Apple's churning of the gut
eliainsider.com
eliainsider.com
Is this your gut saying it can't possibly be true that Apple attracts lots of negative press mainly because it has been King of the Hill for so long, when it comes to fat profit margins and popularity?
I couldn't disagree with you more. Sure enough other companies get unjustified bad press every now and then, but you have to be blind to deny the fact that each and every website, even if it's only remotely related to technology, appears to be populated with people who can't resist the urge to slam Apple for whatever is the popular Apple-fail-du-jour.
It's not unlike the 90', when Microsoft was in the position that Apple is now. No matter what they did, it was bad, evil, anti-competitive, it sucked, they stole the idea, whatever. I'm was guilty of irrational Microsoft hate myself back then. Today, people almost feel pity for poor Microsoft, finally trying to innovate in the smartphone and tablet space, but failing spectacularly to attract people to their platform.
There's really nothing surprising here. In dutch, we have this saying that goes along the lines of 'higher trees catch most of the wind'. I think it has something to do with human nature. People envy success, especially when they don't understand it. Combined with a tendency to herd around the popular opinion, it's not hard to see how successful companies attract most of the bad press. In the last few years I've seen some of the most nonsensical arguments against Apple products you couldn't even make up yourself, almost go viral on the internet.
At some point in time some other company will take Apple's place as the big evil technology corporation that can't do anything right. Facebook would be a pretty obvious candidate, the moment they start getting more successful at monetizing their service, I predict they will become the centre of attention for haters and trolls.
Is that because they actually hate Apple, though? Or is it just a function of the emotional attachment Apple creates?
Consider what we'll call "The Oprah Example".
Oprah doesn't remotely write or talk about technology that often. And far more people in Oprah's audience will have Windows PCs and Android phones than Macs and iPhones.
But Oprah is far more justified in talking about Apple. (And she does.) Because those people in her audience who have Apple devices likely have an emotional bond with them. And they will appreciate a story about Apple. Whereas even those people with Android phones and Windows PCs in her audience almost certainly don't give a damn about Microsoft or Samsung. They likely don't even know off-hand who manufactured their devices.
Not that Oprah herself parrots component order stories. But it's the same mechanism in other places that do. People care about Apple. Ergo they will actually read about Apple. Any number of blogs might have a grudge against Sony or Samsung or Microsoft, and repeat negative stories about those companies, but the fact that no-one really cares about those companies means that they necessarily fall flat.
So the "dog pile" on Apple that you perceive doesn't exist because people hate Apple for its success. It's because people have emotional opinions about Apple and thus will actually read stories about Apple.
Indeed what you see as a dog-pile against, many people who dislike Apple see as a mindless cult that gets outsized press because the newspapers and hollywood are full-fledged devotees to the cult.
They're two views on the same mechanism: the emotional reactions Apple generates.
And the proof of this is as simple as looking to the way that Apple has long commanded a slice of the public consciousness that far outweighed its marketplace relevance. It's only fairly recently that their user base was large enough to justify the press they already had.
I don't understand the distinction here. It sounds like you're exempting "hate" from "emotional opinions". Please clarify.
A handful of people Hating Apple may well motivate them to write negative things about Apple. A handful of others may reblog it for similar reasons.
But all sorts of people hate all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. And one can easily find examples of similar emotionally-driven negative articles about Sony, Microsoft, Google, etc.
Yet those other articles don't inspire the response an Apple article does. They don't generate huge threads. They don't get reblogged much. They don't often generate many responses.
So Apple can't be different simply because of writers motives.
No, it's different because of the way readers react to it. And, specifically, the very large number of readers (historically out of proportion to Apple's significance) with very strong emotional reactions (both for and against).
Large successful companies gather mind share, be it positive or negative, which makes them an appropriate subject for all kinds of attention. Just like many people feel Apple gets a disproportionate amount of positive attention (which is probably true), many others feel the get too much bad press (which is also true). Usually hate attracts much more attention though.
