Apple’s got more than street smarts

I have been proposed with the challenge to go without my iPhone for at least a week many times, mostly by my parents, and the idea of it seemed crazy to me. I once had the mentality that the chances of getting lost, missing out and something serious happening were a lot higher if I did not have my iPhone on me. Shocker alert: I have essentially been doing it for well over a week and can honestly tell you that I am doing A-okay. In March the touch detector on my iPhone became very unresponsive so utilising messenger and the apps was a tedious process so I eventually gave up dealing with the thing and started to rely on Facebook to keep connected with friends and only used the phone for making and receiving phone calls. I see how people become attached to their smartphone and need it for work purposes but I have came to the conclusion that the iPhone is not a necessity but a luxury, a luxury bought by ALOT; to give you some context, 1 billion iPhones were sold prior late 2016.

iPhone is a high-resolution model, iPod and phone all in one offering multiple features including internet browsing, SIRI and GPS. It’s what you call a closed product; it’s pre-programmed, integrating the handset with Apple-filtered & approved content which is only accessible by the “Apple geeks”. Steve Jobs made it clear that it was not a PC computer because these are classified as open platforms that are exposed to viruses, spam, identity theft and crashes (Zittrain 2008, p. 3). The apple ideology is they take care of everything or in other words, they hold the power and don’t inspire you to innovate which doesn’t sound like much fun but at least you’ve got security. The article ‘Owning the consumer – Getting to the core of the Apple business model’ (Montgomerie & Roscoe 2013) explains consumers are distracted from the control factor by strategising how Apple markets their brand as a novelty offering a unique experience. This genius logic is why they hold a market capitalisation of 570 billion dollars.

All this iPhone talk has me feeling some serious withdrawals. So much for feeling A-okay about my no “iPhone = no worries lifestyle” D:

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References 

1. Zittrain, J.L. 2008, The Future of the Internet, Yale University Press, London.
2. Montgomerie, J & Roscoe, S 2013, ‘Owning the consumer – Getting to the core of the Apple business model’, Accounting Forum, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 290-299.