Who can argue with Apple’s success? This well conceived brand has created an almost religious following of consumers. For years Apple was the darling of the graphic arts world. It was a safe harbor for lost and frustrated computer users. Apple products looked good, were functional and didn’t crash. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, Apple products were not associated with Bill Gates’ Microsoft, which over time became the ultimate Uncoola: a technological drink that only the desperately thirsty masses could swallow. The world needed a Plan B and a good portion of the retail buying public took a bite of the Apple offered by the devilish Steve Jobs. It became the thinking man’s brand: first for computers, then for music delivery, then cell phones, and now with the iPad, electronic print delivery.
Has Steve Jobs created a retail religion built around a line of products that are so well designed they appear to have been evolved by the power of Nature rather than the constructed by the hands of Man? Has Apple made every other competitor look inferior or inept? Are people now buying the product because it has become so obviously technologically superior, with such cachet that the brand is a symbolic shortcut proof of the purchaser’s savvy? Are Apple stores designed as a retail holy place for Apple followers? The answer is “All of the above.”
Of course Apple has produced its share of aardvarks and dodo birds like the G4 Cube and the Newton, but even as Nature creates such anomalies, the list of Apple commercial flops is always surpassed by its successes. The old baseball adage about succeeding at bat by failing two-thirds of the time comes to mind. But, sometimes even the commercial successes don’t dovetail with the dogma. Refer to the 90’s iMac with the teal green, bullet train look. Like a loud fart in a quiet church, that one is a bit embarrassing from a “timeless design” standpoint.
But the strength of the brand is not totally about the reality of the Apple philosophy put into practice, the technology, or the way the Apple products look. It is a retail religion filled with references to the devil (Bill Gates), rote acceptance of the quality, coolness, the sacred image of the products, and a world view that says “I don’t bother with other people’s crap…I have taken a bite from the Apple and I no longer fear the technological gods. I can deal with it so long as I have the user-friendly interfaces, the purity of the white products, and the pronouncements of Our Leader to guide me and prepare me for the unknowable and incomprehensible personal technology future.
Apple is my religion, my world-view, my friend, and my guardian angel. I am a MacHead. I enter the retail church of Apple and I am comforted by the purity of the environment. I seek the blessing and insight of the high priests of electronic fashion. I wear the black garb of our leader. I shave my head. I repeat the Jobian manta “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”
I am not a consumer. I am a believer. I have taken a bite of the Apple. So be it. Yea ye…I love Mac and Mac loves me.