Further, I'm speculating that the reason the author thinks this is an Apple phenomenon is because his put his head inside the Apple echo chamber. Which is fine, people can get their news from any source they want. It's just that complaining about it makes little sense.
These stories quite clearly happens to everyone.
That said, there is something unique in the way that Apple stories are linked, repeated and shared, getting visibility of a level that Microsoft, Samsung, et al almost never do.
But that's ultimately just a function of tabloid-style sites trying to make tabloid style-stories out of everything, but only getting traction when they hit companies/services that people actually give a shit about: Apple, Google, etc.
Uh... I think the patent abuse, App Store censorship, and attempting to normalize a paradigm where one needs the hardware vendor's permission to run software have something to do with antipathy towards Apple.
>I think the right answer is that Apple just fails to pass the gut test for most people.
This is no surprise. Apple holds no significant monopoly so AAPL is volatile. The stock is ripe for manipulation with a P/E that is far lower than many other tech companies while almost one-third of the company's value is in cash on hand.
The bigger issue for me is why this story has been so well covered by Daring Fireball, The Loop, MG Siegler and the rest of the Apple blogosphere? Do they really believe that they will affect general opinion of the stock or force an investigation?
What screams out to me is that this is about favoritismm but coming from intelligent people whom can deny it in a way that sounds reasonable to the average person.
You're surprised that bloggers who blog about Apple are blogging about Apple? What's the issue here, again?
There are other issues that exist at Apple which are far more important.
I could say the same for any tech company but I expect more from those who pretended to be above it all.
Daring Fireball isn't a technology blog, it's an Apple blog. Apple's stock price is entirely relevant.
> There are other issues that exist at Apple which are far more important.
Are these issues being ignored? These bloggers tend to post more than once a day on a variety of Apple-related topics.
> I could say the same for any tech company but I expect more from those who pretended to be above it all.
When have folks like Gruber ever pretended to be above covering Apple news and stock prices?
Apple's stock price was on a parabolic growth trend. Sure, this time could be different, but history says that such growth is unsustainable. Combine that with the "intangibles" (Jobs' death) and the recent price correction isn't shocking.
Why is every movement in Apple news? Because it's one of the planet's most recognizable brands and biggest companies. Those are things that make news.
Until recently, there were an avalanche of positive stories about Apple. Some of it are overstated.
What did the author think of too much positive news about Apple back then? He's only reacting now because it's negative.
I don't know if that's possible.
In the last few years, Apple dominated (practically created) two product categories: digital music players and smartphones.
If Apple is going to keep growing like this it needs something bigger than the iPhone. What's it gonna be? An iTV? An iCar, a complete line of iKitchen appliances? A Buckminister Fuller-style iHouse?
I just don't see how they can find an opportunity like that without losing focus.
It's very similar to politics. Apple are the Republicans of tech in that every minor story is major news, all dirty laundry aired by journalists, bloggers, and tweets, and mockery where possible.
So it's the "law or large numbers" and the "doomed without Steve" arguments that impact the news of Apple these days, but hopefully some of that will fade with time.
In fact, Apple has better The Streets for most of the past six years.
Err what? I've seen this happen to every company on that list.
For example, lets take Nokia. Three months after launching the Lumia 900, they discounted the price on contract at AT&T from $99 to $49. This led to a huge cacophony all over the internet with a lot of publications reporting "Nokia discounts phone by half", totally ignoring the fact that it was on contract price, so the price discount was closer to 10% and was totally normal. There was no such hype when other Samsung, HTC etc. phones were dropped in price as part of the normal pricing cycle of such phones.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
Nokia, RIM and Microsoft are some of the most beat down companies in analysis and news. The "news" is universally junk and has more to do with attention grabbing headlines and flamebait, regardless of the companies involved.
I think the author is suffering from a huge selection bias.