You know, Dan Lyons spends so much time crafting these little love notes to us out of spittle, whole cloth, a lock of Tim Cook’s hair, and the rage of 10,000 suns that it seems rude not to reply at least once in a while.
“Why Do Americans Hate Android And Love Apple?” (reply, but not link to, of course, with a tip o’ the antlers to Eric Shashoa).
Why do Americans overwhelmingly prefer iPhone when the rest of the world has overwhelmingly embraced Android?
Why, indeed? Mass hysteria? Fluoridation in the drinking water?
Part of it also might be that Apple’s lawsuits against Android phone makers have been an effective form of marketing, creating the impression that Apple’s rivals are a bunch of Asian cloners – a message that resonates with many Americans.
Please. Convicted cloners.
But Apple and its cheerleaders in the States don’t just criticize Android phones; they also criticize Android users, depicting them as low-class people who are uneducated, poor, cheap and too lacking in “taste” (a favorite Apple fanboy word) to pay for an Apple product and instead willing to settle for a low-price knockoff.
Who does that?
See, for example, a recent story by Sam Biddle on Gizmodo called “Android Is Popular Because It’s Cheap, Not Because It’s Good,” illustrated with a photo of a homeless man sleeping next to a shopping cart and bags full of collected cans. Nice touch!
Gizmodo now represents the forefront of Apple cheerleaders. They’re not just rabble-rousers who would just as soon flame Apple as Android.
Sure, Dan.
This crap about Android being cheap has been around for years. It’s true that there are inexpensive Android phones. But there are also inexpensive iPhones.
Inexpensive iPhones. Not cheap ones. Look, there are a lot of nice Android phones, but it has also become the de facto replacement for the flip phone. People who go in to replace their flip phone get it because you can get one free, even without a contract. There’s an appeal to this—stop trying to deny it.
But while we’re on this: What on earth is wrong with making phones for people who don’t have much money?
Nothing!
And is the implication that somehow those sales don’t count? Or count less?
Yes! Because people who don’t pay for phones are less likely to pay for apps. And jerkweeds like you keep telling us that Android is “winning” because it has more users, implying that that means the platform is more robust than iOS.
As a leading mobile recently declared, Apple’s iOS operating system has fallen behind Android.
Well, if someone said it, then it must be true!
So much so that last year Apple tossed out the guy who ran its iOS software division.
Is that why? The Macalope thought it was because he was such a jerk that it was getting hard to keep other good executives.
Then there’s screen size. With Apple you get two sizes: tiny and not-quite-as-tiny-but-still-frustrating.
Tiny. A four-inch screen is now “tiny.” The Macalope is so old that he remembers when people speculated about Apple using hand models with huge, oven-mitt-sized hands to make the original iPhone look smaller, because smaller was better and the original iPhone was laughably large. Keep moving those goal posts!
Lyons goes on to conflate flame-throwers like Gizmodo and a bunch of commenters on Twitter with all Apple bloggers. You know, as you do when you’re trying to tar an entire user group.
Of course if Apple comes out with a breakthrough TV its business will take off like a rocket again. Better yet, if Apple produces a TV we will be treated to the spectacle of seeing its chorus of fanbloggers becoming overnight experts on television technology and sharing their wisdom at great length on things like chamfers, bezels, aspect ratios, color saturation, contrast ratio and all the other aspects of industrial design that only incredibly sophisticated, Dieter Rams-loving aesthetes can truly appreciate.
It does not enter Lyons’s realm of possibility that it could just be better, through software or services or design—like the original iPhone was better than every other smartphone at the time.
… and therefore those TVs will appeal only to homeless people and people who have no education and no taste or who can’t afford an Apple TV because they collect welfare and live in the ghetto, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink.
Sigh. You don’t have to be poor to not want to spend anything on a smartphone. You could also just not care. But you can, legitimately, get an Android phone for less, even though carriers give away iPhones (with a contract). This is why people still say Apple needs a “cheap” phone. Lyons, ever in a rush to tar Apple fans, glosses over this.
Shocking, the Macalope knows. To think that Lyons would gloss over facts in his rush to … well, no, the Macalope can’t even fake that.
Well, Dan, just didn’t want you to think we haven’t noticed these coyly-produced mash notes to us. They still sicken us, of course, but we’ve noticed.