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Why Apple’s Launch Event Was "Creepy As Hell"
Submitted by Doug Litowitz
Apple's Launch Event Was Creepy As Hell
Yesterday all eyes were on Apple’s product launch.
This is because Apple has become a bellwether for the stock market as a whole.
Legendary short seller Jim Chanos spoke candidly to CNBC, explaining that institutional investors and hedge funds are treating Apple stock as a “hedge fund hotel” where they can buy a single name and ride it upwards as opposed to concocting complex trading systems as they did in the past. Indeed, SEC filings by hedge funds bear this out, and so the product launch attracted a huge audience, generating play-by-play reporting on CNBC and Yahoo Finance.
By the end of trading, Apple stock declined nearly 2%, indicating that investors were not impressed.
To paraphrase poet Horace, the mountain shuddered and gave birth to a ridiculous mouse.
I too watched the entire product launch. The Apple Watch doesn’t do much more than other devices and it looks ugly next to a Rolex; the new iPhone has a few tweaks that don’t amount to much; the new iPad Pro tablet is unwieldy with a humor-inducing stylus; and the Apple TV box is interesting for voice-activation but not that different from what others are already offering in streaming content.
That would be the end of my story.
But I am feel obliged to confess that I found the event creepy as hell from a psychological and cultural perspective.
After two hours of watching their best and brightest, my mind was reeling with associations of cults, lifestyle gurus, and new-age hokum.
The Man At The Helm
Let’s start with the venue, which was the first thing CEO Tim Cook mentioned in his opening remarks. It was held in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Civic Center. Stop right there. What makes Apple so “civic” that it needs a public forum, instead of launching products from its own headquarters?
Apple doesn’t seem particularly “civic” to me, and not to the Senate Subcommittee that has been investigating how they avoid paying taxes while sticking you and me with their tab. They move corporate entities offshore to avoid taxation that would benefit the civic community, and they run sweatshops in China instead of hiring Californians drawn from the, uh, civic community.
So it’s a cheap trick to hold the launch in a civic center named after a man who launched free health clinics and free festivals to celebrate the counterculture against big corporations like, well, Apple. You cannot squeeze out some kind of imprimatur of good citizenship by holding a product launch in a “civic” center. I’m not buying it.
The second problem is that Tim Cook took the stage dressed – or rather underdressed – in blue jeans and an ill-fitting blue shirt with a plain belt. The outfit looked like it was thrown together at the last minute from the clearance rack at Kohl’s. This man is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and runs the most profitable company in the world. I refuse to believe that he is too busy (or too cheap) to stop at Nordstrom Rack and drop $800 on a pair of Armani slacks, a Zegna dress shirt, a Hugo Boss tie, and Allen Edmonds’ belt and shoes.
Cook recently came out as gay, which took courage, and I applaud that. But that only makes his choice of outfit more bizarre. Is he playing against type, to make the point that gays can be slobs too? Or is he saying that gays are harmless and will conform seamlessly? Regardless of his sexuality, there is no reason to dress that way except to brainwash us into thinking that he is so laser-focused on product development that ‘clothes be damned.’ Again, I’m not buying it.
Steve Jobs could get away with wearing a turtleneck sweater because he had a maverick personality to back it up. To put it crudely, when you watched Steve Jobs, you knew that he was an SOB on some level, that he wasn’t there to impress you as much as to impress himself, and he knew that you knew it. He had demons. But sometimes a bad guy is good, so to speak. We all knew that Jobs’ refusal to dress ‘appropriately’ was the flipside of a loner genius with a unique vision who wasn’t going to conform. He was half-crazy but headed to unexplored territory. The first guy who does that is authentic; the second guy is not. CEO Tim Cook is the second guy.
Cook’s persona is creepy, almost mortician-esque. He has an unconvincing forced jubilance, wedded to a lurking, hunchbacked rigidity. His body seems superfluous, a nuisance. The white hair and nerdy glasses round out a kind of depthless, mealy look that betrays a measure of cruelty. His arms hang useless, as if he has to exert every ounce of willpower to raise them when the script calls for mock exultation.
I watched him closely for 30 minutes and then it hit me.
Cook IS a computer.
Or at least, he’s more like a computer than a human.
