There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Team’, Except for Apple’s Marketing iTeam

If you know me at all then you might be aware of my hangups over Apple products. There’s a vast misconception that I don’t like Apple hardware and software and that I’ve a personal embargo on the purchase of aforementioned products. Not at all! This is absurd for the following two reasons:

1. I have never used an Apple product for a significant amount of time, therefore I have no frame of reference in order to be able to criticise them. I don’t have a smart-phone, either.
2. The popularity of Apple, via their customer service or in the quality of the products they offer, is hard to dispute. It would be easy to become the outsider at the back of the crowd who wants to vocalise how different they are from everyone else just for the sake of it¹. I’ve seen how efficient and handy Apple-based software is for myself and I’m not about to argue it.

No, where my problem lies is with the lifestyle that Apple sells and encourages people to buy into; an Apple subculture, if you will. I don’t want to retread ground that the hilarious Charlie Brooker has covered before², and I’m definitely not technically minded enough to blame the hardware (I’ll leave that to people who know what they’re talking about) so I’m going to look at some of Apple’s design choices and marketing instead, touching on some of the irritants that particularly rile me.

Let’s start with a little bit of history. Here’s the iconic Apple advertisement from back in 1984.

F*ck me, that’s pretentious. I see what they did there, though. Appealing to the intellectual crowd by emulating Orwell’s 1984. “Apple is the thinking man’s computer”, the advert says. “We’re revolutionary”, it claims.

I wasn’t actually alive in 1984 so I don’t know if the advert worked or not. I can take the implication that it did work by the fact that I own a copy of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and one of the first pages has the following text:

This book was written and typeset on an Apple Macintosh II and an Apple Laserwriter II NTX. The word processing software was FullWrite Professional from Ashton Tate. The final proofing and photosetting was done by The Last Word, London SW6.

Douglas Adams was a very clever sod, and I know he had two major passions in life: Apple products and saving animal species from extinction. Why he felt compelled to let the reader know this book was written on an Apple Mac does both confuse and annoy me, however. Knowing this fact did not suddenly transform the reading experience into being beyond what it normally is. All it did was show me that he was proud that he’d written this book on his Apple Mac, and that I had the privilege of reading what he’d produced on his Mac. I’m probably reading too far into this, but the point I’m making is that most authors don’t feel compelled to do this. I didn’t append a paragraph to the beginning of The Mercenaries’ Tale saying “most of this book was written using Microsoft Word across a PC with Windows XP installed and a laptop running Windows 7, it’s amazing we managed to get any of this thing written given the circumstances, actually” (although I’m tempted to now, just on principle). I wouldn’t have enjoyed Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep knowing what brand of typewriter he wrote it on, or any of the Discworld books knowing what computer setup Sir Pratchett uses (although I’m almost certain he’s a PC user). This is an early example of the main thing that makes my skin crawl about the Apple lifestyle: the smugness that comes from owning Apple. The iSmug, if you will.

Back in the 80’s minor celebs like Stephen Fry and Douglas Adams championed Apple not only because it was a rising star in progressing technology, but also because it was very British. I can get behind that, I’m as pointlessly patriotic as the next British person. In the modern world, however, I’d find it difficult to happily describe the worldwide phenomenon of Apple as distinctly British. There used to be something quaint about Apple, it was the earnest “trying to get by in my own way” candidate on the market, reflecting down-to-earth British principles. Now it’s an over-designed non-entity that tries to appeal to everyone, and succeeds. Except in my case³.

Moving on to another advertisement, this time from 1987…

If you didn’t (or couldn’t) watch the video, it shows a university lecturer talking to his computer like a prat. The lecturer suffers from a perpetual smirk and gets this shit-eating grin on his face when he’s talking to his colleague via video. The computer has a face in the form of a clean-cut white man in an outrageously large bow tie – it looks like the sort of quirky future prediction that would find itself comfortably at home in Back to the Future 2⁴. Now I’ve known Apple fans say “look, they predicted the future, aren’t they so smart!” or something equivalent, but let’s take some things into consideration here:

• Vid screens and talking to computers isn’t a wild stretch of prediction, in fact it’s been a staple of science fiction for yonks. You might as well credit Star Trek the Next Generation as having the smarts to predict half the stuff we have now.
• What the video managed to predict was a whole bundle of technology that isn’t actually solely under Apple’s development umbrella. Talking remotely via video is Skype. Commanding a computer via voice (and motion) is the Microsoft Kinect. Finding and collecting knowledge is inarguably the domain of Google.
• The only two things the advert predicted were the iPad and Siri, and even then part of me likes to think that one of the motivations behind pushing these products out on to the market was to win a bet someone at Apple made over the advert featured above.
• I will concede that Apple also managed to predict that some of their core users will be smarmy pricks who get their jollies just from using Apple products.

