Showtime at the Apple-o
12 September 2006 by jaksoul
Much as I would like to consider myself way too savvy to be caught up in the infinite loop of Apple hype, it doesn’t take much (24″ inches baby!!!) to get this poor sap wondering golem-like through the Apple store, pointing at stuff and whispering ‘me wants it’ to random passers by. Today is ‘Showtime’(or simply ‘the announcement’ as it is being called around here), and while we wait, hoping not to be disappointed by some lame-ass ugly stereo, it is worth reflecting on how serious all this is.
At the weekend The Observer was foolish enough to question the longevity of the ipod brand-Infidels!!!-Macdailynews got medival on them posting a 1000 word rebuttal including chart showing the last five years of ipod sales quarter by quarter and printing the writer’s address/email/phone number-Take that you Gates loving bitch!!!. Sure the article was a bit rubbish; short on facts, long on under informed/over opinionated ‘media analysts’ but it doesn’t really matter does it?
Why is it that we take our brands so seriously. That people care enough about Apple or Sony or who-freakin-ever they will spend hours arguing on blogs about fake mock ups of some never-gonna-happen Apple product announcements?
Reminds me of the time some poor schmo thought it would be funny to scoop out the insides of a brand new (at the time) G5 Powermac and replace it with PC parts-the mac faithful took all on their stride of course, responding with death threats.
Good.
For the last couple it has been a guilty pleasure of mine to ‘coincidentally’ be checking my emails around the time of Apple press events and end up spending 45mins furiously updating engadget’s minute by minute coverage like some crazed lunatic. I’m not going to lie, that could well be how this evening pans out as well- but wouldn’t it be great if it really wasn’t that important , that we had enough in our lives that ipods and macbooks and yes even that 24″ dream machine were confined to being playful enjoyable products that we don’t have to sell our entire souls to own.
Maybe we should be grateful to get disappointed.
13 September 2006, on 12:58 pm
[...] So why, when i’ve given up smoking, actually enjoy eating pulses and green vegetables and all sorts of other responsible, adult stuff - am I too to be found camping out (albeit nonchalantly) on macrumours to salivating over whatever tasty, ergonomic, intuitive, white and brushed titanium morcel Steve Jobs’ll toss me this quarter? (see Showtime at the Apple-O below) It seems to me that the vitruvian triangle of form/function/delight in equal measure which meets in many of apple’s products has been squared by ‘covetability’… [...]