I hate that I love my new iPhone.

I used to be pretty pro-Apple (‘pro’ as ‘in favour of’, not a stainless steel exterior and an excuse to charge an extra $200). These days, I hate the fact that any Apple is still my go-to digital device. Without so much as a Google search.

Apple used to be a company that stood for creativity, humanity, and unique perspective—and they focused on making products to empower these things. But in the last few years, they seem to have let that focus go to their heads. And while their products are still of indisputable quality, their tone is so self-congratulatory that I want to take a file to the logo of every Apple product I own… if it wasn’t so goddamn tastefully minimalist and flawlessly shiny.

Apple Ads don’t add value

But they used to. ‘Think different’ was honestly inspiring; ‘Mac vs PC’ was a fun series that really underscored Apple’s positioning as being made for real humans; and a little more recently, there was this iPad Air commercial with Robin William’s voice from Dead Poet’s Society, featuring part of Walt Whitman’s poem, ‘O Me! O Life!’. If that doesn’t make you want to go out and create some shit, then you’re probably slightly dead inside, which is unfortunate, but also pointless arguing about.

Nowadays, ads like these demonstrate Apple’s love for their precious product more than anything human or creative. All I see is perfectly shot steel and a painstakingly curated assembly of ethnicities, which I fucking bet had a Keynote presentation dedicated to getting the balance just right, using phrases like ‘cappuccino skin tone’. (To be clear: racial diversity is great, I just hate how constructed it feels.) Here’s another one for AirPods Max. It’s… who cares? The product-porn is not unpleasant to watch, and the spacey theme is inevitably a little cool, but they’re selling music! How did they manage to not make that exciting? Especially when they’ve got $550 and a handbag-themed carrying case to justify?

In Apple’s defence, this fairly recent ad was much more vibey and—ah shit, I just remembered this one from 2019. That was undeniably endearing and nice, so… fine, there goes my point, kind of. But I stand by the earlier stuff and anyway, we’ve got lots more to cover, because Apple is also…

CrApple at innovation

You get phones that fricken bend in half now, and with the iPhone 12, Apple abandoned curved screens altogether—because they’ve never actually been able to mass-produce them. Oh sure, the 10 and 11’s screens were curved. But only where the image stopped, i.e. where the screen ended. Those cheaty bastards.

And look, I’m not saying they should be innovating for innovation’s sake. User experience is what counts and Samsung’s first few releases of phones with screens that curved round the side were pointless. But when upgrading from an iPhone 8 to a 12, I lost the fingerprint scanner in favour of facial recognition—which does not work with a COVID mask. In fact, buying something is now an Apple-Payn-in-the-ass. And let’s not even revisit the AirPod Max that requires a handbag-case just to be turned off.

Of course, none of this stops Apple from pretending they’re still our guiding light of all things tech. Like how every-single year, they announce that the new iPhone is the best/most powerful iPhone ever. Yes, you twerps; that’s how upgrades work. It’s not like you start each year from scratch. If you take last year’s most powerful iPhone ever, and fucking wished at it, it would still be the most-powerful—or at least tied-with-the-most-powerful—iPhone ever. What is it exactly about that claim that makes you so insufferably proud?

No more Jobs

I don’t love Steve Jobs. Of the two CEO’s, I think Tim Cook is probably the nicer person. But I’m not weighing up dinner invitations ; I’m buying a product—and into a brand. And Steve Jobs simply offered more innovation when it came to the former and more inspiration when it came to the latter. And it seems unfair to say, but I can’t see any of my previous points being there, if he was still running the show.

Today, in spite of more human face of the company, I feel like it’s just a fleshy smile on an evil corporation, bent on assimilating you into its ever-expanding ecosystem.

