Sunday 23 October 2011

Why Apple believers are idiots.

** DISCLAIMER ** This topic has been a passionate discussion point for me even before I took up this subject. If you are a closed-minded Apple fan and decide to read this entry, you have been warned.

Dear Apple believers. You're stupid.

To start, I would like to point out that when I say "Apple", I'm only referring to their market of phones, tablets and computers. I own one Apple product, an iPod, for the fact that there is no other competition whatsoever in the mp3 player market at the current time. I'll let you know, however, that I owned three different non-Apple mp3's before my iPod. If there were equal competitors for mp3 players today, I would not own an iPod.

My first point branches from the comfort or freedom ideology. To you Apple fanboys and fangirls, I ask you this. If you had a choice between arranged marriage or conventional marriage, what would you pick?
By buying Apple products, you are signing yourself up for an arranged marriage. You are trusting a higher figure of authority to spoon-feed you an aspect of your life without your own personal input. You are trusting the authority that whatever single aspect they find, it will fit your needs, based on their judgement.

Now, this is not to say I'm against arranged marriages. I understand that culturally and religiously, arranged marriages are a historical value dating back thousands of years. My analogy questions this: if you originally had the option of whether you made the choices, or someone else was assigned to make your choices for you, why on earth would you pick the latter?

Onto point two. Here's a bold statement. Apple believers are technologically illiterate.
When I said Apple believers were stupid, what I really meant is that they were lacking in technological knowledge. I say this because Apple products are designed for babies. I kid you not people, there are videos of babies using iPads on YouTube. Apple dumbs down the interface of their products. Why? It's so technologically illiterate people can use them. I understand if a toddler or an elder were to choose Apple products, but if you are a part of Generation Y, have money, and are somewhat in touch with the tech world, I honestly see no logical reason why you would dedicate yourself to Apple's devices.

My understanding is that Apple believers don't know enough about hardware. My understanding is that an Apple believer will be spoon fed their Apple devices, and expect them to work without knowing why. My understanding is that the average Apple user won't know what a CPU overclock is, won't know what GUI customisation is, and won't know what WiFi tethering is. Believers? You know very little.

Sure, the tech-illiterate market may be a valid target for Apple to sell their products, but to me, owning an Apple smartphone and calling yourself a true 'tech enthusiast' is similar to reading Physics For Dummies and calling yourself a PhD physicist. It's like driving nothing but automatic cars and pretending to know how the gearbox works. It's like.. you get the point.

Onto my third and final point. Quality.
Apple believers may be under the impression that their products are somehow "malware proof". The truth? They're definitely not. An Apple believer will say that an open source device will allow unwanted material to infect your computer. The reality is, your closed devices aren't so safe after all.

Furthermore, an Apple believer will argue that the most recent iPhone is the best selling product in the world. Seriously, I actually asked a TechCrunch blogger (also Apple fan) this question. It's obvious that the only reason the iPhone is a top-selling device, is because Apple believers only have that single device to choose. I can guarantee you that if Android had a single-device equivalent, it would outsell the iPhone. Instead, Android has multiple devices, and their combined sales are enormously larger than any other OS.

With regards to computers, I simply laugh. Computers are used for three main things at the present time: Internet browsing, gaming, and business software purposes. Apple Macs are designed for one of the above. Can you guess which one?
Gaming is a joke on a Mac. You can't tweak your hardware to suit your video game needs. Want to update your graphics card to suit a new game? Looks like you're going to have to buy a whole new Apple computer, which even though are manufactured in China by underpaid factory workers, certainly are not cheap products.
Business software? Have you even looked at the compatibility issues Apple's OS has with non-Apple software? Again, you don't get to choose what suits you. Apple chooses what suits you.
Did you guess it right? Apple computers, I admit, are great for browsing the internet. But is that really all you do with a computer? If you say yes, then I'd place you in the 'technologically illiterate' category.

Oh, and with regards to the App Store, why does one company get to decide who produces a quality app and who doesn't? If this logic were congruent, why aren't all apps rated 5 stars in the App Store? Why do Apple users have to illegally jailbreak their iPhone just to get their apps from other locations?

In conclusion, if you admit you are illiterate in the tech department - if you admit that Windows and Android are truly too complex for you - I give you permission to use an Apple product, even though you're admitting that you're too lazy to make choices. But keep in mind that the future of technology is never dominated by a single company. The future of technology, rather, is held within the tweaking and feedback improvements provided by the users. Not the company's development team, but the users. It's why Google will outperform Apple in a few years' time. I bet 10,000 Bitcoins on it.