Intelligent, desexualized, emotionless, disembodied, apolitical, steely, gimmicky, and lacking in charisma. He wants us to become cybernetic, to sync our entire lives to Apple so that we become computers like him. The technology does not have some higher purpose like social justice, or eradication of disease, or ending poverty. The bar is much lower: you can now get the weather and read CNN headlines on your watch – what a great day in Western Civilization! Cook and his ‘team’ (as he refers to the thousands of people who do the actual work under extreme stress) don’t have any appreciation for the downside of technology.
Missing Apple's Man Upstairs
Steve Jobs understood minimalism.
Sometimes less is more. And he had a weird belief system that made him something of a Luddite – he would not let his own kids use the iPad, he forced them to talk face-to-face, and he ridiculed college kids who wanted to go to Silicon Valley just to make money. For all his eccentricities, he knew that there was an outside world and that bigger things were at stake.
Cook is the other extreme – he thinks that technology improves everything, and that every little gimmick is noteworthy. In his world, the Apple Watch and the new iPhone are miraculous contributions because they let you change the channel on the Apple TV without getting off your butt and fetching a remote.
As an illustration of how the Apple Watch changed people’s lives, he tells us how the watch helped a man keep to an exercise schedule. Does he think we’re so dumb we believe this was never possible until the invention of this watch? Also he showed how a doctor could tilt the watch forward and check his daily schedule of rounds; ironically, this task was something that my own father could handle with a small notebook and a pencil in the 1960s, as a doctor at San Francisco General Hospital no less.
The Apple Launch soon became a drone-fest, with Cook introducing another man who was dressed virtually identically to Cook, who introduced another guy dressed the same, and then a woman dressed similarly, then again another guy, like Russian matryorska dolls popping out of each other. They were all in the same uniform, or rather anti-uniform, in some kind of California-forced-conformity/anti-conformity. The last time I saw so many people looking like that, it was the mass suicide at Heaven’s Gate.
They were all being ‘authentic’ by wearing the same thing and telling us that we were ‘revolutionary’ by consuming their products. It’s the same line used by the guy at the mall who sells Anarchy T-shirts for $20. Soon, these words lose their meaning: authentic people dressed alike, humans wearing machines to supposedly make them more human, freedom by buying more products. Do they believe this stuff themselves?
And then there is Siri, who featured prominently in the show.
"SORRY... I DIDN'T GET THAT..."
To all the idiots in the audience, let me remind you that Siri is not a human person.
It is a search engine with a voice. To attribute wisdom to Siri, or to think that Siri is your servant or your friend, is to mistake a THING for a HUMAN. Apple shamelessly encourages this category mistake by having its spokesmen talk to Siri as a person, in the same way that a psychotic ventriloquist converses with his dummy. There is nothing more pathos inducing, more cringe-worthy, than a grown human being asking a machine what is the meaning of life.
I have saved the most disturbing phenomenon for last. The audience spent most of its time looking at computers and smart phones on their laps, and taking pictures of each other and the event. They were present, and yet they weren’t. What a spectacle. Thousands of people celebrating how the computer will set them free and let them connect to anyone and anything, but each lost in their own computer world, incapable of connecting with anything outside themselves.
Mercifully, it ended with Cook giving a shout out to the Apple workers in the audience, who responded like cult members fed sugar and gumballs all week. And then, in a fawning introduction, he introduced the band One Republic, who gave a kind of generic performance that would offend nobody, in a hall that hosted revolutionary bands like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Grateful Dead.
Lest I be called a killjoy, let it be noted that I am typing this on a MacBook Air. I have an iPhone 6, and an iPad Mini. I am an Apple person, as it were. But just because I buy the products doesn’t mean that I buy the mythology surrounding them.
I know that for every connection I make online, there is a connection I lose in the real world. For every song I can record playing guitar and singing into my MacBook, there is a place where I could be playing with real people. And I have been to China and seen the factories, so I know that for every machine I buy, there is someone getting rich, someone getting cheated, someone unhappy, a miserable executive, a ruined life in a dirty dormitory. For everything there is a trade off, that’s life. And there are limits to what technology can do. The Apple Watch can show my appointments today, and the Apple TV can find all the movies starring Jason Bateman, but I am not going to stand up and clap for it, for the simple reason that it cannot help us end violence, or reduce poverty, or provide health care, or spark an economic recovery. I don’t clap for my refrigerator either.
