Apple is taking over as one of the world’s most recognizable brands but is the following worth it?
Virginia Calcagni, Special to Southern News:
It is funny to think that we used to live in a world where the only Apple product’s were one type of Macintosh computer and the iPod generation one. It seems like that never existed now. Over the years, Apple has built themselves up to be one of the top selling, if not the top selling name brand, but why?
Coming from a personal perspective, to put it simply, Apple isn’t that great, in fact Apple sucks. It has gotten to the point where some people will purchase literally anything with a half bitten Apple plastered to the products back or side.
Apple is smart, they push their products out quickly; for example the iPad 2, which is going to be available in very, limited quantities to begin with.
Working in retail personally, it is safe to say getting the new iPad will, if all goes as planned, be challenging.
However to my surprise, Verizon unleashed their version of the iPhone a few weeks ago and the sales of it weren’t anywhere near what anyone expected. This most likely has to do with the fact that as soon as AT&T got the iPhone, people switched their original providers just to get that phone, and when AT&T releases a new version of the iPhone phone, places can be a zoo.
Now there have been many trends that have driven people to fight for their spot in line; the Wii, Ferbies and Cabbage Patch kids (and they weren’t even cute, and they were birthed out of cabbages; weird.)
What is probably the most interesting point to make is: why do people go so crazy for these devices? Safari isn’t a great internet browser, battery life is virtually nonexistent if you are actually looking to use the device for a long period of the time during the day. I mean seriously it took them four versions of the iPhone to get the battery life to not completely suck and last a full day with frequent usage.To add onto the ridiculousness, and this could just be seen as a good selling strategy, the iPad just came out about a year ago and there is a new one already.
The only main differences between the two will be a faster browser (still safari, so negative in my book) and a camera.
The worst part is that people are going to flock over it, tablets are the equivalent to personal computers only touch screen and smaller.
When you are talking Apple you can’t forget about iTunes, which doesn’t always catalog music properly. Some of the metal music that I have in my library is classed as blues.
IPods are just as bad on battery life, they can freeze like phones and iPads, and the headphones are overpriced and are not the best quality.
Every experience I have had with Apple headphones has been terrible. Turn the volume up the bass/sound is full of static, and they fall apart easily, and have the same amount of quality of ten dollar Gummy headphones. Not to completely bash Apple, the Macintosh computers have the option of having a windows side and a Mac side, both sides need an anti virus.
Mac products are not as susceptible to viruses as PCs are, but don’t think that because you own a Mac you can’t get a virus, and just don’t protect your computer, because then you are in trouble.
For the price of the products that consumers are buying just because of the Apple name, you want to make sure everything is protected, whether it is anti-virus, cases, or a replacement plan
Apple is literally coming out with devices all the time; surprisingly they haven’t come out with a new Macintosh computer, but it probably will not be long until they do, or until they come out with a completely new creation that surprises us all.
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The grammar in this article is absolutely atrocious. You make all these claims but have no evidence to prove it. I have been an apple user for years and my iPhones, iPad, and other Mac products work perfectly fine. Have you considered that may just be the user, not the product.
It’s true that Apple machines are more over-priced than cake smuggled in to fat camp. You’re pretty much paying for a name, and the company loves that people are willing to. So far as build quality goes, though, you aren’t really getting an amazing machine from Apple vs Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, etc. All of the computer companies in the US out-source their builds overseas, where little Asian boys and girls get paid 5 bucks a week to put pieces of metal, silicon, and plastic together for us. For example, the computer I just bought was shipped straight from a factory in Shanghai, while the PowerBook that the new computer just replaced had ‘Made in Taiwan’ plastered everywhere on it (Including the internal components — I had the machine in pieces plenty of times for upgrades and repairs while it was working).
I personally don’t have much of a preference over either. Windows is very functional and business-oriented, while Apple’s OS is very aesthetically pleasing. The Apple I just got rid of might as well have survived a war. I dropped it into a lake once, and after some drying time, the machine didn’t skip a beat (motherboard and video cable issues unrelated to the lake incident made me start to think that maybe it was time for an upgrade — the machine was 9 or 10 years old). However, the tipping point for me, as I mentioned above, would have to be price. I went for the company I bought from because they have a reputation for reliable, functional, sturdily-built computers (this specific brand’s hardware passes several mil-spec tests that Apple machines don’t), all for half the price of a less-than-comparably equipped MacBook.
As far as the computer debate goes, it isn’t worth it. Both sides have their near- dogmatic fanboys and fangirls (even that one weirdo who pipes in every so often with a bunch of supporting points for Linux). When I used to have my Powerbook on campus, I’d get people stopping by to chat me up about my ‘awesomely superior computing machine of pure superior joy,awesome excellence, and awesome superiorness.’ As long as there’s a competetive market in this country, companies are going to do whatever they can to sell, sell, sell — whether it be riding on an over-inflated brand name and cult-like following (in the case of Apple), or making machines just cheap enough to cause a good chunk of buyers to flock over while still turning a profit (most Windows machines).