Angel or demon? Apple continues to confound
It’s hard to find anyone that doesn’t have an opinion about the Cupertino, California-based maker of Macintosh computers, iPhones and iPods. Moreover, you can generally elicit those opinions with little or no prodding.
When it comes to Apple, people wanna talk.
Emblematic of the people who love Apple is John Sculley, who was recently interviewed by TechRadar.com:
Steve Jobs’s [Ed—Apple's] genius is his ability to use technology to create products that define fundamental cultural shifts. The Mac defined “personal technology,” and the iPhone defines “intimate technology” as a convergence of communications, content and location.
Further, simply including something Apple or Mac related in an online, newspaper or magazine headline is sure to increase an author’s drawing power. For years, you could rely on John C Dvorak or Paul Thurrott to publish at least one flame bait Apple article monthly if not weekly—it was and is a very easy and effective draw.
Though Dvorak and Thurrott have mostly moved on, you can still find people like Boston.com’s Lucas Conley stirring the pot. His latest effort, an article entitled the 10 most overrated brands, goes to the heart of what it is trade on Apple’s good name:
No doubt this will incite the ire of the iCult … But in an age when no-name companies make phones of equal quality at a fraction of the price of an iPhone, how long can Apple keep sales and its cool factor up? Only as long as it can sustain the hype.
No doubt inciting the ire, and pulling tens of thousands of pageviews in the process, was Lucas Conley’s intention in part if not whole.
Moths to a flame
Referring to Apple or its creator as a genius takes as much insight as thinking of the company as little more than the sum of its hype, and both uses are just as likely to drive ad clicks and sales.
Perhaps that last metric, sales, is the only yardstick we should use when judging whether Apple’s an angel or a devil. Because at the end of the day, regardless of whether the Cupertino, CA-based delivers record sales (and profits) by creating great products or massive hype or a measure both, it’s the money that matters…
What’s your take?
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