The Apple Launch is a closed circle of fawning sycophants, thrilled with gimmicks, adapted to computers, programmed, a throng of identical authentic individuals chained to their machines and congratulating themselves on being ‘connected,’ led by a human that resembles a robot.
Two hours of watching the Apple Launch actually made the Manson Family seem homey.
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Wonder what product will be called the i-spy.
VMware was the worst. I was the only non-creep in the room, and I am positive the only guy having sex with a woman that you didn't have to put a ZH bag on her head.
Well said sir. I've thought this about most computing for 2 decades now, it's a navel gazing meta industry, it's solving non-issues, problems people without computer don't have.
Jobs never got license plates and zero f's were given when it came to parking his SL
http://s10.postimg.org/53whjnr09/steve3.jpg
Who put this dork in charge? The Chinese?
He's made the OS more complex to use. You have to scrool through more and more to find the app you want to use. He's a token minority hire for the LGBT community.
Many of the tax evasion structures AAPL uses were set up under Jobs. The NSA also had a powerpoint (leaked by Snowden) showing their appreciation for what Jobs did for them.Which must be to sell out AAPL's customers' data.So this writer loses all credibility bashing only Cook. Both Jobs and Cook suck.Also how hard is it to become ultra wealthy when your partner is a fascist government. Cue Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin. And remember those last two have a company called Google (motto= "Don't be evil" with evil undefined) and Zuckerberg was caught on TV wearing his hoodie with the Illuminati design on the inside.
I'd rather clap for and talk to a machine than most human beings. Most human beings are useless to me and bore me beyond belief or lower my intelligence because they're not that intelligent. I gather this writer is one of those human lovers and probably mocks people who love animals/pets and talk to them. This guy would probably love it if the world was full of nothing but humans who are uninteresting and full of fluff.This is of course fine and my motto is to each their own. For me, give me some generally intelligent a.i and robots and I'll be happier than having to talk to your average homo sapien.
Having said that, I do agree with a lot of what he says in the article.
Wow! Powerful prose there, Lore Gnum.
Jesus. Slow news day Tylers?
did anyone else see the story about the femmibloggers getting out their torches/pitchforks over the adobe guy photoshopping a smile onto the picture of a woman's face?
I swear twitter has got to be an elaborate prank to pass the turing test by lowering the bar to passing for human...
I went fully android on samsumg, the phone, the tablet..
And believe me, my entire house, anything electronic is connected to it.
You come in my driveway... I SEE YOU!
You come near my door.... I SEE YOU!
You walk in every room downstairs... I SEE YOU!
You walk in my garden.... I SEE YOU!
You come near my safe... I SEE YOU!
You open my safe... I see you and I'll kill you!
I can track my kids, my wife, everybody where they are, where they've been, this shit is the bomb!
All the radio's in the house, my pool, my destops, office, everything can be operated from every place in the world.
This shit is so wonderfull, it's just crazy!
And THEY SEE YOU TOO!!!
Crazy like a fox.
Foxes are still using Windows 7
Stop Windows Nagging and Spying. Works with Windows 7 through 10 The Fox and the HunterDo you get swim in the pool anymore? or busy watching everthing thing,
ps I upvoted you, well said
....,ahhh the birthplace of skynet.
The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around. What do you see. Business men, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so innerd, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
What a pathetic article by this 'author'. So pathatic no wonder he choose not to reval his real name.
Please stick to market news and not nerd talk. Who gives a hell what Tim Cook wore? Why should I waste my time listening to your garbage about fashion? You say it was a pathetic showing yet you own an iPhone6? Talk about gimmicks.
If you are true Apple hater go ahead and be a man about it. If you truly believe what you wrote you would man up and take a stand and boycott Apple products. But no. You still use the iPhone6 and iPad Air.
Absolutely. Now, I agree with what the author is trying to convey and don't buy into the hype of any of this bullshit either.....but....
He mentioned his father being a doctor at a SF hospital, and so he is more than likely local to the area.That being said, a lot of this seems like nerd envy on the part of the author in that he isnt part of the "scene" and therefore denigrates it to make himself feel better. That's the feeling I get when I read this anyway.