Then again, I’m willingly going along for the ride, and here’s why…

Apple will keep taking my money:

Their products are better without even trying

I’m not great at looking after things, being both clumsy and absent-minded. So any device that’s in my hands every day should have a lifespan of up till next Tuesday. But the iPhones endure. Those smug & shiny steel exteriors actually also keep the bits inside safe for years after they are made. My iPhone 8 was still fine when I upgraded. And as much as I do buy into the idea that Apple embraces disposability, pulling you into the endless churn of annual purchases, the structural integrity seems to argue against that.

The new iPhone also has the best video camera, seriously impressive battery, and a bunch of other things that are better-explained elsewhere. Give it a Google if you like; this is more of a place for meaningless rants than useful tech reviews. We’re moving on to the next gripe:

That damn amazing (damazing?) Apple ecosystem

It’s the poison and the antidote in the same spoon. And I keep taking it. Apple CarPlay is a dream, for crying out loud. And the way the Powerbeats switch seamlessly (well, fairly seamlessly) between computer and phone… it’s infuriatingly convenient. The future will almost certainly include the enslavement of a mindless humanity by an AI(OS) Overlord, ‘Designed by Apple in California’, but by God, it will also be wireless.

What else am I going to do? Choose Samsung?

Nope thanks.

I get it, Samsungs are the better phones. They’re leading the way in terms of high-end (if sometimes, wanky) innovation. But I don’t really trust the quality (based on the last one I owned, which was an early 2000’s flip-phone model, so probably not the fairest thing to judged by, but it worked for like 3 months).

More than anything, I don’t like what Samsung stands for: ostensibly to beat Apple—and nothing else. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when an underdog pisses in the soup of a bigger competitor—but only from the position of rebelling against the competitor’s lofty bullshit. Samsung do it solely because they wish they were in Apple’s place. It would be like revolutionaries overthrowing the king, just so they can install themselves as emperors… which is usually pretty much exactly how it works, but it still sucks. To the guillotine with them all.

Samsung fights for themselves, not consumers, and it shows in their advertising. Their ads don’t authentically reflect people. This Galaxy Gear ad makes it seem like ‘people’ were something they found out about when the hashtag started trending on Twitter. But as heavy-handed and straight-up creepy of a vibe as that was, it still doesn’t piss me off quite so much as this World Cup series from 2014. It’s condescending and could not be more creatively paint-by-numbers if it came with instructions. It makes me angry just imagining about that stupid brief:

• It’s the World Cup this year, so we want to “own football”
• Generate brand love by recruiting all the world’s best players for ‘Team Samsung’
• Show how Samsung products play a vital role in helping the team win!
• We don’t want to alienate consumers, so we can’t show anyone losing
• Wait! Alienate? That’s it! We can beat the aliens and show ‘Team Samsung’ playing a football match to save the world
• Please see our reference
• Don’t worry about delivering a clear plot, smart dialogue, or believable acting; audiences should just be grateful that we’re squeezing so many football stars into an ad

Okay, that last one might not be a verbatim, but I think we can agree that it was an underlying sentiment. They threw all the money and topicality at the screen with zero creativity or human empathy—and then they expected us all to gape in wonder. 2014 was a while ago, but I’ve never really forgiven Samsung for making that.

It all comes down to the ads

It shouldn’t. I should probably be less influenced by everyone’s advertising and base my decisions on something more tangible. But tangible stuff is boring and bad advertising hurts me. After all, I’ve had to make so much of it myself.

Good ads aren’t intangible though. They champion ideals that resonate with people, so that buying the product becomes more than an act of consumerism; it’s an act of self realization. Like any true piece of art, good ads give people the tools for shaping their idea of who they are—and sharing it with the world.

So when you put out an ad about creativity and passion, it helps people to connect with the creative and passionate part of themselves. It excites them and makes them feel empowered that a new phone will help them create more. But when you put out an ad that hijacks trends and force-fits products into beloved celebrities’ hands, it makes people feel irritated at the intrusion. And that a new phone is just a high-tech, shiny obstacle that gets in the way of the things that really matter in life….

Which is arguably the more true of the two things. But who the hell wants to pay smartphone money to feel that?