Note that at the tail end of the 80’s, Apple were still pushing the intellectual card. The video above pushes for the outrageously cultured stereotype, the kind of person who works within the massive study of their home and has classical music piped into the house at all times. They obviously didn’t predict that they’d be pushing their products out to the masses in the future, and that one day every tracksuit-wearing Joe Bloggs would be able and willing to buy a tablet to talk at like a complete berk (alright, I know, Siri isn’t available on the iPad at the time of writing this, but you get the point).

Let’s move on to more familiar territory. The Mac vs. PC adverts of the mid-2000’s.

I’m well aware that the Mitchell and Webb adverts were the UK localisation of the TV adverts that aired in the US, but any of them will suit the purpose of proving that, at this point in time, Apple are actively encouraging their customers to be smug pricks. Aside from the fallacy that Mac is “just for fun stuff”, every one of the adverts has a moment where the Mac looks at the PC in a condescending manner, and another moment where the Mac looks at the audience as if to say “yeah, he’s a bit uncool and rubbish, isn’t he?”.

I’m not going to lower myself to resorting to the common “PCs can be fun argument” of “you can play games on them, unlike Mac”⁵ because all the popular games these days have Mac versions, with World of Warcraft and the Sims coming to mind. I would like to share an animated .gif for old times’ sake though:

Shamelessly stolen from Encyclopaedia Dramatica.

What I don’t get about the Mac vs. PC adverts is the characterisation – okay, I see the stereotyped casting of stuffy, nerdy old guy vs. young cool chilled-out person, but in both adverts I genuinely prefer the PC characters. If I was organising a Heston Blumenthal-esque celebrity dinner party and I could only invite either the PC or the Mac, I’d invite the PC every time. No offence to Robert Webb, but David Mitchell does come across as a genuinely funny person by himself. I’d rather talk to David Mitchell than Robert Webb because I think he’d not be so awkwardly self-contented and would actually have something to say. David Mitchell’s PC character probably wouldn’t look at me like I was covered in shit or smirk to himself about me and my “funny little ways”.

Yeah, a little bit like that.

I genuinely don’t want to be the Mac’s friend in these adverts. But he keeps looking at me like we’re in on this together, that this PC bozo isn’t in the same crowd as us. Bugger off, Mac, you condescending bastard. I’m taking the PC out for a pint in a minute. And he’d probably pay for his own drinks too.

Stop looking at me like I’m your friend. I’M NOT YOUR FRIEND. EVEN THE JAPANESE MAC PISSES ME OFF.

Also, the American Mac almost ruined Die Hard 4 by being the whiny, neurotic sidekick. Almost.

In the interest of fairness, I’ve got to state that I’m not advocating Microsoft as the perfect alternative to Mac. Hell no. I’m well aware of all the flaws and bugbears of Microsoft products, but the difference is that I quite like having a not-so-perfect system to work with. I’m suspicious of perfection – we are imperfect creatures ourselves, so why should we strive to make the things we create something we can never be? Christ, that’s a bit deep.

Coming back from the metaphysical quandary of the imperfect world and our place in it, I’m also unhappy with the idea that, if something went wrong with my computer I’d have to then take it to someone at a “Genius bar” in order to get it fixed. This isn’t the case with most people, but I’ve always been the curious sort who likes to get his hands dirty with trying to fix a computer before giving up and getting someone else to fix it. I used to delete files off the hard drive of my Windows 98 computer because there seemed like a lot of them and they couldn’t all be important, right? It was terribly messy. When something goes wrong you learn quickly which folders to leave the f*ck alone. I don’t like the passiveness of people submitting to the idea of just giving up and letting Apple sort their products out. That’s when you start treating a complicated piece of kit like a computer as a rudimentary commercial product such as a TV, and it’s a bad mindset to have that “things should just work” because at some point they inevitably won’t and you’ll get frustrated. I know my Microsoft product will probably break at some point⁶.