That or he just prefers Jobs brand of propaganda and doesn't like the new guy.
"By the end of trading, Apple stock declined nearly 2%, indicating that investors were not impressed." Author
And the stock is up more than 2% today. Very ignorant of the author to think short term daily moves have anything to do with what investors think of the new products.
This is ZH most of thje users on here had to get someone younger in their family to turn on their computer.
LOL, so true
A stock that falls 2% yesterday and gains 2% today in a repeating manner will eventually decline to ZERO.
Or has your precious idevice not figured that out yet?
When your whole brand is based on NOVELTY, you beter stay novel. We are at the point of diminishing novelty.
When I saw that 3D touch feature I couldnt tell if it was a joke or not (or not).
Yes.
Having the most advanced smartphone CPU is novel.
Having the best camera on a smartphone is novel.
having world class services like App Store, iTunes, TouchID, ApplePay, is novel.
Having 98% customer satisfaction is novel.
Being able to get your phone serviced by a real person instead of shipping it to an unknown factory is novel.
Believe what you want.
I take it youre a Nokia guy then?
Nokia? Their chipset is out of date. Their operating system is horrible.
There is a reason why iPhones sell for $650-$950.
There the best. Deal with it.
You can bash him and them and it all you want. But they do make great products which sell and perform.
Do think the watch is a waste. Us older baby boomers cannot even read the dial on the damn thing. And many of us stopped wearing watches the day we stopped working full time.
But have been using Apple products for 20+ years. No complaints.
I like their hardware but you pay over the odds for it. And I hate being crammed into their proprietary universe. Give me a copper cradle, you can keep your gilded cage.
You get what you pay for.
You want quality? You gotta pay. Its the same thing with everything.
Go buy a cheap Android phone for $300. But guess what? After 2 years the thing is WORTHLESS.
Buy an iPhone for $650 but after 2 years you can sell it for $300. So you save $50 for a inferior Android phone. If you are hardup for cash I guess that $50 is a big deal.
Hmm. So if I buy an Android phone for $300 and after 2 years it's "worthless", I've lost $300.
But if I pay $650 I can get an iPhone and sell it two years later for $300, thereby losing $350.
But somehow I've made a smart financial decision by buying the Apple? So, what, sure there's a unit loss, but we're going to make it up on volume?
Keep it up slick, this is getting amusing.
Yes you pay $50 more for 2 years. But those 2 years you have a far superior product.
One of these posters is not like the others.
I think she was re-directed from HuffPo or Bloomberg.com when her Macbook was infected with some sort of root kit. Which one of you non=apple worshipping illeterate non apple using (because apple users know all PC users are idiots and know nothing about IT in general) fuckers messed up her laptop and brought her here?
Fess up, fix her computer and get her the hell out of here before she really pisses somebody off.
Who cares what Cook was wearing.
He was hand picked by Jobs.
One thing this author missed was the REAL purpose of Siri...It's a listening device.
Welcome the stealth auditory peeping Tom...er uh Tim.
Even more amusing, ask Seerie a generic health question & watch the stats of your last physical pop up in spite of HIPAA.
Courtesy Jonathon Booosh...CEO Athena healthcare software.
I don't buy Apple products for the simple reason of how restricitve they are. Compare an Apple Iphone to an HTC and you will see what I mean. In addition the Apple watch is UGLY. Whoever would want to wear one of those in place of a real watch has no taste. The problem is people get sucked into whatever is trendy like flies without thinking. Just because something new comes out doesn't mean its the best thing ever. Another great exmaple: Kindle replacing books. Now that is a sad thing to think about.
Try taking Rothbard's History of Economic Thought on holiday (or some similar 1200 page tome) and you'll get what Kindles are all about.
I will check it out, thank you.
But I agree, even with a fancy leather cover, a Kindle can't match the satisfying feel of a real book... but that's because a Kindle is less of a book and more like a library :-)
There is nothing like opening a new book and hearing the crack of the spine and the smell of paper and ink. The weight of it in your hands, and the new knowledge that is behind each turn of the page. Being able to measure your progress as it starts out thick in your right hand and gets progressively thinner and thinner.
