For a moment, I was not sure if Apple were losing me.
Or if Samsung were winning me.
But there is only one crystal clear reality in actual fact.
Apple are losing me.
Brand Loyalty.
I’m a real Apple fan.
Because of the aesthetic across their products.
And the usability with the iPhone.
Usability on the MacBook is weak.
So that’s not what hooks me.
Nevertheless, I never ever looked elsewhere.
Until recently.
Attitude.
I loved their attitude once upon a time too.
But, somehow, I have come to think of them as arrogant and salesy.
And I am starting to see their biggest competitors as humble, hard working and a genuine alternatives.
I am not quite ready to jump ship, because I am (albeit at arms length) ‘learning’ the competitor’s products.
But I am interested.
And this is new.
And from what I read the 2019 iPhone won’t boomerang me back either.
It’s launch will apparently be headlined by some unexciting, intangible, immediately forgettable bollocks like ‘better screen’ or ‘faster’ or ‘there’s a new gobbledy-bollocks in the camera.’
Bored.
I’m just a bit bored with Apple.
I am not cheering for them any more.
I don’t care if they win or if they lose.
They try to sell to me every few days with some annoying crap about memory on my phone.
MY phone.
And I don’t want THEM selling to ME on MY phone.
How dare they!
And their adverts are neither as artful nor beautiful as they once were.
These days they look like they are created by several good minds instead of one beautiful one.
Marriage.
A great relationship with a brand is like a marriage.
It is love.
But, unlike great marriages in the real world – the real impetus behind the relationship is one way only.
It is the job of the brand to make me feel heady-in-love.
As consumer, I am largely passive in this relationship, until the brand compels me to behave differently and connect.
And eventually fall in love.
Waiting.
So with Apple, these days, I wait.
I want to be seduced.
Entertained.
Bowled over.
Over and over and over.
I want to be proud to be Apple.
And I am not.
The End.
It’ll be some time before I leave Apple.
But the fact that I am even entertaining the idea; the fact that my head has been turned is disappointing for me.
You see, I still love them.
I just don’t think they love me any more.
So, I am sorry to say, that instead of me only having eyes for Apple – I look around.
I rate the others as they jostle for position.
I compare.
I create my personal hierarchies with the other players in the market.
The only good thing that has come from the deterioration of my dedication to Apple, for me, is that I can now write my worst pun since starting this blog.
In the last sentence.
Here goes…
I now do not only have eyes for Apple.
I see many credible alternatives, and I am prioritising them all as pretenders to the crown.
My monogamous relationship with Apple is over.
It has ended in tiers.
4 Comments
I am sorry to hear Apple has stopped being the apple of your eye.
Totally understand where you’re at. I’ve been waiting for Apple to wow me for the last few years, but nothing.
My first Mac was an 800MHz Titanium PowerBook G4…it cost me a large amount of money, but I was completely in love…even with the transition between Mac OS 9 and OSX. Over the years after that I’ve had another PowerBook G4, PowerMac G5 with Cinema Displays and a myriad of MacBook Pros (15, 17, 15, 13, 15 inch models) starting from the transition to Intel. Not to mention iPhones, iPads and everything else in the Apple ecosystem. I use to get up at 2am to watch Apple keynote live-streams from Australia.
A couple of months ago I bought a Thinkpad X1 Extreme – 15” 4K 100% Adobe RGB display, dual M.2 SSDs, 32GB RAM (upgradable to 64GB)…and made the switch as my primary machine. I’m loving it! The only things I miss are FCPX and a couple of beautifully designed apps like Coda and Ulysses.
While I still have an iPhone XS, I’ve got a Pixel 3 now and am flirting with it. Heck I’m even thinking about selling my 12” iPad Pro for a Surface.
But in my heart I’m an Apple user. The ethos that attracted me to the brand back many years ago is still strong in my heart, it’s just I don’t feel Apple care about that anymore. I’d come back in an instant. For now I’m waiting and watching…
Thank you for commenting Samuel.
I’m staying ‘Apple’ for the moment too.
But I am learning from you and the 400,000+ people that have viewed my original post.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6511646221608767488
It’s been really interesting.
Thank you again.
Michael
Great read! My feeling is that although Apple products are falling shorter and shorter, they are still a business that walks the walk around diversity and that for me goes further than hardware of software. They will bounce back. My money will never go to a brand that is inherited racist cough…Samsung .