SOUR FRUIT

When you taste it, you know.

It may be disappointing at first, to discover the truth, but at least you know afterwards what not to eat. The problem for Apple Computer is that this could eventually translate into what not to buy. Mac users have long accepted underdog status and other indignities because the computers are (for the most part) beautifully designed, easier to use than PCs, and because it's fun to be part of a group generally assumed to be more clever, hip, and creative than the hoi polloi: the "coolness" factor. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the current drift in Apple's corporate policies is most apt to destroy.

I'm talking about an increasing ugliness and arrogance that surely reflects the unhappiness of those at the top of the food chain. Having it all just isn't enough, it would seem, and the tendency to demonize their friends and surroundings is the give-away. (This is something I know quite a bit about, having observed similar emotional pathology in my own behavior over the years). I'm afraid that we're seeing signs that Apple's top management has been trying too hard for a little too long, and when you-know-who realizes that, everything could change overnight. Also, in cases like this, negative reactions from friends and customers, although engendered by the demonizing in the first place, may actually accelerate the decline. . .

One indication of spiritual malaise, if you will, is the reported "loyalty oath" campaign undertaken by the Chiat/Day advertising agency, surely at the behest of their Cupertino client. This has already evoked the darkest and saddest feellings I have ever had about Apple, although my first reaction was to pedantically pounce on those who called this an assault on freedom of the press. (Unless webmasters and publishers are somehow prevented from speaking, it isn't anything of the kind, of course, but that's beside the point.) To require that editors promise in writing not to publish speculation and rumors about Apple products is "simply sick," as a correspondent from Switzerland declared this week, and I can no longer rationalize or defend this paranoia. I also predict that many people now enthusiastically volunteering their time and money to give free publicity to Apple will look at themselves in the mirror, shake their heads, and quietly move on. I will likely never look at another Chiat/Day-produced Apple commercial, for instance, without thinking of the intimidation now forever associated with the firm and its client. For similar reasons, there are still people uncomfortable with buying German cars, believe it or not, and I'm sure many of you can think of other analogies.

For some time now I've been warning that there was a danger in unreservedly cheerleading for a corporation that no longer seemed to need our help and acted like it, namely the emotional/psychological letdown that occurs when you realize the object of your affection doesn't give a damn. This kind of reaction can spread faster than anyone realizes, until no one is left to wave the flag except sycophants and impressionable types with low self-esteem. This would of course be disastrous for all concerned, since Apple lacks the muscle to control markets enjoyed by a company like Microsoft, which can be hated and still make billions.

I know next to nothing about what goes on at Apple, but I understand defensiveness, paranoia, and projection of one's own problems onto others. In fact, you might say I'm a walking, talking textbook example of how not to act in this respect. And while admitting (and reminding you all of) the absurdity, unfairness, and grave danger of allowing myself to think I understand how someone else's mind works, my intuition tells me that the iCEO may be on the verge of a totally unanticipated change of direction in his own life. Outbursts of temper are one thing, a propensity to dispatch legal SWAT teams another, and the doomed attempt to control what individuals in a free society say about a company quite something else entirely. We've all wanted Apple to market and advertise more aggressively, but how did the jackboots and truncheon come into the picture? One inevitable and telling result of this disjunction is a product like the Key Lime iBook.

People of sound mind and good will would agree that everyone has a right to his or her own concept of beauty, but I have to say that the absence of huzzahs greeting the arrival of this new laptop is deafening. As Mac Observer says:

" All over the Mac web, the new iBook color 'key lime,' which is an intense yellowish green, is creating big controversy. Actually, perhaps controversy is not the word. For that to be true, there would have to be someone who actually likes it, and we have not heard of anybody yet."

Continuing my unauthorized corporate/personal psychoanalysis, it occurs to me that this leftover radioactive asparagus color may be a "chip on the shoulder" design. Ah, but is it? Anyone reading these words should note: I may be unconsciously using Apple marketing as a mirror, and therein lies the danger of even attempting to write such a column as this! If that's the case, I may turn out to be just an out-of-touch, opinionated jerk. I mean, what if the Visionary of Cupertino is pointing the way rather than wearing his neurosis on his sleeve? Maybe a generation that paints its hair green (!) and fingernails black will really dig Key Lime iBooks! Maybe, just maybe, when I actually sit down in front of one, I'll think it's beautiful myself and crawl all the way to California on my knees to apologize and beg forgiveness. There surely is something curmudgeonly in the response of resellers like PowerMax, who claim they won't even stock the things, and that gives me pause.

However (and this is a major "however"), we still have the very real problem of just what has become of the brash, upstart, anti-establishment technology company we used to identify with. Is size and wealth inimical to wholesomeness and coolness? Do stock options and private jets inevitably poison the soul? (I'm very tempted to next ask whether a bear shits in the woods, but I really don't want to put myself in the position of declaring that salvation and enlightenment demand poverty. Since I'm currently quite poor and can testify that enlightenment has so far eluded me, I'm more than willing to give affluence a try, anyway.)

One thing for certain is that Apple could be having more fun, and that would surely be healthy. My favorite car magazine, Car & Driver, frequently publishes "spy photos" of automotive prototypes taken by intrepid photographers who regularly haunt the back lots or crawl through the fence at secret test tracks. As far as I know, neither Ford nor General Motors nor anyone else has ever sued the magazine or accused the photographers of industrial espionage. In the car business, this kind of thing goes on all the time -- in fact, it's a hugely entertaining game. The manufacturers have to test future models on the road, so they outfit cars with bizarre body cladding to disguise them and send test drivers into nether regions of the land, frequently followed by picture-snapping spies whose shots are snapped up by magazines read by millions of people every day. Is this so terrible?!?

If your answer is, "well, in the computer business, the stakes are higher," then my reply has to be: SCREW the stakes! Anything that turns nice boys into Nazis needs to be tossed out with the fishheads and potato peels. (It ain't worth dyin' for or losing your friends, either.) Besides, the problem of corporate control of the way we live is much larger than whatever sins Apple may have committed, so to hell with worrying about consumer alienation or the state of Steve's psyche. Five years from now, who knows what kind of computers we'll be using or if we'll even care at all? In the long run, it don't mean dink, and we all have bigger fish to fry.

Now go git 'em!

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM and has some JPEG-laden weirdness going on at an fun project called Zoozone News (if you're lucky you'll find a different photo of New Mexico there every day).

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