I don't get the appeal of digital "books" either. Sad indeed.
Upvote. And your book doesn't need a goddamn batter charger or AC current.
Perfect TEOTWAWKI entertainment.
HTC runs Android which is open to virus attacks
Thta may be true, but I haven't encountered that and have been using the android system based phones for years now. To be honest I think Samsung makes one of the best phones out there. But they are expensive & cell phones are a waste of money as it is. 2-3 years and stuff starts breaking.
My 2005 model Nokia Candybar trackphone just gets 'er done.
Talk, text, $10 per month. And maybe recharge it 3x per month, if I get 'round to it.
HTC runs Android which is open to virus attacks. Also good luck on getting software updates after 18 months. HTC has no control of the OS, you are at Google's mercy. Good luck
Yeah, well good luck replacing the battery in your iPhone, or using an off-the-shelf USB charger.
Apple are just another company in a long line of abusive computer manufacturers who deliberately subvert industry-wide standards so they can lock their hapless users into proprietary, overpriced "solutions".
I'll take my Samsung Galaxy 5 over an iPhone any day of the week. I can upload hacked OSes, all sorts of freeware to access the underlying *nix kernel, you name it. If the battery dies I can replace it. I can plug standard USB peripherals into it. I had an iPhone and it sucked donkey balls, but for a guy like you I'm guessing that's another "feature." :-)
It made me feel Creepy just Reading about all this Trendy Shit. Now I've gotta go take a Shower and Re-read The Electric Koolaid Acid Test!
Idildo! Cook should have planty experience in that thingy?!
You meant ibuttplug
Yeah, it pretty much does.
Oh, Tim Cook's gay? That explains what all the rainbow colour scheme is all about.
Some people here are young enough to not remember when the Apple "apple logo" was rainbow-colored, rather than the white it is today. It was that way a long time before the LGBT community co-opted the "rainbow" thing the same way they co-opted an entire word ("gay") for their exclusive use. I think the Apple logo became white at least in part because "rainbow" had become so over-loaded a theme. But yes, Tim bringing back the "rainbow" thing is an interesting turn, and I'm sure he's doing for the reason you alude.
We are way down the rabbit hole now. I try to be amused and still think that is the best defense.
"I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused...."
FUCK iCrapple! Their products are shit.
Thank you for your intelligent reply
1. Voting for first person to question their tax policies.
2. Being gay is more chic than not. He is asexual, like a computer.
3. Can this country get any softer?
"Cook recently came out as gay, which took courage, and I applaud that"
What a seriously stupid fucking comment! Who gives a shit?
By the way that took no "courage" another over used word who's users don't know it's meaning.
Now...fuck off!
Allen Edmonds shoes are about all that interested me with this article.
I usually don't watch the latest and greatest iShit seminars, but the amalgamation of latest iCrap was pretty boring.
The problem all tech companies have going forward are diminished returns on what those products can do over previous products. I currently run windows 7 on my 4 year old tower,won't be upgrading anytime soon. Currently have an Samsung Galaxy s5 won't be upgrading that anytime soon. Have a LED and a LCD TV that until they shit the bed won't be getting a 4k TV, and by that time they'll probably cost $500 to replace, my 8 year old LCD TV. Don't need an iPad, have a smartphone. Don't need a iPod have a smartphone.
How much better can the technology get before it hits its glass ceiling? Pretty sure its almost there. Everything is redundant. Don't even get me started on Apple watch or the $99 stylus.
Technology has become the new and improved shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream of the day. Slightly better (still think windows XP was their best OS) but not ground breaking stuff. Wake me up when holographic technology becomes the norm until then slightly faster or shinier isn't going to do it for me.
I don't know, I like my Haswell 5960 and DDR4. Good luck with your windows 7.
Wrong.
Computing devices will never be a commodity.
Individual form factors will (PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet)
The new form factors will always command a premium.
Right now that form factor is tablets and smartphones. When that becomes a commodity the industry will move on to the next form factor which is probabily wearables. And then wearables will command higher prices.
Technology keeps going forward.
exatly. there is no "wake up" in their product line for 2015/16. this is not a stock that should be soaring into the stratosphere.
hope this cook cock sucker is on al ciada's hit list..and they act soon. come on ISIS take him out.
