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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Sure, but you didn't have people buying Apple products because Apple was signaling how much they loved gay people. People were buying Apple products because they liked what they were buying.

They liked what they were buying in large part because of the image of the product, not some genuinely enlightened analysis of its raw utility. If you slapped an Android logo on an iPhone with iOS modified to change all of the logos to Android's, they'd like it a lot less. And wokeness is a large part of that image.

I don't completely disagree, I'm sure if Apple had a partnership with Google where they released a new Google Pixel but it had all its logos changed to Apple, it'd sell like hotcakes. But as a reverse thought experiment, if Google released two phones, one that's a normal Pixel, and one that's an iPhone with the Android logo on it, you'd still see a lot of people preferring the iPhone version.

I'm really not one to argue the iPhone advantages, I'm not that into phones and I strongly prefer Android myself in any case, but it should be obvious some people genuinely enjoy the iPhone for itself, not just for signaling purposes.

should be obvious some people genuinely enjoy the iPhone for itself

But do they really enjoy the unique features of it or simply what's common to every smartphone (and yes admittedly Apple pioneered a lot UX-wise here)? In a world where only Androids existed, would they really be deprived of much actual functionality?

I have no doubt they enjoy it for itself. To go back to the debate that took this place by storm a bit ago, surely people who drink $2000 wine enjoy it for itself. The question is how much they enjoy it more than any wine beyond the prestige signaling.

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