When it was first introduced, anyone with a mind to look into the features of the new iPhone 4 were assuredly bombarded by the smarmy gushings of the Apple executives in their 'feature ad' for the new device, the same sort of sales technique they employed with the release of the iPad, as well as the new MacBook Air.
It's pretty hard to sit and listen to almost any pitch job, and for me, to see a product pitched by the guys who are among those who absolutely stand to gain the very most from the success of said product is a few degrees harder to swallow. They all seem to be holding back the urge to gleefully shriek, "CHA-CHING" at the end of each of their overplayed musings about how the new touchscreen interface "just feels right." It's certainly tough to ignore hard-hitting bullet points like that, fellas.
The real thing that irks me about Apple's hold over the American subconscious is that they have this entire image that seems to be predicated upon being at the 'leading edge' of computing. They're 'hip,' and hipness is nearly synonymous with 'new.' Now, far be it for me to criticize the overall quality of their products, but to put their innovations anywhere near the 'bleeding edge' in your mind is to dull the actual bleeding edge to an acuity roughly equivalent to the narrow end of a wedge of cheddar cheese. Their business model simply precludes utilizing the newest stuff, and rather focuses on honing a product, quite finely mind you, around a specific arrangement of just less than current technology, and to cling desperately to that basic setup for as long as is fiscally responsible, or maybe a bit beyond that.
Because we seem to have this hair-brained association of hipness and newness, people can listen to corporate executives gush about how incredible it is to video chat over cell phones, when the very same technology has existed in Europe and Asia for at least a half a decade. That bears repeating: one half of a decade. Five years is at least two eternities in the tech world, and here we are 'oo'-ing and 'ah'-ing over something that your typical Japanese grandmother would hardly even snort at.
Ultimately this points to a pretty clear lesson about the power of marketing. Apple has done nothing if it hasn't marketed a very clear image to the US, and even the rest of the world. It's an image that they will surely ride right into the stratosphere of profitability, but will likely forever sit at the backseat in real computer hardware sales, unless they get to changing how they treat their business model.
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