Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
Piggybacking on Peter's ruminations on brand loyalty, I have a confession to make: this post is coming to you from a MacBook. During the day I check Ricochet updates on my iPad and I listen to the podcast on an iPod with an embarrassingly catholic playlist. As a Verizon user, I'm currently holding out for the great iPhone diaspora, as I've recently discovered that dealing with a BlackBerry with a malfunctioning trackball is like reading an unpublished Kafka manuscript.
I bring all this up because I can't tell you how much grief I've taken from conservative friends for being an Apple aficionado. I'm not entirely sure what is about Mac products (the green-friendliness? the suspicion that they will someday yield the mark of the beast?) that riles the right, but it's real and it's deep.
Me: I don't get it. Yes, Silicon Valley can be a greenhouse for quixotic liberals, but there's a substantial libertarianism undergirding it. After all, this is better living through market-driven technology. That, I think, is part of what I find appealing about Steve Jobs. If you prefer your corporate executives Randian, it seems like he should be your guy.
First, there was his delightful reaction to Google's "Don't be Evil" motto (I won't tarnish our editorial standards by quoting or linking, but I suggest you find it for yourself). Then there was his bracing shot at teachers' unions. Finally, there's the fact that he belongs in the pantheon of great human beings simply by guaranteeing that musicians can no longer get away with recording albums with two singles sandwiched between nine tracks of filler.
Has anyone else encountered the phenomenon of conservative Apple hatred? Particularly those of you here from the Palo Alto crowd?
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May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I won't speak to the political aspect of it, but there is a tremendous amount of tech tribalism in the world these days. It's almost as if our tech choices have become a substitute for religion and any opposition is seen as sacrilege.
Me, I like Apple products and find that they serve me well in my job and in my personal life, but I don't feel threatened when others choose MS, linux, Android, or abaci. It doesn't really effect my world.
Jobs himself is a man who is a wonderful mix of charisma, bad behavior, and interesting vision. He's a remarkable and remarkably flawed human and I'm glad he's heading Apple. I find him much more interesting than most folks in the tech limelight.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
Oh, I don't hate Apple because I'm a conservative. I hate Apple because their products are vastly overpriced and have limited capabilities compared to other products available on the market. I have an MP3 player that cost me $25.00. It can do everything those crappy IPod minis can do, and I can add on storage capacity. I'll never buy an Apple product because they're also closed systems. Don't like closed systems. They make me feel like I live in the USSR circa 1983.
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
Troy, you've given me the courage to come out myself. I'm an Apple man--through and through. Which is to say--and, yes, I can hear the PC catcalls already--which is to say that I find simplicity, reliability, and beauty--beauty!--irresistible.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I find the freedom of an open system to be a lot more irresistible.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
Felicia, I have never found Apple products overpriced. I'm happy to pay for them in the same way that I'm happy to pay extra for a better vodka even though the cheap stuff gets me just as drunk. I still prefer the taste of the good stuff.
I've never found Apple products to be limited in capabilities. They do precisely what I buy them for and they perform their tasks well. They have also tended to last longer than the cheaper laptops, desktops, and MP3 players that I've bought.
And I've never found my Apple laptops particularly closed. A lot of my Linux loving friends might disagree, but most of the software freely available as open source through the many flavors of Linux is decidedly second rate. Apple's desktop OS is also no more restrictive than, say, Windows when it comes to development.
Whatever works for you, though, is fine to me. But comparing Apple products to "the USSR circa 1983" is utterly ridiculous. They sell phones, computers, and software; they aren't trying to run your life. Just doing their best to turn a profit and keep their customers happy.
Edited on Jan 4, 2011 at 11:41pmDec '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
David Jones: Just doing their best to turn a profit and keep their customers happy. · Jan 4 at 11:40pm
Edited on Jan 04 at 11:41 pm
Steve Jobs himself isn't all that concerned with keeping Apple customers happy. His advice to iPhone 4 users not to hold their phones the wrong way to fix an antenna design flaw was pretty typical.
Back in 1984, at the first MacWorld conference, Jobs presented and took questions. An audience member asked, "When will you introduce a Mac with a hard drive?" Jobs said that would be impossible, when a vendor said, "We've got a hard drive conversion kit for the Macintosh here today."
Jobs pointed out that the Mac had no hard drive interface; the vendor answered that they piggybacked right onto the CPU. Jobs pointed out that the power supply wouldn't support a hard drive; the vendor said their kit included a bigger power supply. Jobs said that the Mac's convective cooling couldn't dissipate the drive's heat; the vendor said their kit included a cooling fan. Finally Jobs said, "It just won't work!"
His attitude toward Pixar customers is entirely different.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
Steve Jobs is not Apple. Apple is not Steve Jobs. Apple wants happy customers--and seems to have a really good number of them right now. More than at any other point in their history as far as I can tell.
Read my comments about Jobs above. I don't deify the man nor do I ignore his place in the industry or the positive things that he has done. Regardless of his missteps, I would suggest that it is still a pretty impressive place.
As far as I know--and I don't much know, I'll admit that--he never had much to do with the running of Pixar, though.
Jul '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
From my perspective it's always been about freedom.
Do I prefer a system that lets me do the things I want to do in the way I want to do them, or a system that tells me what I can do, how I can do it, and if it doesn't know what I want, it simply won't let me do it?
I'm sorry, but MAC has always had one major shortcoming as far as I'm concerned and that is its closed loop system.
I can lie to a pc and tell it I have a printer I don't have in order to make a piece of software hard wired for a specific peripheral work anyway, in MAC, I'm going to have to buy the peripheral and connect it, or not use the software.