ZH libertarianism at its finest
Shit rolls downhill.
I will retain the high ground and continue avoiding Apple products like the plague.
boy, that's good writing.
i wait for apple to crash like the second coming
I just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this
Who cares what this author likes or dislikes? Insecurity is such an unattractive trait in men.
The closet queer-as-ultimate-victim meme has well passed its sell-by date...
Its pretty darn simple. Jobs was an anomaly as a human an inventor and a businessman. To expect another Jobs to surface is very very unlikely and its equally very certain that his successor, cook, is not another anomaly. And, there is some noteworthy history that supports this, reference Jobs departure from Apple in the 90’s, I believe it was, and the impact to Apple back then. So, without Jobs’s one-of-a-kind touch of genius Apple will likely wallow as a technology titan, for now, and the best the likes of cook and company can do is to hold market share and margins and maybe win a couple runs with an occasional innovation. As far as labeling this man as courageous for being a homosexual is disheartening to read. He’s an unattractive middle age geek of a man that dresses poorly and someone willingly engages in sodomy with this creature. That’s not courageous. Storming the beaches of Normandy is courageous…I really hope that society can get beyond this bizarre fixation with gays.
Its been 5 years since Jobs died.
And Apple is making more profits than ever, their global reach is more poweful than ever, their stock is up 125% since then.
If Apple was going to crash without Jobs it would have happenned years ago. Revenue would have slowed down. But its the exact opposite. Revenue is up over 100% since Jobs death.
Stop confusing monetary policy with anything else.
If I thought I knew or could know that Apple will crash I'd be doing something about it. I think its an enormous company that is too far entrenched to crash anytime soon, but, who knows. I do think that Jobs's genius has survived long after his demise. He innovated things like the iPhone and iPad etc and its that vision and innovation that has propelled the profitability and revenue you speak of. The question is how long will that half-life last, because, what I am trying to say is that you can't expect that level of innovation out of Apple going forward...not without its maverick. And, again, it is the innovation which drives the valuation. So, we'll see. As I stated, I think they'll hold onto market share and margins and occasionally they'll make a win or two from something original. But don’t count on Jobs’s type innovation that was rare.
wow - you threw me for a loop with that comment. that LONG since Jobs died? actually it's coming up on 4 years since his death. But it's much longer than I realized. good point.
APPLE is entrenched because they have captured a whole market sector. They won't lose this overnight. But take a look at their product showing. There is nothing awe-inspiring in any of this stuff. Why do I need the watch that tells me the weather? Why do I need one more iPhone that is a re-hash of gimmicks from all the old iPhones?
Can APPLE really come out with entirely new products that change the market and the future. This year, the answer is NO. If they keep this up ... they will decline.
Leave it to a sodomite to get excited about a glorified $90 pencil!
[Cook recently came out as gay, which took courage, and I applaud that.]
Question: Does it take more courage to allow foreign objects to be shoved up your ass or to admit it?
...very nice elegant and sophisticated writing, and fun to read.
kudos to you Doug.
« Cook recently came out as gay, which took courage, and I applaud that »
Sorry to be a bit hors sujet, but I still do not understand why - specially nowadays - when one is coming out about being gay it has to be considered as an act of courage...
(actually, stating that you are straight may one day be more courageous, in this weird wide world)
Same for being proud of being gay : Don't understand the concept...
How can you be proud of something you did not achieve by yourself, something you do not control at all ?
I'm not proud because I'm a lefty (10% of the world populace).
Not even since my left handed grand-father told me that in the good ol' days, his parents attached his left hand in his back, at home, to force him to write with the right hand (because even among well educated people in the early 20th century, the left side of the body, and therefore the left hand, where considered evil. Yes evil...).
Even though they look pretty cool, I'm not proud because I carry a gene mutation (HERC2 gene in case you wonder...) that gave me blue eyes, no.
Because I'm not responsible for having blue eyes.
That being said, I do thank my mum for that !
And how ridiculous would that be if I suddenly decided to share with all my friends and family my pride to be straight. Not responsible either... So no reason to brag about it.
So be gay or whatever you wanna be, don't care, but please cut the pride part and the « Oh that was so courageous from him to bla bla bla ».
