Appleism is a New Religion...

I too am an Apple person. I recall reading that theologians and poets are drawn to Apple. Wondeer why. My IPOD and our lovely little iBook which replaced another iBook and one of those iMac's that were such cool colors. I love to go to the Apple Store. Feels like a pilgrimage of some sort. I do have a couple of complaints. There are no little ol ladies to help me at the Apple Store. Everyone there looks like they spend a good deal of time in coffeeshops and they look a bit afraid of little ol ladies like me. There needs to be the lil ol lady division of Apple. It will involve larger fonts for our aging eyes and perhaps trainers who use recipe like directions to teach us. Went to a recent graduate symposium of theology types and we all pulled out our Apple laptops to take notes. We saw the nun with the Toshiba. Just figured it was about the vow of poverty or something.

In the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, it is written:
"Users can accomplish their tasks quickly, because well-designed applications don’t get in the user’s way."

And yet, there are many soulless developers who flaunt the AHIG and obstruct users from their true path. I call upon all Appleists to smite these decadent and greedy developers with a plague of spam and rootkits, web site defacings, and extreme rants. Let us bring down their network connections and render their computers inoperable. And let us not cease from this holy task until they repent and adhere to the laws of the AHIG.

Let it be done.

Oh - and let us also smite the infidel users of Windows with a 100,000 viruses.

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Incidentally, "a worldview and morality based on the faith" is really just standard rebel sell marketing, ie. marketing that creates associations between a product and a sense of unique individualism; essentially absorbing the spirit of the counter-culture and using it to sell stuff.

The True Believers are the Windows users who struggle on, year after year in the vain hope that the next version of Windows will be half-way decent.

Nailed it. I think the "flaw" is the "Ritual Acts" portion. If people got as much immediate and tangible benefit out of any other sort of "religious" ritual as they do from using a Mac, the churches would be overflowing.

It is NOT "apple-ism". It is Jobs-ism. Or maybe "the Jobsons" would be a good term for them.

If Steve Jobs left Apple next year, the stock would plummet and Apple would be back to Pippin's, Pucks, Mac TV and crap like that and nobody would give a damn about them.

I would imagine also that quite a few of the die hard Apple lovers of now would then become die hard "[fill in name of new corporation with Steve J. as head]" lovers.

It's not a cult of Apple, it's a cult of personality centered around Steve Jobs.

Fitting, really. Self-described as "@sshole", with friends referring to him as "@sshole" and "sociopath" and "genius"... it fits the bill of most of the Mac users I have come across. They all tend to be the edgy, artsy, wanna-be-SEEN-as-mad-genius types who typically want (psychologically need) some power over others so that they can 'teach' that person how to live / eat / dress / what to smoke and what not to smoke / compute / etc ... Ergo, an overwhelming portion of liberals/nanny-staters (not classical liberals, mind you) that are computer literate use Macs and worship its' creator.

Of course you can't convince them of this. Have you ever had a conversation with a cultist of any stripe? No matter what ground you are standing on, your "persecution" is to be expected and re-inforces their identity with the group and you as an "outsider" or "of the [common] world". You obviously do not have their special knowledge of salvation. Likewise, when they have a problem with their religion/cult/Mac, it is instinctively their own problem and not due to anything on Apple's behalf.

Saw this firsthand with a Jobson friend of mine. Years ago, he laughed when I had a BSOD and started the trash talk about MS. But when I was over and his Mac crashed hard --- hard enough it had to be unplugged to get it to reboot --- he took the blame and said something to the effect of "it must be something I did" ....

Sigh.

Sebhelyesfarku:

EXACTLY who I had in mind. As someone with relatives in that cult, the similarity is striking. Although I would assume anybody with a family member in any XYZ cult would say the same thing about the Jobsons they know.

Perhaps Jobsons are bright and well-educated and whatnot and therefore feel they couldn't possibly be involved in a cult. Well, I know an aerospace engineer, a couple Medical doctors, etc, in the JDubs.

I love the article above and as an Apple nut myself I agree. I have even read a couple books about his holiness, Steve Jobs. This article made me think about that and the fact that I would never care to read a darn thing about any other CEO, but yet I felt compelled to do so about Jobs. Funny and enlightening! Thanks.

I'm also an Appleist. Since I'm an atheist, this presents no conflict with any pre-existing religious faith.

Must. Have. iPhone.

Or better yet Jesus would say "your willing to accept these measly gifts in exchange for your true magnitude?"

Is Microsfot funding you? Please disclose.

This is a little known story from the youth of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They were friends, and both of them went on a tour of Bell Labs, and got caught up in the new technology that Bell Labs was into, the graphics format (the original ping pong game), they didn't know what to do wuth it at the time, but a couple of inventive kids will, every time ! They both stole the idea from them. The difference is Steve Jobs saw a gold mine (a lot like Rome and Christianity) Bill Gates thought it was better to make a computer avilable to the masses, as opposed to only the elite, as Steve Jobs forsaw, at his original selling price of $3,000to $5,000. I really believe that most of the Spam out there is sent to dis-allusion PC owners to give up ... Face it, nobody is going to buy anything from all these spammers, even if you want it ! "You can piss off some of the people,most of the time. And most of the people some of the time. But you can't piss off all of people, all of the time" Abe Lincoln (or something like that !)

LUV 2 ALL
Wisdum

Note - per a reader question I am decidedly not funded by Microsoft. I have, however, funded Microsoft with software purchases.

I have some Apple things, iPods, computers, etc. and I enjoy them all. To compare their use to religious status, well that really lowers the perception of Religion. I guess as humans we like to equate the good in this world to diety status.

Brilliant post. I love that things will change for you after getting that iPhone. Typical Apple cult-like behavior. I too am an Appleist. I have added your link to my Church Chatter roll at iphonesavior.com. Nice work!

Yup... you definitely need help. I pretty much can't stand anything Apple. A false religion is certainly is. Someone once said it was "hip and condescending." Couldn't be more true.

Praying for you and all the other liberal Windows-haters.