Apple Takes a Lot of Undeserved Crap

Yesterday, I posted to Jaffe Juice when Joseph talked a bit about the iPhone controversy.  His point was that Apple was exceptionally arrogant in not doing their due diligence on the iPhone name.  And he's right. Most of the criticism I've seen about Apple, in the wake of this controversy and others, has to do with people criticizing Apple fans because they seemingly covet and buy every new product that comes out of Cupertino.  Apple fans are often characterized as mindless sheep that happily gobble up new Apple products without thinking about it.  And that's simply not fair.

It's not all about looks, either.  Apple has a lot going for it, and it's not just the looks of their designs.  It's the simplicity.

I had several MP3 players before investing in an iPod.  I had a HanGo Portable Jukebox, a Rio and a few others.  All were great once you read the manual, figure out how the software works and work out any issues concerning file formats, etc.  The truth is that most people don't have time for this crap.  They just want things to work, and they want them to work intuitively, without needing a degree in computer science.  The iPod had this simplicity in spades.

Macs are the same way.  So are all the other products that come out of Apple.  When I got my Mac Mini, I hadn't used MacOS in years, yet picking it back up and getting used to OSX was easy.  There's hardly anything non-intuitive about it.

So we're not just talking about design in terms of looks, here.  We're talking about design from an information architecture and functionality standpoint, making a robust feature set easy to use without complications.

Looks certainly don't hurt.  Neither does a loyal following of the brand.  But at the core (giggle) of Apple's success is the functional design of its products.  They just work.

Even hardcore techies like myself are willing to overlook some of Apple's shortcomings to buy products that work and that are intuitive to use.  As a guy who build's PC's from scratch, I don't like the fact that I can't simply buy an Airport card and install it myself, and instead have to head over to TekServe.  But that's better than having to deal with machines that need to be wiped clean and have their OS reinstalled every year or so.

So quit all the crap about the Cult of Apple.  There are real reasons why Apple has this kind of following.  Dismissing those things out of hand is just silly.