Are iPhones evil?

That depends on your perspective I suppose, but I offer a brief argument today that Apple and their products are promoters of tyranny and if they are not promoters of tyranny then they are at least symptoms of tyranny.

For the first point we go directly to the core of how apple functions.  Since, at least, the launch of the iMac the Apple corporation has operated using a strategy of selling technically inferior equipment at dramatically elevated prices by making them shiny and trendy and making them “easier to use”, which may actually sound like a fair trade-off.  However, saying that their products are easier to use doesn’t do the situation the due justice.  The reality is that the “usability” of the product has always come at the cost of user empowerment, and the sacrifice the user makes for usability has almost never been a necessary one.  In fact Apple often goes deliberately out of their way to provide you with less, and to reduce your power to innovate and create with their equipment.  There is a certain level of sickness to this philosophy.

Now, as a business model it has eventually proven to work very well; consumers are, after all, generally speaking, dumb and lazy and not interested in power or creativity and it does indeed make sense for greater men to profit from that.  However, doing so is not without broader reaching risks.  By sacrificing wealth and power on a daily basis to maintain convenience and the bliss of ignorance people are making themselves more and more accustomed to and comfortable with the same means by which tyranny establishes itself on a geopolitical basis.  It’s easier to quietly pay your taxes than become informed and demand changes to a budget.  It’s easier to accept half-baked stories wrapped in a flag about reasons for war than it is to question them and say no.  Apple’s strategy makes complacency the norm, a dangerous situation, even for those who profit from it.

Ponder this:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

-Martin Niemöller

Take some time, think about the larger implications of this complacency, it’s not just a computer or music player or phone, it is part of a bigger trend.  We have the power as choosy consumers to decide whether or not capitalism will empower us or neuter us. Think about it.  It’s tough to see, I know, that subtle link between something as insignificant as a little convenience and something as horrifying as a Nazi Holocaust, but the links to the broader and uglier implications have recently become much more clear.  Today the Guardian published the following article titled:  iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go

Suddenly that subtle link becomes much more clear.  Then we read that police are now scanning information on our phones at routine traffic stops.   …  Hey, you bought that complacency phone, you brought this on yourself.

In the end I suppose we’re still left with the Chicken or the Egg question.  Which causes which?  Does consumer complacency breed tyranny or are we just acting this way because we are already crushed souls under a well disguised tyranny of another sort?

But, anyway, don’t worry about that.   Look!  You just got a new text message, wow, look at that deal on Groupon!  A discount on iPads!!!