If you haven’t got an iPhone, you probably haven’t got self-esteem issues

Those of you who know me know I am quite a vociferous Apple hater. I never miss an opportunity to launch some sort of rant about them.  I responded to a tweet this week asking “why do some people hate iphones so much”, so I felt the need to answer, but before I do, a little confession. There are some things about the iphone (and by logical extension, the ipad) that are quite good.

a) It’s not a bad piece of technology, quite user friendly, and has a significant app store. I can see why people like them, plus its external looks have been quite well designed.

There I’ve said it. There are some people I know who have iPhones who use them for being..well a phone. And don’t need to shout about it. And there are people with other phones who don’t need to shout about it either. But there seems to be a group of people who can’t help themselves when saying “I’ll give them a call on my iPhone” or “I’ll just look that up on my iPhone” or “I’ve got an app on my iPhone”. I can’t help but wonder what they will lose out on by dropping the “one my iPhone”. It’s like a desire to say it. Like they must tell anyone who cares to listen that they have an iPhone. There have been extensions to this on two fronts this week – the release of iOS5 and the 4S. With the former, people are saying whole stories about how they are upgrading their phone telling us in detail how the update process is going. That’s fine, I can imagine the sense of achievement of a non-techie would have doing something which is slightly technical (especially as iPhones have attracted the really non techie end of the market). The latter I find a little more disturbing. People camping out to get the iPhones on the day of release. Now to be honest, these phones will never run out. There is no real issue about never finding the stock. Yet people feel the need to camp out all night. Like they felt the need to camp out all night for the last Harry Potter book.

To me I can see one major reason for this sort of commercialism. And that is to tell people they have got it. In a sort of “I’ve got the new iphone, you don’t nar ne nar” way. If you couple this to an obvious subtext that Apple has in all its marketing being “If you have an Apple, you are a better person than others” or as the title of this hints on “If you don’t have an Apple, you are a worse person”.

In marketing terms that’s all well and good. It happens quite often. Lynx for example give you the subtext that if you are male and use Lynx, you’ll get your cock wet. Yes it helps it sell, but people don’t go round saying how many shags they have got because they’ve used Lynx. This Apple evangelism is a little more sinister, and yet a sad reflection of our society.

Today, there seems a big a need as any to show that you are better than ones neighbour. Apple have tapped into this by spending a lot of money on not just the product, but on the look and the ‘appeal’ of the product. In terms of their PC/Laptop range, you are paying well into the £1,000s for a machine where the equivalent “PC” is somewhere in the region of £400. Even allowing for, say £200 better software (which personally I don’t think it) you are paying around £500 for how a computer looks. I’m sure you all like pretty things but if I said to you “I’ll sell you this pretty laptop for £500 – it has no insides and is totally useless, but it looks nice” it seems some people would say yes. Especially if it has an Apple logo on it.

Then Apple take it a step further and get very high profile people to “endorse” it – even if they are not experts in the field. The most high profile one in the UK is Stephen Fry, and how he talks about it, I’m finding it hard to believe that he is not on their payroll. If you do a search on “Stephen Fry Apple” on youtube, there are a lot of different videos about him going on how wonderful Apple products are.

Here’s my take on it.

There are some people, and these tend to be people those aforementioned people who have to talk about, who actually believe they are better than others because they have a device like that. I’m of the opinion that these people are not happy within themselves. Either they feel they need the same device to fit in with the ‘cool kids’ or perhaps they’ve reached a point in their life where they have not achieved what they hoped to, or maybe they’ve had a fortunate upbringing and they’ve hit a rumble. I feel there is a real self esteem issue going on. Don’t get me wrong, many of us (and I include myself in that) have elements about ourselves which we don’t like, want to change and have low self esteem ourselves. But some of us are smart enough to know that getting an iphone will not solve these, or just being the first to get something won’t make us into a better person. When people bleat on about it, it’s in the same ball park as making someone feel bad because they are a virgin or a car is an extension of their penis.

I agree than a piece of tech like this can enhance your life, make life easier etc. But they don’t and can’t make you a better person. Or in some cases a more successful one. I’ve just read a tweet from someone I used to follow (but stopped following for the reasons above) saying “spend so much of my life with my baby. It changed my life.” – He is referring to his apple product. To me, that is an example of what a wanton society we have become. Another tweet I just saw said ” iPhones are part of twitter and always have been” and to me misses the point. It’s PEOPLE that make Twitter.

Sadly I can see all of this carrying on. And of course has been carrying on for a while. Charlie Brooker sums it up well in this clip

If people like this valued people around them half as much as they value aspirational bits of tech, the world, my friends, would be a better place.