Ludic Dreams

**Update**
Below I lambaste a retail situation, little did I know that Jezebel has a whole series of these stories seen here, called “I work retail.” Read on.

Many people know I work retail, which….. well, it kinda explains things. I work a sorta combination of Customer Service and Tech support, which is essentially aimed squarely at my sanity, driving ever forward to shatter what little I have left. Still, I love my job- if I did not, I wouldn’t stay there a second longer.

Many other people also know I have a certain distaste for Apple products. My arguments have evolved somewhat, gaining some more merit, and in my head I no longer assume that I am simply speaking out of my ass. I have a number of just arguments, but today, I’d like to look at their image in relation to their clients.

Namely; their whole shit is based on being elitist assholes.

Take a look at exhibit A. Read the story, and yes, this particular employee had problems in his life. But check this little quote:

Apple’s supposed to be about customer service, yet they seemed to like he was acting like an a-hole, he said. That pissed him off even more. The hypocrisy. They wanted him to act cool, kind of above it all, it was part of the image. But not crossing the line (whevever it was that week), to the point of terrorizing the customers.

This touches at the core of my thoughts on apple. Apple is a Draconian Dictatorship, who only survives in the minimum. It’s strength is that it is not strong and not popular. People perceive Apple as a godsend from a problem-filled windows world. However, what we find is a perfectly closed system. You go to one store ( although they are apparently getting bold), which sells one OS, controlled by one guy. Lets take a thought experiment and look at it from the opposite; Windows has the diminutive market share, and Mac owns the retail locations. Can Apple sustain that kind of strength? Most likely not, they would certainly license OSX to various manufacturers, which give all sorts differing motherboards, processors, graphics cards…. which creates a fundamentally confused and unavoidably buggy operating system.

The reason macs seem good is because the opposition seems bad. They are the essential underdog, and though their products are worthwhile, their entire business model seems based on being a minority, being an elitist, being an individual… that has one OS, identical machines, and one store to go to, with one attitude.

Think different…. Just like everyone else?

On an odd note, does this make me some sort of reverse trend-follower? Windows is the ruling operating system, ‘hipsters’* likes this quirky abomination, so therefore I am, to quote south park, “being such a non-conformist, I am not going to conform with the rest of you” and purchase windows?

Regardless; retail is a destructive system, if for no other reason than that it takes sleep-deprived college students and makes them blog about this shit late at night.

Sigh-and-a-half.

-F9

* I have brought up with a few colleagues what we call the Hipster paradox, or perhaps the hipster bubble: People aged 18-26 essentially consume what is cool, but it is only cool because they consume it. This bubble is popped on occasion by disruptive trends, with a foundation of elitism. Namely, the Hipsters are ‘ too good’ to be hipsters. These are the lifeblood of Apple, with the occasional Tangents.