[leocgcd]

Charismatic founders are PR lol. Steve Jobs was a market strategist.

>To be tech was to stand against the corporate types who milked people for money without offering real value.

Positioning yourself as punk, as pro-consumer, as an alternative to the corporate hegemony... This was all carefully developed by marketers and brand strategists to grow their vision of selling tech. You are not immune to propaganda, it was not some granola revolution that gave the people iPhones. And that's ok! It's ok to admit that marketing is an important force that should be leveraged for change and innovation.

[keiferski]

I think the single best argument against this viewpoint is to just look outside. People are obsessed with iPhones because they're a superior product, not because they were sucked into a PR campaign filled with Justin Long ads.

[leocgcd]

Thinking that TV spots are the limits of brand strategy is just kind of naive.

You think iPhones are a superior product... Why? Other phones have more RAM, better screens, more capable OS. An iPhone is designed in response to market demands-- it is the vision of Apple to anticipate what users will want, and to show users what phones can be.

So many Apple billboards around New York show kids or families, the "memories" function of the iOS Photos app is designed to pull from forgotten pictures and tug on your heartstrings. Part of this is Apple marketing responding to a demographic of tech-consuming people becoming parents or grandparents... But it is also Apple showing us what tech is good for. It's a vision of compassionate technology that will hopefully sell more iPhones while also structuring the narrative of what an iPhone is. An iPhone is a superior product not because it has the best tech specs or the best combination of components. An iPhone is the superior product because the future of technology can be compassionate, and Apple wants to position themselves there. This is a marketing strategy, and it is likely why you associate iPhones with quality and superiority.

We cannot immediately see all possible uses and promises of technology, no matter how tech-literate we think we are. It takes institutional vision (in many cases a function of market/brand strategy) to figure out what makes a good product and how we can show people that our product fulfills that idea.

[lucianbr]

What I can see by just loooking outside is that people are obsessed with iPhones. Why they are obsessed is definitely not obvious at a glance. Could be quality, could be PR, could be something else.

You just think your opinion of something is the obvious truth and anyone not seeing it is blind.