Apple took a bite in the right direction with this statement. Unfortunately it was dropped in 2002 by the company when they began to realize their recently released iPod (October 2001) was going to be success. Why “Think” and why “different,” when the only possible choice for a mp3 product is from Apple’s iPod lineup. However, the corporation has always been a strong competitor, which explains their more recent success. My problem with the company is that they falsely advertise to their consumers.
To begin, they insisted with their “Think Different” campaign (with images of Gandhi, Lennon, and Cesar Chavez) to free ourselves from the norm. Basically, all the great minds did not join the bandwagon, but did something different and so should you. Or in case your mentally incapacitated, stop using Windows. And I would agree to a certain extent, Windows is not the best. But my problem with Apple does not manifest from a preference in operating systems. It is that with all this talk of freeing ourselves of social norms and pressures, that they had and still continue to have the most restrictive system of products.
For instance, lets say that I want to listen to the song “1234″ by Feist which played as the background music for their 3rd generation iPod nanos. I could hop on Limewire and download it in less than a minute for free. But today I am going to be a good samaritan and buy it legally. So I go to Apple’s website and realize in order to buy a song from them I have to download iTunes. So, I go and download the hefty 45 MB program and ten minutes later I got the song at a lousy 128 kilobits per second. Assuming the software works. One would assume since I paid money for this song that I would have all rights to do what I want with it, nope. FairPlay kicks in. More restrictions. Now, lets say theoretically I owned an iPod. It runs off of a USB cable so I should just be able to slap some songs on with no fuss. Yeah right, iTunes is required. The same is with all products related with Apple. If you want a OS X, then you need OS X hardware. Where do you buy Mac hardware? From Apple’s website of course, unless you can manage to find a local storefront. Another restriction. Basically, if you go Apple, then you are gung-ho about “simplicity” and personalizing your iLife. Or in case your mentally incapacitated, “Think Regime.”
As for their user base, Maddox articulates it perfectly in this article.
