Apple's strategic gouging for a new century

I never dreamed anyone would have the chutzpah to sell a product so shoddy that it has proven repeatedly it cannot last more than two years. I never dreamed that anyone would have the chutzpah to charge $85 to replace the product (a power cord/adapter). But then, I lack the vision that made Steve Jobs the quasi-supernatural figure he is today.

The day I bought my Macbook laptop computer, I saw how the power cord pinched and bent where it met the plug, and I thought no way that thing will last. Sure enough, it frayed and broke after less than two years of not especially intensive use. (I loved the Apple store employee's — or does Apple call them partners or associates? — explanation that I would not have had to pay $85 for a $15 adapter if I had paid $249 for an AppleCare protection plan. Technology, as I wrote at the time, was not the only area where Jobs was a genius.) And now, a year and a half later, the replacement cord has gone on the fritz.

Apple's strategy is brilliant, really. Make and sell a good but expensive product, and you can afford to gouge the customer on the vital accessories. In fact, it would be irresponsible to the shareholders to do anything less. After all, no one is going to toss out a $1,500 computer because of a shitty power cord.

Jobs once said the world is full of things invented by people no smarter than you yourself. He was wrong about that. Jobs was much smarter than most people, and not just for the reasons his hagiographers would like the world to believe.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014 

Euphemisms for the sacred name

Pious Jews will not pronounce the names of God. I have read, too, that the word bruin originated as a euphemism for bear, substituting a quality (the color brown) for the whole, whose name was too fearsome to be uttered. Nor, I learned this evening, will an Apple store employee utter the name of Steve Jobs.

I visited the store because my computer's flimsy power adapter had predictably cracked, frayed, and stopped working after less than two years, and I had to pay eighty-five dollars for a replacement. (Apple would have replaced the adapter free — had I paid $249 for an AppleCare protection plan. Technology is not the only area in which Jobs was a genius.)

This led to a civil discussion with the clerk who sold me the adapter. I pointed out what a smart business practice it was to sell shoddy — and proprietary — but necessary extras for expensive computers. As outrageous as it is to charge eighty-five dollars for a power cord, what choice do buyers have, once they've already spent hundreds or thousands for the machine? Apple computers take only Apple cords; the company would be a fool to make a sturdier cord and charge a reasonable price for it.

I mentioned Jobs to the clerk, a rueful tribute to the founder's business acumen as well as his engineering smarts. And the clerk replied: "As you said about our late boss ... "  The juxtaposition of the familiar our with the substitution of the epithet boss for Jobs' name was creepily similar to the way monotheistic religions refer to God.

One amusing note: The clerk asked where I'd heard that Apple power cords tend to break. "From a friend in a café," I said.

"A friend in a café," he repeated, his right eyebrow rising.  The irony of an Apple employee displaying disdain for café habitués was almost worth the eighty-five dollars I had to pay for a ten-dollar power cord. Count the number of Apple laptops the next time you visit a café. You'll see what I mean.

***

The number of hits I got searching for Apple and worship is scary. Any number of people, presumably some of them at least half-serious, detect parallels with religion in the fervor of Apple product worship. I do not find this reassuring.

In what ways is Apple/Steve Jobs worship like a religion? Like a cult? How is it different?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

"Innovation": Breaking ground in buzzwords

He did not
produce innovation

I really do have a crime-fiction post lined up, but first a bit about a buzzword so pervasive that many people may not recognize it as such: Innovation.

I mean innovation as a product, not as a process, as an end rather than a means. What do I mean by this? In researching a recent post about Alan Glynn's Bloodland, I found that the author of a relevant statement worked for the Center for Innovation in something or other, and I thought, now there's a name tailor-made to capture the attention of deep-pocketed charitable foundations. What does a center for innovation produce? Innovation, I suppose.

On the other hand, there was Steve Jobs, who produced products. Yes, Jobs was an innovator (Thanks to him, millions of people can call up computer programs by swiping their fingers across a touch pad rather than clicking a button), but innovation for him was a means rather than an end. When innovation becomes a goal in itself, it's time to roll your eyes and watch millions of dollars being seduced out of millions of pockets.

(See "new and improved.")

© Peter Rozovsky 2011