Rifkind on Apple

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One bad Apple

Apple makes me angry. “Fascism doesn’t stop being fascism just because the end result is pretty!” I spat at a colleague, during the tail end of last week, as part of something that was very nearly an actual argument. How mad am I?

Strangely, it’s a very similar sort of rage to the one inspired in me by Sex and the City. For a while I thought that this was coincidence; that the link was just in my own stupid, petty, angry brain. But I’ve been thinking about it, probably more than is healthy, and I’ve realised what the two have in common. Both are totally insincere, and both get away with it.

The film is a celebration of ignorant materialism, inspired by a book (a good book — I was shocked) that is a vicious satire of exactly that. And nobody cares. And the slogan of Apple, way back in the mists of time (13 years ago), was “Think Different”.

“Think Different”. Think about that, you crowds outside the Apple store, waiting for a uniformed cohort of stormtroopers to march you into their temple and take £600 off you, just like they did with everybody else, so you can buy your music from the same place as them, and your films from the same place as them and stroke it and cuddle it exactly as everybody else does.

“Think Different”. I mean, seriously. I wouldn’t mind so much if there was some evidence that anybody else did. And it doesn’t help that I want one. God, no. That doesn’t help at all.