from The Atlantic - "With Its $10,000 Watch, Apple Has Lost Its Soul"

Seriously?

I'm not an Apple Smasher, but I also don't attach any mystical spiritual purity to the company, either.

I respect Apple. I started in IT doing desktop publishing in Pagemaker on a Mac.  For years, I supported a small weekly newspaper that was managed and published entirely on Macs.  For the longest time, Apple was the only place to go for top grade graphics, both for games and for desktop publishing.

These days, while other platforms have largely caught up in the desktop environment, Apple has pioneered vast new venues of consumer satisfaction and vast new markets. All due credit to them. They hit the front end of the wave.

Sure, a $10k watch is over the top - an example of egregious consumption on a Hiltonian or Kardashian level.  But let's not pretend that the $$ hasn't been a motivator for Apple and a not-tiny share of its customer base for some time.

Sure, I know plenty of people for whom Apple has been the preferred paradigm for ages, not just for the way the O/S and apps behave, but also for the finely tuned aesthetics.  It's a family of very good, very well-crafted products.

Truth be told, though, I know a lot more people who buy Apple products not because they love the functionality of the products, but because they love the coolness factor.  They love that buying Apple means they're buying membership in the cool crowd, the kids in the cafeteria who never seemed to have a seat at the table for them.  They're non-conformist conformists, like the guys who are all growing beards right now so they can be themselves and look exactly like every other guy being his unique self.

Not only that, I know people, albeit a smaller group, who buy Apple because of one reason and one reason only.  It costs more.  Buying Apple buys them prestige.  And to speak technically, buying a $10k Apple watch buys approximately a fuck-ton of prestige.  At least that's how they're going to see it, in part because that's how Apple is going to (quietly) sell it.

I'm just waiting for a new class of bespoke, artisanal, gluten-free Apple products, and maybe some cases with scarves and waxed mustaches as accessories.

To be both fair, and serious, however, I'm actually feeling better about the Soul of Apple, $10k watches aside.  Under the stewardship of Tim Cook, Apple has discovered the value in being a better corporate citizen and has started sharing some of its abundant profitability with charities and foundations, something that was lacking in the more "soulful" Apple of Steve Jobs.