, without fail make my life better than it ever could have been before. It is the Apple Watch strapped to my wrist, reviving all of my eleven year old Spy Kid fantasies in crisp and clear HD, able to do everything except tell me the time. The Apple logo has become synonymous with a new way of interacting with technology. It is the marker of the ‘anywhere, anytime, anything’ culture, the symbol of the selfie generation, and will inevitably be the idol for the increasingly likely cult of Apple that will show up in a few years, if such a thing isn’t already manifesting somewhere in the American Deep South.
Lurking in Microsoft’s shadow for the majority of the personal computer revolution, Apple have since exploded onto the scenes of laptop and tablet markets, reacting to a very real consumer desire to take their technology mobile while still being ‘cool’.
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Apple experiences a phenomena in the marketing world – its brand loyalty is at fanatical levels. People watch, live, from all over the world as a new iOS system is announced, and for a few days, social media implodes with the sheer force of people tweeting and blogging about it. Queues line the streets when a new iPhone is announced in numbers I haven’t seen since the first Pokémon movie. People literally fight about Apple. The levels of dedication are baffling. Where did this culture come from, and how has it so rapidly set down its roots in our society?
The fanaticism over Apple and the fierce brand loyalty it inspires is a relatively new phenomena in their history. Since 1977, Apple have experienced a number of ups and downs, including a devastating crash during the eighties and nineties due to an inability to really discern what consumers wanted, and a series of confusing and expensive machines. In 1994, Apple ended the year with a market capitalisation of around $6 million. At the time of writing, Apple is worth $675 billion, and is still growing. That makes it the largest company in the world – bigger than any oil company, and far bigger than any of those consumer conglomerates like Unilever or Proctor and Gamble.
In just twenty years, Apple’s fortunes have entirely turned around. Lurking in Microsoft’s shadow for the majority of the personal computer revolution, Apple have since exploded onto the scenes of laptop and tablet markets, reacting to a very real consumer desire to take their technology mobile while still being ‘cool’. This has put major computer manufacturers like Microsoft and Dell on the defensive, forcing them very much into the corporate sphere, and out of the hearts and minds of the consumers. I challenge you to find an Arts Block lecture where at least twenty per cent of the laptops on display aren’t MacBooks or iPads. This is thanks to a very clever marketing strategy – Apple have worked from our pockets up.
Whereas other companies seem to have looked at what would make them the most profit and go for that first, e.g. laptops and desktops, Apple targeted that which we use the most – our mobile phones.
I would consider the advent of the iPhone as the major turning point for Apple. Whereas other companies seem to have looked at what would make them the most profit and go for that first, e.g. laptops and desktops, Apple targeted that which we use the most – our mobile phones. While we may not carry our laptops everywhere we go, our mobiles phones, in this day and age, are never more than an arm’s reach from our person. If you get the phone right, with an operating system that is appealing, regularly updated and above all, user-friendly, then naturally consumers will want to replicate this effect on their laptops and other larger systems.
This ties in with Apple’s other major advantage over its competitors – their ability to bring consumers into the fold and make them feel a part of the team. Apple’s keynote sessions, now sadly lacking the magnetic presence of legend Steve Jobs, have the major bonus of making their customers feel completely included. So often, technology is something that is ‘other’, or set apart from us – we hold modern heroes of technology like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs up on some mythical pedestal, giving them legendary status in modern folklore. The keynote sessions serve to make us feel technologically literate, like we know what they’re talking about. This, coupled with the slick and slim design of the technology and the ‘cool’ names of various updates and additions, builds an inclusive and immersive culture, that could be where the fierce Apple fanaticism comes from.
I, personally, will never quite understand the en masse fangirling over new Apple products, and the complete dedication some people seem to have to the brand. I appreciate Apple products for their simple design and their overwhelming usability. They are consumer-targeted, and seem to put the comfort and ease of the user above many other factors. It could be argued that we are overvaluing Apple products entirely, particularly in a college setting – they are very powerful systems, but they are also very expensive. Is a Macbook Pro necessary as an English student if the only systems you really want are a competent web browser and a good word processing software for essays?
I, personally, will never quite understand the en masse fangirling over new Apple products. I appreciate Apple products for their simple design and their overwhelming usability.
I would argue that Apple is a product of our time. In the late 90s, when what we wanted was a system that allowed us to do a little bit of everything while we waited for pages to load on our dial-up internet, Windows and Microsoft were what we needed – an all-rounder with the ability to adapt to any kind of task, as long as it wasn’t too big, or on Internet Explorer. But now, we need a system that is light and mobile, user-friendly and uncomplicated and, above all, interconnected, as Apple have achieved so well with their Cloud technology. As the world grows larger and humans are increasingly mobile, the Apple systems that enable us to jump in and out of the digital world as we please will soon become a necessity rather than a luxury, and for competitors, it is a case of adapt or die. Apple culture is a strange thing, but it is not baseless – regardless of your reservations, I encourage you to give in to sin, and take a bite.
Correction: 23:50, December 7, 2014
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Apple’s worth. Its market capitalisation is $675 billion, not $483 billion.
Photo by B. Tse
