About 15 years ago, I got a call from my Uncle asking if I could build a PC for my cousin.
This was a bit surprising because I’d built him a PC about a
year earlier and I’d made everything absolutely top of the line. He had a PC that was still fairly high
end...and I knew for a fact he’d
barely touched it in the entire time he had it.
So I asked my Uncle why he needed a new PC.
“Well, his friend has got one of those with the fancy case
with all the lights and stuff, so he wants one like that. Can you do it?”
My answer was simple.
No. Not just no, but fuck
no.
First of all was the small matter that this was a family
member who decided because I ‘liked computers’, I just fucking loved doing
completely free tech support. (I’d spent entire days in the past scrubbing
viruses off their family machine because the virus scanner I installed “wouldn’t
let him go to this music site he liked” and didn’t get so much as a fucking
coffee while I was working)... and I was fucked if I was going to spend a few
hours modding a case for a PC he never fucking used.
Sadly, I didn’t realise it at the time, but this was the
beginning of a trend.
You see, in those days, PC’s were big beige boxes. My main
machine was a big beige box. I didn’t (and still don’t) give a fuck how ‘cool’
a machine looks as long the hardware is good. I’d rather have a V8 than a
2-stroke no matter how crappy the bodywork looks.
Then Steve fucking Jobs came along.
Prepare the nerd-rage because I’m going to say something
controversial:
Steve Jobs was not an innovator. He wasn’t a visionary. What
he was, was a marketing genius.
MP3 players existed long before the iPod, touch screens
existed before the iPhone. In his entire career, he didn’t invent anything
new...he just repackaged existing technology and made it ‘cool’
You know what his best idea was? Making iPod headphones
white.
You see, all headphones before that tended to be black... so
you put on a set of white headphones and your music player stops being a music
player...it becomes a fashion accessory. You no longer have an mp3 player, you
have an iPod, and that’s what all the cool kids have.
His next best idea? Bringing out a new version every 3
months.
It used to be pretty simple. You bought your gadget and used
it until you needed to upgrade. I
bought a new mp3 player when my music collection outgrew my storage space. I
upgraded my PC when it couldn’t run new games any more.
Now? You buy the next iPhone because, despite the fact there’s
almost no actual improvement in the new one, and your current one works just
fine, being seen with last month’s iPhone is like being seen in last season’s
fashions.
Of course, there’s always some new buzz-word. For example, a
friend of mine gushed for an hour because his new macbook had a ‘Retina’
display.
Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing
as a ‘Retina’ display. It’s a fucking marketing
term. Sorry to bore you with technical details (why would you be interested in
technical details when buying a fucking
computer), but your fancy ‘retina display’ means you macbook pro has a
standard monitor that has 2800x1800 resolution.
You know what else has that? My fucking laptop...that cost
about $500 less than your macbook, and has more memory, more hard drive space, a faster processor and
a better graphics chipset.
Saying your Macbook is awesome because it has a Retina
display is like me saying my toaster is better than yours because it has new
Electromax Plasma Transmission Exothermic Technology (tm). That means
electricity runs along wires that heat up. Does your toaster use Electromax technology? Fuck you.
Now don’t get me wrong, Macs are pretty slick machines. I actually
like them... but I’m an IT guy and I know what’s inside the fucking things, and
what it boils down to is that 40% of what you’re paying for is that big glowing
apple on the back.
The saddest part? Apple have convinced you that you need this shit.
For example, A Nexus 10 tablet will cost you around £250
versus $300-£400 for the Apple tablet, and they’re almost identical in terms of
specs...but to take the piss even more,
you can pay just double the amount
and now you can buy the ‘iPad Air’ for over £500.
It’s got to be worth it, right? I mean, it so much thinner
and lighter that the iPad 4!
Wrong. It’s a whole 180 grams lighter (about the weight of a
large bag of potato chips), and it’s a massive 1.9mm thinner! That’s almost 7
one hundredths of an inch! That’s worth the extra £150, right?
Of course, the point is, when was the last time you were
holding your iPad and thought “Wow, this thing is much too thick... and that
extra 0.3 of a pound is really making my arms hurt.”
I’ll tell you when...never...but they’re flying off the
shelves and they’re selling for one reason. So you can pull it out of your bag,
look down your nose at someone and say “Oh, you’ve only got the iPad 4, huh? I’ve
got the iPad Air, it’s sooo much better.”
People are idiots. You know fuck all about technology, you
don’t even know what a gigabyte is,
but you’ll still spend ridiculous amounts of money because the man on TV told
you to...and you’d rather have a shitty piece of technology with a glowing
fruit on the back that a good bit of tech that doesn’t.
The funny thing is, I recently upgraded my phone, and I
looked around for the best phone, not the most fashionable. I settled on the
Sony Xperia Z1, and had a co-worker look at it, smirk and ask why I couldn’t
afford an iPhone.
Actually, I could afford an iPhone.
Instead I got the phone with the better screen (441 pixels
per inch vs the326), twice as much RAM, a far better processor (2.2ghz quad
core versus 1.3ghz dual core), far better camera (20MP f2.0 vs 8MP f2.3) and
far better battery (standby time of 35 days vs 10). Oh, and the Android OS that
lets me put whatever the fuck I want onto my phone without having to invalidate
my warranty by rooting it.
Both of these phones cost roughly the same price, but the Z1
is objectively better. In fact it’s twice
as good as the iPhone 5 in almost every respect... but I have to put up with
fucking idiots calling it the ‘poor man’s iphone’ because it doesn’t have a
picture of a piece of fucking fruit on it.
Apple is not a ‘movement’, it’s not a community. It’s a
company selling you goods. Reward the company that gives you the best product
for the cheapest price, not because everyone else is wearing white headphones.
