Great point – Apple has so long departed from that cool/anti corporation not Microsoft/IBM (who?) thing that it has become those companies. Telling that it recently surpassed Microsoft in terms of capitalisation.

Apple produces very shiny , nicely designed products and equally shiny marketing. But that sheen appears to be hiding the fact that some of these products are shoddy. Not just shoddy, but shoddy products that cost a lot of money and are made in the fact factories by exploited workers who make everybody else’s crap.

How much longer can a brand that encourages wanton consumerism retain its status as an uber-cool brand in an age of supposed austerity and anti-consumerism?

Simples! This isn’t going to be an age of “austerity and anti-consumerism” – at least, not for Apple’s target market – any more than 9/11 led to “the death of irony”. At the risk of sounding tediously Marxist, talk of “austerity” is just a way of softening up the poor to pay the price for an economic crisis caused by the rich. Who will continue to enjoy buying Apple’s products.

Far more dangerous to Apple’s prospects is the “iWanker” image you describe so vividly in the preceding paragraphs.

@John H – I’m sure you’re right about austerity but should we let that stop us from using it as an excuse to further loathe people who go out and buy the new gadget for the same reason Edmund Hillary ascended Mt Everest (i.e. because it’s there)?

I agree that there is a backlash on the cards, but I don’t think that it is just because there is a gap between Apple’s marketing and its products. When any brand reaches a certain size it attracts negative sentiment regardless of its actions…

I see what you are writing. Being a copywriter in direct marketing I am not that impressed by the marketing of these devices. And I sincerely think that I would not have been tricked into the coolness of it. I fell out of Apple products in the 90´s, like many others. But then they started to create products that made my life easier, richer, more convenient, more fun etc. It is not because of just the devices, it is much because of the iTunes/AppStore ecosystem. I use my 3GS for everything from calendar and timesheet to booking of flights and hotels and of course, some Doodle Jump and Angry Birds gaming in between ( I am not a gamer at all). The thing is not the coolness of the brand, it is not even the design of the devices – it is the functionality of them, the userfriendliness, the things you can do easier than with other device. At least, that is my motivation. And, yes, I am impressed by the way they create innovative products. In marketing and sales you have to have a product that delivers or else people will not re-buy it, which is the whole point. Apple devices delivers. And – so far – they deliver much better than the competition. We consumers are not blind morons who choose Apple devices because of the marketing. And we will no doubt turn them down when the competition comes with something better. But not until then.

I’m not sure I see what the story is here.

1. Apple has released a new phone which, like my BlackBerry Bold 9700, if you hold in the bottom left hand corner loses signal.

2. People like Apple products and buy lots of them.

3. You think a man with a lot of Apple products looked like a “needy wanker”.

4. There might be a backlash.

Nice work.

“Three days after iPhone 4 launched, and with a raft of negative stories about the phone’s performance and a failure to produce the white model at all so far, and Apple says it has already shifted 1.7m of the things, making the 3m iPads sold over 80 days seem like it just wasn’t trying.”

That’s the worst sentence ever written.

“Oh right, so he’s apologising for not selling MORE iPhones, not for the fact that you have to hold them in a certain way or your phone call will likely cut out.”

There isn’t a problem with the iPhone. My BlackBerry is exactly the same. You’re drawing a generalisation from a small amount of internet moaning (comparative to the number of people who have iPhone 4 and aren’t complaining).

This sort of non-news doesn’t really do anyone any good.

George it isn’t a small group of internet moaners these are early adopters, which represent a powerful voice online. You’re an Apple fanboy George, come clean.

The iWanker has made my day. That’s like a new consumer category.

Just becuase a brand’s products become popular the early adopters have to start to distance themselves and claim they can no longer be considered ‘cool’…

Surely just the same story MW trotted out when BMW was selling more cars that Ford?

For those that can look beyond the label, their products deliver…

I’ve just bought an iPad – my first Apple product. I wanted something that would be quick to start up, would be small enough to be safely placed on the out of the reach of my two young toddlers, yet had a screen large enough to actually do what 99% of people use their laptops for (sending a few emails and a bit of light stalking on FB)?

Believe it or not, many people actually buy things because they are useful as well as shiny/nice to look at…

@Will Stuart-Jones I agree they are pretty and pages look great and appealing, but the need to plug in a keyboard (when I used one the virtual keyboard was pretty poor) means for me I’d still need a little netbook if i wanted to type anything more than a few lines.

@gordonmacmillan – you’ve hit the nail on the head – ‘more than a few lines’.

But remember you are a journalist – I would expect you to be generating copy (and hence typing) more frequently than the average user….

However, back on topic, as the original poster intimated how many people really NEED to own both an iPad and an iPhone (let alone a MacBook aswell)?

For emails I use a BlackBerry. Again, no brand snobbery or anti-iPhone statement being made here, its just the best horse for that particular course (especially when genetics has bestowed you with fat fingers).

All IMHO of course…

I was thinking exactly the same thing at the weekend, when I visited an Apple store in Sydney. I am at the stage where I am questioning paple products as Two Mac book pros have died in the space of three years (fortunately the latest one was still under warranty) and my iphone has also died. The problem is there is little or no alternatives.

You ae spot on with the iWanker theory, I tried an iPad but there was absolutely no need for me to have it, most people are buying it to ‘look cool’ not because the need it.
Apple has certaoinly moved on from the early adaptor phase however, for as long as Microsoft, IBM and Sony poisition themselves as big, slow unresponisve corporates Apple can dominate the anti coporate/consuomer champion space, the Virgin brand has been doing this successfully for years despite being a billion dollar corporate.

Swearing warning!;
I compleatly agree with Jennifer on this, but what I don’t get is why we need all this fucking stuff. And not just stuff you buy and keep, but stuff you have to keep buying and replacing, replacing and buying till the stuff makers have all your money. And why is it big news? People say it’s ‘going to change the world’, yeah, ‘cos that’s what the man wants, and people have been suckered into it, making a self fulfilling prophesy as they spin down through layers of a Techno-Dantein Hell.

Who or what exactly are we trying to keep up with here?

Most of the criticism of the iPad seems to be about the things it can’t do.
What about ‘why the fuck do we need another piece of crap, filling up voids in our lives, emptying our wallets, using up finite resources, and giving us a brief flash of self worth, followed by a hollow sick feeling when you realise the true cost’ It’s like getting a £5 blow job off some pissed up skank in a pub car park so she can buy another rock of crack.

If, 25 years ago,I said to you lot that people would queue up, queue up FFS, all night on a Friday to buy a another piece of stuff to replace the stuff that they already have, you would have said that I was nuts. Yet now, it seems I am the one who is nuts.

Fucking crazy.

I might add that this is not aimed at individuals, more at capitalist led consumerism, which will, given time, bring this planet to it’s knees’.