Since I’ve been unfairly cherry-picking adverts from bygone decades in order to mock Apple, it’s only fair to say that Microsoft’s TV adverts are, much like their products, a little bit naff. The UK attempts in particular say everything about Microsoft because I know that the toothpaste white smiles and almost perfect faces mean that the adverts have just been recreated from the US ones⁷. Why bother trying to directly market to the UK? They’re like America but smaller, right? This is why Microsoft Word and keyboards get so confused over which English to use, American or British.

So we’re probably all familiar with this recent gem:

Windows: it’s for prudish mothers who like to live in denial! “I don’t want a quirky family,” says Prudish Mother,  “I just want everyone to be utterly perfect rag-dolls for display purposes only! Like robots. Like the cloud.” Prudish Mother LOVES the Cloud, and the Cloud loves her too.

Or we’ve had this particularly unimaginative rebuttal to the Mac adverts:

What Microsoft have done here is rather discreetly given two fingers to Apple by almost outright stating that they still have the majority of global market share. Touché! I actually like this campaign, if only because it’s not fronting for a particular lifestyle. There’s only one other Microsoft campaign I’ve seen that’s even better.

This one.

As another rebuttal to Apple, Microsoft are looking to open their own chain of retail stores globally and, after looking at some pictures, I’m disappointed to see that their stores have tried to echo the cleanliness and openness of the Apple stores. Hey, at least they have more colours and actual furniture, I suppose. Much like Adele’s music, there’s something about Apple stores that practically everyone likes going into them, except for me. I think they’re creepy. It’s like going into a hospital room. As for the rather egotistically named “Genius Bar”, I think it’s a bit much to call some tosser who knows how to restart a laptop a “genius”. From what I understand most fixes provided in-store come in the form of “here’s a replacement”, which is fantastic for the customer but at the same time not particularly representative of being a “genius” answer. I’d expect a genius to actually fix the original problem.

A typical Apple store / a typical hospital laboratory

When it comes down to it, I’m a little worried about the ratio of Mac users who become brainwashed into overly self-satisfied Mac salespeople. I will admit now that in my experience, it’s probably about 4 in 10 Mac users that I’ve met who are a little bit too enthusiastic about what they’re using, and this small proportion mostly come from a technical or web development background (or are gadget fans). The other 6 have all been less vocal about what they use.

I know what it’s like to be a fanboy – I’ve been a gamer most of my life. I used to mock Nintendo-owning friends because I had a Sega Mega Drive II⁸. I vehemently advocated the PlayStation during the N64/PlayStation/Dreamcast period. There was no way in hell I was going to let Microsoft handle my video games during the PS2/Xbox years, and I would gladly spout verbatim the advantages to Sony’s bit of kit. These days, I’d say it’s a far more level playing field – there’s  no particular differences between the Xbox 360 and the PS3, they both fall over in different ways and each has its own advantages. No, I’d say it’s less about the inter-console rivalries, and now it’s down to PC vs. console and digital download vs. physical copy (but those are blogs for another day). I’m all the better for it, it’s unhealthy to be a fan – it’s short for “fanatic”, after all.

If you like something that makes your life more pleasant in some manner, there’s nothing wrong with being a fan of it. However, I distinctly take issue with those who try to change other people’s lives because they’re so damn sure that what makes their own lives more pleasurable will make everyone’s lives better. That’s, dare I say it, the domain of religion. I don’t like Jehovah’s witnesses knocking the door to try and sell me their (apparently far superior) beliefs, and I don’t like Apple fanboys gloating over their iThings and constantly telling me it’s fantastic and better than everything else. I don’t go around lecturing people incessantly on the finer points of Doctor Who and Batman, because there’s a thing called self-restraint (and another called “the internet”, which is tailor made for that sort of thing).

And that’s why I hate Apple’s marketing team. They actively encourage this lifestyle of betterment through others. “Spread the word about our products”. “Tell everyone about how much better things could be”. I’m not interested in buying your lifestyle, thanks. I do not care how much you spent on your new lifestyle. I could not, to paraphrase Warren Ellis, give two tugs of a dead dog’s cock over your new laptop which you’re scared to carry with you in case it gets scratched. It’s a bloody computer at the end of the day. Feck off and keep it to yourselves.

This blog post was written on a PC running Windows XP using WordPress via Firefox. JUST THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW!

Postscript (22/06/2013)

There’s another video that rather nicely sums up Apple vs. PC…

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | May 7, 2012 at 6:56 pm | Opinion Pieces, Technology | 2 comments

Tags: advertisements, Apple, Apple bashing, elitism, fanboys, marketing