Loading ...iMania or iFad?
From guest blogger Gabriella Lahti
On the day of the iPad launch, there was a special feeling in the air. Excitement, frustration, happiness, desperation. The people outside the Apple Store all wanted to have it, to be a part of the family. Did people know whether the iPad was great or not before they lined up outside the store?
Probably not, but they believed in it. Just like lining up to receive the Lord’s Supper in church, they believed in it.
A great example of consumerism, triggered by a belief, a want, to be a part of something bigger and to be a member of the family, the iFamily.
The fear of being an outsider is more powerful than the fear of spending your whole salary on an iPad.
We have all heard it all before, but it could be healthy to go through this again:
What do these products give us, more than the thousands of applications and the access to the internet? Why do we need so many of Apple’s products and who would we be without them? Is that a scary thought?
Three years ago, Apple’s iPhone had not yet arrived on the market. The iPad was just a rumour. Since then, Apple has been spewing out new products; skinnier, smaller and with better quality each year. At least we keep telling ourselves that.
Steve Jobs gets skinnier too, you know.
Despite undergoing a liver transpant last year, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer, Steve Jobs, has frequently attended conferences, interviews and seminars to talk about new Apple products.
About a month ago at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All things Digital (D8) conference, Jobs said:
‘Apple is a company that (…) doesn’t have the most resources of everybody in the world and the way we succeeded is by choosing what horses to ride really carefully.’
He further explained that Apple’s goal is always to choose the technology that has a future.
‘If you choose wisely, you can save yourself an enormous amount of work, verses trying to do everything”, he said.
Jobs explained why Apple decided to not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads, saying it didn’t matter that 75 percent of the video on the internet was available in Flash because Flash ‘looks like a technology that had its day’.
Jobs said he was only interesting in creating products people would think were great, such as the iPad.
‘We are trying to make great products for people. So far I have to say that people seem to be liking iPads. We sold one every three seconds since we launched it’, Jobs said enthusiastically. This is Steve Jobs doing what he what he does best; he makes choices. With the iPad, he decided to save himself an enormous amount of work, verses trying to do everything, and called the iPad a great product. It was a great product and everyone needed one.
And so we swallowed the Lord’s Supper; opened our wallets and paid. At the D8 conference, Jobs said this about the future:
‘PCs are going to be like trucks. They are still going to be around. They are still going to have a lot of value… but they’re just going to be used by one out of x people.’
But I think Jobs forgot something. Jobs is not God, he is just a worm inside of an apple, eating his way through life.
As much as the people right now seem to be in some sort of hypnotised iMania mode, evolution is always going to be a fact. Sooner, rather than later, there will be a new competitor in the market who also knows which horses to ride.
A competitor who remembers the fact that people get bored easily and are drawn to new looks, feelings, flavours. Things we need and want… things to believe in.
Plus we all know, eating a rotten apple gives you a stomach ache.
Gabriella Lahti is the producer of Business21c Weekly, our regular business podcast. She is studying a Masters in Journalism at the University of Technology.
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