No.
But I don’t write for the Indiana Daily Student to give one-word answers.
The Apple Watch was released Tuesday under a several year-long tidal wave of speculation, letting us finally exhale our baited breath.
I could embellish and say the ghost of Steve Jobs appeared and granted everyone in the conference hall three iPhones.
Apple isn’t in the business of selling us what we need. They convince us to think we need things and then sell those things to us.
Many would argue that one needs a cell phone. I would probably agree with them.
But nobody needs an iPhone. Yet it’s the most popular mobile computing device on the market today.
The fact that it’s ?unnecessary makes people like it.
I love my iPhone very much and, sadly to say, I believe I would not be able to “survive” without it. Of course, one should notice that I put “survive” in quotes because, although being without an iPhone would make me anxious and cause me to constantly think about the fact that I don’t have an iPhone, I could easily ?survive without one.
It’s like heroin. Apple is a glorified (and legal) drug dealer.
We’re addicted to our Apple products. We’re addicted to the rush we get when Apple releases a new product line.
It’s like being in on this secret that everybody is actually in on and refusing to believe that other people are, in fact, in on it.
Ten years ago people didn’t think they “needed” phones such as the iPhone. Palm and Blackberry had released smarthphone-esque devices long before this, and they continued to hold only a niche market of business professionals and the Real Housewives of Orange County.
The iPhone was released in 2007, and by 2008, with the release of the iPhone 3G and Google’s Android OS, smartphones were deemed a necessity.
And 10 years from now, maybe “smart watches” such as the Apple Watch will be deemed a necessity. ?Possibly even sooner than that.
Apple is changing what we think we need faster than any company in the history of capitalism.
I’m not necessarily against this, but I can’t be for it. But it doesn’t matter what I’m against or in favor of — I buy into it anyway.
I’m very much part of the Empire, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t even really want to do anything about it because I love Apple products, and I’ll probably always buy them.
Trust me, nobody needs an Apple Watch. But damn, they’re cool.
ziperr@indiana.edu
