How Tied to Apple Is Your Sense of Self?

apple-identity

Among my friends and family, I am The Apple Guy. More so even than those who work as professional film and television editors, and do things with Macs I could only hope to lamely emulate in lowly iMovie. So how did a brand whose products I use become so inextricably tied up in who I am as a person, and what are the consequences of that link?

It’s no coincidence that I’m thinking about this the week following Macworld, arguably one of the Apple faithful’s most important annual pilgrimages. While I’ve yet to go myself, both Weldon and Dave are regular attendees who speak about the event with something approaching reverence. Even now that Apple no longer graces the Macworld floor with its presence (arguably limiting the show’s newsworthiness), early estimates put show attendance for 2011 at as much as 25,000. It’s hard to imagine a similar turnout at, say, an HP-focused convention where HP wasn’t in attendance.

Macworld isn’t the only recent development that sparked this introspection. CNET today has a great interview with Mike Daisey, a devoted Apple fan and theatre geek who actually visited Foxconn facilities in Shenzhen, China to see where the products he loves are made. Daisey has just started a one-man show called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” in which he compares his choice of operating system to a religious choice. And if you’ve seen the ardent defense mounted by Apple apologists (myself sometimes included) when their brand is besmirched, you have to admit the comparison is apt.

For me, Apple is so closely tied up in who I am partly because its products seemed to make my life so much easier once I switched from Windows-based devices, and partly because evangelizing the adoption of Macs and iDevices among my friends has left me feeling that I have a personal stake in the reputation of the company behind them. If Apple’s image suffers, so too does my own. After all, what happens to The Apple Guy when everyone’s using Android devices?

Apple is also a company that makes products designed to breed loyalty. After half a year with an iPad, I recently tried switching to a Galaxy Tab, which is a fine device by most accounts, including those of my colleagues. As Kevin noted, I returned my Tab soon after purchase, citing the somewhat ambiguous complaint that I found myself wishing it was an iPad. If I had to articulate, I’d say that feeling stemmed from relatively insignificant isolated user experience differences that, taken together, I was unwilling to learn to overcome after years of getting to know and love iOS.

Motorola just introduced a new promotional spot for its Android-powered Xoom tablet in time for the Superbowl. In it, the company obliquely compares Apple to Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, which ironically takes a page out of Apple’s own playbook. Granted, it’s a hyperbolic comparison, but isn’t my knee-jerk urge to call it baseless, ridiculous and uniformed before I’d even seen it at least somewhat indicative that it isn’t totally off the mark?

As a journalist, I’m able to put aside my fandom and think critically about the decisions of Apple and its competitors. But as a user and consumer, it’s much harder to separate myself from the products I use and live with every day. But is that something to be worried about, or just a testament to the quality of the products Apple creates?

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