I could tell you lots of other tricks to bypass licensing on Microsoft products LEGALLY by using Linux Proxy Servers in your network and then some. All items you cannot even think of doing with a MAC.
If MAC don't have an ICON, MAC Don't Do It. Command Line Interface can get so much done.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
So, the Terminal application that dumps you into a command line interface in OS X doesn't exist? It's just a figment of my imagination?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Terminal
My guess is that you don't actually know enough about OS X to tell me what you can and cannot do with it.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
If you are not running a virtual machine You Are Not a Real Man™.
I run several virtual machines on a mac mini. The best of both (all) worlds.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
It's worth pointing out that El Rushbo is a huge Apple guy. He raves about his Mac on the air.
FeliciaB, your preference for open architecture is perfectly valid. I bought an Android phone over the iPhone for that same reason. But for my mom I bought an iPhone, since the closed architecture and heavy supervision of the apps market suits her needs much better. Don't forget that everyone who buys an Apple product does so voluntarily, and in some cases they are intentionally trading flexibility for consistency.
Troy, on your original point, among my friends just down the road here in Sunnyvale there is definitely a subset of diehard Apple geeks and a subset of principled anti-Apple curmudgeons. But I find most people to be laid back and tolerant, even to the point of condoning legalized intermarriage between iPhone owners and non-iPhone owners. The anti's probably tend to be more politically conservative, but it might both stem from a general conservative disposition that is skeptical of new trendy "miracle" products and fads. Apple products are often highly innovative, but also extremely trendy.
Edited on Jan 5, 2011 at 1:10amJul '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I'm sorry, I've spent so much time managing networks in the real world for so long that once I determined that MAC wasn't going to cut it (that was about 96) I stopped looking at it.
If it's changed since then, I'm not really interested as you'll find Jack in the Box uses NT4.0 SP6, Barnes and Noble uses Win2KServer with Win98 thru WinXp in their stores. I can go on and on, but logistically the fact that they may have fixed it recently doesn't make it viable in the real world of interconnected legacy systems.
I'll also add that in the DataCenters I've worked in I've seen Win2k3, Win2K8, Win2K8 core, Linux and Unix. But I've never seen MAC OS X. I will admit, I've not been in every Data Center there is, But I've been in Many.
Edited on Jan 5, 2011 at 1:30amJul '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I think the conservative dislike of Apple has less to do with Apple and more to do with Apple's role as a cultural marker among smug lefties.
(This comment typed on my MacBook Pro)
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
But it doesn't really leave you well qualified to comment on what they can and can't do, does it? For the record, I'm not suggesting that you use it in any implementation. Everyone should use whatever works well for their needs. In my home, I have a few Apple boxes, a Win 7 box, I run Xp in emulation on my MacBook Pro so that I can work in Dynamics CRM, and we have a Linux box as well (Ubuntu which I chose because it worked well with the wireless card in my laptop). Each one performs a useful purpose (well except the Linux laptop which I really don't need any more). For the record, though, OS X is a Unix- based OS and iOS is a specialized version of OS X. If you were running OS X Server, you would recognize the networking tools even if you didn't like the interface.
Jul '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
To be fair, most Silicon Valley companies tout their green credentials. Apple doing so is higher profile because everything Apple does is higher profile.
And for conservatives and libertarians who need some ideological peg to justify their appreciation for Mac hardware to their compatriots, keep in mind that Steve Jobs has publicly said he supports school vouchers and has criticized teachers' unions.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I am a PC guy because Apple doesn't play nice with others. In the remote TV business almost all of the equipment runs on a Microsoft base because Apple's third party phobia. Switchers, graphics computers, audio boards, routers, EVS replay machines - every last thing runs on Windows.
Both Jobs and Gates are lefties so you can't base it on politics.
Nov '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I tend to look at Apple addicts as those who think Zemyatin's One State was a good idea; MS based PC's as for those who take Brave New World as a desirable end (especially the "ending is better than mending" bit), and Linux for those who think Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is utopian...
FWIW, I used Linux based machines for heavy duty computing & distributed processing; PC's for everyday tasks (like reading Ricochet) and algorithm development (in software like Matlab & PV-Wave), and I can't understand why anyone bothers with Apple, constricted as it is. But now paper, pencil, and paintbrush generally rules.....
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
I decided against Macs when I found out their mouse only has one button. Who can trust a computer manufacturer who thinks that this is acceptable?
That said, I love my ipod.
Aug '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
Methinks we are layering loads of political thought upon a product line that has a very specific and well-defined user in mind. As a musician, Apple has been the only computer I've ever used. They were there first with DAW software. They are still the best with that sort of software. Apple has always had an appeal (pardon the pun) to folks in music, graphic arts and film.
My older son works solely on Macs as a video editor for a giant corporation in NYC. My younger son (and every studio musician he knows in LA) works only on Macs for music production.
But my "business" buddies love PC. And we artsy-fartsy types can't survive without the business geeks. So - I have lots of "mixed" friendships.
PS - One thing nobody has yet said in favor of Mac - I never worry about computer viruses.
May '10
Re: Conservatives and the Poisoned Apple
That doesn't mean you shouldn't. With just 7% of the market, the bad guys don't get much bang for their buck by writing Mac viruses. There was a Botnet written for Macs in April of '09 and last October a Java-based trojan was being spread around through Facebook and MySpace accounts.
And then there was the iPhone G3's that had a gaping hole in their operating systems that also led to major problems.
Apple likes to spread this mythology that their systems are 100% secure and perpetuate by not shipping anti-virus software for their products. But more and more of the applications we find necessary for both business and pleasure are cross-platform. And as Apple grabs marketshare more bad guys will take notice.