Comments on: I(con) of the Month: Apple | Selling Us Our Desires

By: Karsten R

Karsten R — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:13:30 +0000

Apple fans were always the fiercest propagandists in the IT (somewhat “religious”) and only recently became more cool. The historical ad celebrating the introduction of the Macintosh was declaring a kind of “jihad” on the IT establishment, especially IBM.

The big problem of Apple was and is that they’re internally so different, closed up, protectionistic, counter-competitive, patent zealots, etc.
Ok, in some areas they have left that terrain, but I wonder very much, what would they have done if they had become the new Microsoft??

By: KB

KB — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:44:54 +0000

Erm… not sure you’re getting it Malcolm. Or was this an attempt at satire?!

By: Malcolm Armsteen

Malcolm Armsteen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:54:35 +0000

Apple is a commitedly humanist organisation, a supporter of civil and gay rights, a general force for enlightenment.
Haw can you have the effrontery to compare a rationalist organisation like that with woo and mumbo-jumbo?

Why, to the religiosos, does everything have to conform to your irrational world-view?

By: Ric

Ric — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:43:45 +0000

“The bitten apple is the birth of knowledge and the end of innocence, perhaps even the birth of the ‘i’.”

Wonderful.

So many words to read on the internet but this one sentence will give me enough to reflect and meditate on for the rest of Lent. Thank you.

Ric

By: KB

KB — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:26:35 +0000

Great programme, and good comments Daniel.

I don’t think it is Nick. For many it has all the hallmarks of a religion, with its High Priests and castes and gnostics and evangelists… not to mention the great adulation heaped on the God Jobs himself as his latest revelation of the product that will help us find nirvana is unveiled to the chosen few…

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:28:39 +0000

Well said. I want answers as to where to find true identity and meaning. I fall prey to the hope that my Macbook Pro or my new house or some new expression of Christianity–or the classic case, my lover–might look back at me lovingly and tell me that I am in fact the epitome of my ideal self. Is there any hope of finding that gaze, or of finding fulfillment without it?

I assume you have watched Century of the Self by Adam Curtis. If not, or for other readers down here in the comments, a quick Google search will reveal a copy of it, in its entirety, on Google Video.

By: Nick Welsh

Nick Welsh — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:49:58 +0000

…or, it’s just a very large computer / entertainment / music / mobile device / communications (delete as appropriate) company?