Sooo boring, sooo outdated, sooo 20th century...
I'm so proud to be straight....why just last week I masturbated to straight porn. Who wouldn't be proud of that?
/Sarc off
wow...what has become of this culture.
Who the fuck cares? I never mt a CEO I liked or thought was good looking or even very human. Dumb article.
Who wants a stylus?
https://i.imgur.com/FTBUEXF.png
I share a lot of Doug's feeling but I just don't like Cook. By comparison Doug is fawning over the guy.
Anyone that fits comfortably into a sentence with the pope and algore is a loser.
CONGRATULATIONS Doug Litowitz. An excellent piece of writing!!
This is culture in the same way what you smell near a dogfood factory is perfume.
Refrigerators are definitely clap- worthy ;) If you disagree, try living without one.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple Launches are turning into cult affairs. They are probably trying to stick to the prior routine, without really understanding the reasons behind it.
A company without the founder is just not the same. It might still be good, or even great in some ways, but it won't be the same.
Apple still does things much better than most - except for those awful cartoonish icons and colors.
Tim Cock
Apple is for faggots but not every faggot is gay.
So, basically, Apple will never be the same without Jobs. The magic is gone, and the author is apparently disappointed that technology is not more than it is. That there is no homey feeling at the Apple launch (realy, was there ever?). It was a launch of new products--get over it.
I love the pencil. Hey! anyone see my i-pencil?
Ah, I just saw one in the parking lot all smashed to hell.
Jobs had tons and tons of charm, whenever he wanted to.
Cook, who can make the trains run on time, is extremely creepy.
Apple's product design and marketing efforts are just falling apart, as ten seconds spent on their launch page will tell you.
Beautiful article.....right on the money
Fuck him and apple.
Icult
Icrap
Story sucked so did the "What was it anyway?" A dog and pony show with all dogs subscription included of course. You like that Hobson choice on voting? Look familiar?
exactly.. Apple was Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. With both them gone, Apple is simply a fantasy. The product release game is utterly hilarious. The followers, worshipers, are all dimwits with a very shallow understanding of tech. I'll bet you 99% of them cannot write 20 lines of code which works. This outfit will be gone in less than 5 years. What is very likely to survive is their huge cash pile. But their tech? It will be crapola. Look at IBM. They were once the greatest tech company. They had a huge cash pile, and it survives to this day. But as a tech company? IBM sux. They have evolved into a services company. They don't invent squat any more. Same with Microsoft. Once gates retired, he handed it off to baldmer. What a laugh that jerk was. When Seymour Cray left CRI, the new CEO was gamuchi. Another idiot. Result: Cray Research withered. The same will also happen to Apple. You can take that to the bank.
HP ... Carly Fiorina
It is a surreal event. Every year they announce the same, but slightly improved product and act like they've just decoded the human genome. It is creepy how they all try to dress in the Steve Jobs way and even try to act and speak like him. None of them are Steve Jobs.
Yeah, as long as Apple fanboys have the cash they just keep buying more and more every year. It is a cult.
"my mind was reeling with associations of cults, lifestyle gurus, and new-age hokum."
charles manson would approve....
Well, it looks like the apple fanboys don't have the cash any longer because for the first time ever, apple is looking to finance the iphones directly.
the only Apple dip I'm buying is the one covered in caramel - Halloween season incoming.
I thought Creepy as Hell was the new black?
Am I wrong?
"Hellish Lives Matter"
You put into words what I felt but could'nt quite express, after watching The Event.
"lurking, hunchbacked rigidity" says it all about tim cook...you would stand like that if you had a you know a big thing up the you iknow what i mean. hard to stand up straight when you have been rammed you know up the you know all night. just saying.....
The concept that taxes to "help communities" is laughable and naive. Taxes go to help politicians, help their freinds, and punish their enemies. People have to be gullible to pay money to the government money men on purpose. If governments are so charitable and great, cut them an extra check this month. Oh, you know they aren't, and you wont' cut them a check. See, you knew this already.
Although that was to miss the point; you do make a valid point. Like throwing money at schools wil make them better or making kids trow away vegetables and go hungry will improve health. Calipornia.
I have posted this here before and now once again. Apple will go the way of Nokia if it continues on the current path.
