I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Willam Shakespeare
No, I’ve come to praise Apple, not to bury it.
Apple enriched my past. The Apple ][ and the Mac were gateways to a new world. However, computers and electronic gadgets during those years, for me, served specific purposes but weren’t an inescapable part of daily life. I used my Mac for classwork. I had a TV and VCR for entertainment. My Walkman and, later, Discman provided a soundtrack to whatever I was doing. Losing any of those, though, would have been inconvenient but not catastrophic.
I think Apple will continue to enrich my life, but in different ways than before. Apple’s main product—the iPhone—has allowed Apple to reach the goal of the original Macintosh team: to make an appliance that people use every day without really thinking about it. My iPhone is a multi-tool that plays a key role in my professional and personal lives. Instead of making certain tasks, such as writing a term paper, more efficient, the iPhone and, to a smaller extent, the other Apple products I own, are integrated into pretty much everything I do.
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy
Apple makes me happy when I’m getting something done and its technology fades into the background. That’s what “it just works” means to me. Apple makes me unhappy when form and function are not balanced. There seem to be more and more examples of this recently (see: butterfly keyboard, MagSafe charging on the Mac removed for awhile, macOS Liquid Glass) but I also think human memory tends to make the past seem better than it really was. After all, living with an ever growing store of negative experiences isn’t very nice, right?
He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
George Orwell
Unfortunately, Apple often embodies “Big Brother” culture, despite its most famous advertisement. It is extremely secretive, isolates and separates its corporate workers from each other, often suffers not-invented-here syndrome, and not infrequently seems to take its customers for granted. I don’t feel, however, that using Apple products requires a “true believer” or “sycophantic” attitude. I have no interest in being an influencer and my living does not depend on remaining in Apple’s good graces. So as long as the benefits of, say, my Mac, outweigh the pain points, I will continue using Macs. But given Apple’s position as one of the largest and wealthiest companies on the planet with little risk of going out of business, I no longer feel there’s much need to evangelize or sacrifice on Apple’s behalf. In other words, Apple stuff has gone from being a personal passion to more of a utilitarian thing for me.
And in the end, the love you take/Is equal to the love you make
The Beatles
Adam challenged each of us to “think about which lessons from the past are worth carrying forward”. I chose the lyric above because it encapsulates how I think we should treat each other on TBT and because the Beatles have been woven into everything Apple from the very beginning.
So, my personal guideposts on TBT are, hopefully, to:
- Let people discover for themselves how best to use technology. I don’t want to judge anybody on the basis of their using an app, a service, or a device just because I don’t use something myself.
- Keep in mind that humans have always been able to adjust and adapt to new things throughout history.
- Encourage and support people who have questions or are troubleshooting.
- Not view everything Apple does through a cynical lens.
- Not demonize individuals at Apple for its faults and failures.
- Remember words matter in online forums. Questioning people’s intelligence, using inflammatory or politically charged language to label actions taken by Apple and other organizations, and dismissive attitudes drive people apart, not together.
This exactly. If all we’d be left with were sycophants offering their predictable phony praises for Apple or if that were the only thing Apple heard, we’d be in a bad place. The community needs people who are engaged and invested, but still independent enough to call a spade a spade. Apple needs to hear from those users that want them to strive for better. And that comes with pointing out when they stray, even if that’s not always comfortable. But IMHO a small price to pay if it ultimately leads to a better Apple, a better Mac, or a better user experience. Ideally, all of that will come out of their next 50 years! 