What is it we hate about Apple? Is it the fact that their products make us feel like crazy crack addicts whoring ourselves for what will basically do us no good? Is it because they charge a completely spurious premium? Is it the fact that 65% of the British population has a set of white wires attached to its ears, making it look like it's just emerged from a very pleasant, futuristic mental health facility (congratulations on completing our course of treatment; here's your iPod).
Or is it something more tangible? The fact that iPods are so damn quiet? That the batteries last for about 42 minutes?
Is it the hypocrisy? Why does Apple bundle its products up together? Why does iTunes require Quicktime to function? Why does your iPod
need iTunes? Why is
the latest iPod updater a mind-boggling 55MB download? Apple users used to boast that
their company would never do things like make you use a particular product, and that other companies' software suffered from something called
bloat. Which reminds me, let's add
smugness to the list. Because it's only Micro$oft that makes money: Apple is a kind of benevolent design charity, spreading its soporific whiteness across the face of the planet.
Apple is the anti-punk. 'Never trust a hippy' was perhaps Johnny Lydon's most profound utterance; and Steve Jobs is the uber hippy. So we also watch as witless rockers U2 take time out from saving African people to do a neat marketing deal. U2 have branded one of the west's most potent symbols of its sterility and vacuousness: the iPod. There is something rotten here.
We hate Apple for many different reasons.
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