And yes, the entire performance was poor. From Tim Cook who is about as likeable as a proctologist to
the forced, contrived, claps and shouts...Apple TV has NETFLEX! HBO! Wow, who could have imagined!
Gay Timmy was installed to manage their pile of cash until they can find another Steve Jobs like visionary. Ain't going to happen. The next visionary will be out creating the replacement for Apple. The Nokia analogy is spot on.
Apple as a brand has creeped me out since the first Macs, but I sure am sorry I didn't buy a lot of stock.
Oh look! Another anti-Apple article! ZH had jumped the Shark again...
Pathetic... Pls go back to real economic trends you actually understand.
Seriously....troll.
Seriously... moron
Of course, it is viable to note that as a gay man, and whether he is conscious of it or not, Cook discriminates against women. Gay men by their very choice, elminate women from the most basic of equations: man + woman = life
Recently there was an article noting that 2% of the population being gay men rounded out to around 6 Million gay men. Of those the CDC is saying there are 1.2 Million with Aids. Figure out that percentage and you can see that is a bit frightening especially with all those accompanying disease like tuberculosis, fungus diseases, and those bouts of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea and syphllis, particularly the very nasty ocular syphllis showing up in San Francisco.
Regardless, Cook and Apple are bereft of women in top positions...out of 18 they show on their executive profiles page, *https://www.apple.com/in/pr/bios/* only three are women and all three of those are in the women's barrio: retail and human resources and environment/social initiatives.
Apple..Up Your Game...but then gay guys, as noted, really don't like being around women; women remind them they are not women. Cha!
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen..... Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. - Romans 1:18-32 (describes in detail how we got to where we are, 1) sexual revolution 50's&60's 2) Homosexual revolution 70's-90's & 3) God lets us go our own way - down hill, thus the fall in moral values leads to the sewer
I can buy 1000 pencils for the price of an iPencil.
I can buy 1000 takes-a-lickin'-and-keeps-on-tickin' Timex watches for the price of an iWatch.
So, technological solutions to problems that don't exist that are overpriced by a factor of 1000 seems to be CEO sassy pants' iStrategy.
But they can't do it without a legion of iTards willing to pay the price and defend their choice.
this too.....tops out.
Homosexual left extremist liberals motto; terrorists: "It is good for all of you; just don't impose it on us...we'll do the imposing."
"It’s the same line used by the guy at the mall who sells Anarchy T-shirts for $20. Soon, these words lose their meaning: authentic people dressed alike, humans wearing machines to supposedly make them more human, freedom by buying more products. Do they believe this stuff themselves?It’s the same line used by the guy at the mall who sells Anarchy T-shirts for $20. Soon, these words lose their meaning: authentic people dressed alike, humans wearing machines to supposedly make them more human, freedom by buying more products. Do they believe this stuff themselves?"
Hey, just wanted to say this is brilliant. Talk about hitting the nail on the head. I wanted to write a whole long comment, but this totally sums it up. This is the kind of stuff I still read ZH for, in spite of the jew haters and other lepers in the comments section.
Funny thing is that I thought the "3D Touch" screen on the iPhone 6s was revolutinary for smartphones. One of the biggest problems for years with smartphone and tablets has been accidental slight touching doing something you didn't expect. I guess most people watching the launch just missed that gem.
More info here http://gizmodo.com/the-iphones-new-3d-touch-is-the-future-of-user-intera...
Don't Touch me There.
Humanity is fucked up.
How did you reach that conclusion? Looked into the mirror?
"Cook recently came out as gay, which took courage, and I applaud that."
Bullshit. Courage is admitting you are man married to the same woman for 30 years and you've never strayed.
When the Apple BoD finally figures out Cook isn't Jobs and fires him, he'll run around complaining he was let go because he's gay, ala Michael Sam who was all hype.
It's always painful and creepy to watch an old and unhip person trying to be hip.
It sounds like that old Luddite Kunstler, who hates everyone and everything, is posting under a new name.
"Yeah, I know I look like a prison warden - ever been to Foxconn"?
Apple is creepy.
Technology is creepy.
The phones and internet are creepy.
All the internet did for me is that I learned that Jews run the world and there is little chance of changing that until
they implode like the others have.
All technology does is expose the ignorant.....