The only thing worse than an Apple product launch is dealing with the reaction of the Apple evangelists in the days following.
Before all the Apple fanboys stop reading this, let me assure you I’m not anti-Apple. In fact, I’m writing this on an Apple MacBook Pro and I live in a three-person, five-iPod family — and one of those people is six-months-old and lacks the basic eye-hand co-ordination to use a touch-sensitive wheel.
My point rather is that some Apple fans seem to have — how to put this delicately? — lost touch with reality.
Too harsh? Perhaps, but indulge me for a moment.
My most recent encounter with Apple evangelists’ tenuous grip on reality occurred at a class for first-time fathers-to-be. There were fifteen of us seated in a hospital meeting room. Over two hours, we were to learn about the mysteries of labour and the adventure of fatherhood. Filled with questions about the meaning of life and the universe-shattering wonder of birth it was only a matter of time before the conversation turned to… the iPhone’s lousy battery life.
It all began when one father-to-be mentioned an iPhone app called iContraction into which expectant fathers can record all the relevant information about the progress of the labour. “I haven’t used it,” he admitted, although he assured us that reports about it had all been positive.
This provoked a bit of good-natured laughter, until another father-to-be pipped in. “You better hope for a short labour. You’d be lucky if the battery lasts that long.”
At this, iPhone-loving-father-to-be got a bit cross. “Watch what you’re saying.”
“Hey, I’ve got one,” replied the iPhone-battery-sucks-father-to-be. “The battery life is terrible.”
It’s not an isolated instance of how Apple products can turn otherwise rational people into commodity fetishists. When the iPhone was first released in the US, for example, one customer was reported to have queued 18 hours to purchase the phone, only to find it didn’t work.
“It looks cool, but I can’t do anything with it,” he whined to Fox News. “I’m angry and frustrated and feel like I wasted my time standing in line.”
How to explain to this poor sod that his time was wasted whether the phone worked or not? Unless you’re waiting for food, water, medical attention or to see a loved one, queuing for 18 hours is, by definition, a waste of time.
In some ways though, such lack of perspective is understandable, given the press reactions to Apple product launches. Even journalists, who you might expect would be a little more sceptical — if only for the sake of appearances — succumb to the iStupor induced by shiny things stamped with Apple logos.
As Newsweek’s technology writer Daniel Lyons wrote last year, “Reporters don’t just overlook Apple’s faults; they’ll actually apologize for them, or rationalize them away. Ever seen reporters clapping and cheering at a press conference? Happens all the time at Apple events.”
Lyons went on to describe the ‘Faustian pact’ that some journalists make with Apple, agreeing to withhold criticism in return for access to Apple products and people.
Things were no different with the launch of the iPad. (Watch this to hear ‘journalists’ whistling and cheering Job’s announcement.)
Such uncritical coverage colours even the local news. Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald for example, Stephen Hutcheon, who was “a guest of Apple” at the launch, told readers: “Dressed in his trademark jeans and black skivvy, [Steve] Jobs described the iPad as “magical and revolutionary” and containing Apple’s “most advanced technology”.”
This isn’t journalism. It’s an unofficial Apple press release.
Nor is it news. It would have been news if Jobs came out and said “Jeez, I was kinda hoping it would be better than this. It just a big iPhone — but without the phone bit.” (Fortunately the SMH recovered its journalistic senses later in the day with this piece from Asher Moses.)
Apple excels at many things. But a sense of perspective and an ability for critical self-analysis are just two things at which they fail miserably. For that we rely on, among others, journalists. As things stands, we’re not being well served.
Christopher Scanlon teaches journalism at La Trobe University and is a co-founder of upstart.net.au.
Christopher’s problem is his short memory.
It doesn’t take much work on the interwebs to find what journos thought about the iPod and the iPhone when they were first released. Almost universally, tech journos – usually without having used, let alone seen the devices in question – panned them and predicted a dodo-like future.
The bottom line is having been caught out two times, they don’t want to risk someone googling their views in 12 months time to see how they wrong they were. It’s self-interest pure and simple – not Apple worship.
And using the words “journalistic senses” and “Asher Moses” in the same sentence destroys your credibility forever!
Well said Chris. It may be that Paul’s theory above has some basis to it, but ultimately that cannot excuse the media’s breathless adulation about a device that is basically a big ipod touch. The take-home lesson from underestimating the iphone’s mega success shouldn’t be to suspend all critical faculties and worship at the altar of Steve Jobs. Rather, it should be to ackowledge that the phone market had been stagnating or at least not innovating as well as it should have done. This allowed Apple to steal the show with the iphone because it delivered a unified experience through a responsive and stable UI, the app store platform, chic design and a big capacitive touch screen.
Can we please have a ban on the use of the term “fanboy” to describe people who evangelise about Apple products. They are just suffering an iCrush, which happens to us all from time to time. No need to get too iCynical I guess.
This issue is not confined to reporting on Apple. All technical journalists are compromised to a certain extent by the relationship they have to have with the manufacturers, just to get the job done.
Christopher also misses the point about these journalists relationship to their readers. If you are a technical journalist writing for a specialist outlet, your readers are enthusiasts for the products you are talking about. Often these articles are discussions between fans not objective criticism warning of the pifalls inherent in a product.
If the product doesn’t do the job then the journo is morally obliged to say so. However, in the competitive market we have it is often a nuanced discussion of several alternatives, all of which do the job satisfactorily. The journalist often spends most of the article talking about small features which differentiate between equal products.
Yes, Apple are good at hype but so are a lot of other industry leaders who are there on a pedestal to be knocked off.
You think those reporting Apple launches are sychophantic? You should go to a car launch! Technically inept journalists are spoon fed press releases to be regurgitated while the top writers go off on a tangent and talk about everything but the car, engaging in speculation about the machinations of politics at the top of large global organisations.
All successful con artists have known for a long time that the primary consideration in picking a ‘mark’ is to pick someone who will never admit to having been conned. Apple’s genius is to market to people who through their own insecurity will not only not complain when they realise they have been sold an overpriced and inflexible product but to cover their own feelings of inadequacy and in denial of their stupidity, will trumpet the virtues of the product. It sort of like the marketeers version of the Stockholm syndrome.
All marketing schools should have a picture of Steve Jobs in every classroom.