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captaincranky,
Why do you care so much brand names? Personally I think you should like/dislike a product based on how well it works for you. Teens have similar attitudes like yours where they like and dislike something based on only on the label on the box. These "isheep" that I always hear so much about are very elusive. I did this a couple weeks ago when taking to someone else who told me about isheep. I went out, and over the course of the week I had interactions with about 200 friends, colleges and acquiescence's. When the situation was appropriate, I learned of any apple products they had and how they felt about them. Out of the 200, about 60 of them had a version of an iPhone, 5 had an ipod touch, 8 of them had ipads. Not shockingly NONE of the them cared about who made it, some where not even aware that they all were in the same manufacturer. This elusive "isheep" was still a stranger to me even when trying to find one for a week. I have 3 teenage children. 1 has a iphone4, the other a 3gs, and the other just a touch. The middle one likes her 3gs when she compares to the android equivalent, while the others 2 don't care to much about theirs, they just use it to use it. Since my particular circle involving ages generally 30-50 (give/take a couple years) don't have any isheep in it, I do see the possibility of having greater chances finding one in the teen years. Is it safe to assume you may hang out with a lot of teenagers to know lots of these "isheep"?
Anyway, my point (and advice) is to stop liking/disliking things depending only on brand name alone, its immature and you may just miss out on a great product that you may actually like. As a side note: just because your name is captaincranky doesn't mean you have to play the role, its just a label and not a curse. Smile, and know life is good.
OK first, thank you ma'am for this post and vote of confidence.
With that out of the way, your text, (and subtext), gave me nightmares. In actuality, "night terrors", since I'm wide awake now, and I remember it vividly. I was being dragged around by a young, and very exotic Indian woman (*), buying cars I didn't get to drive, summarily handing her money because she asked for it, yet never quite able to "consummate" the relationship. I finally woke up at the point where I was walking into a police station, filing a complaint about being "scammed".
In any event, buying your children exactly what they want to shut them up, doesn't really qualify you as a shrewd shopper. You walk into a store, most likely hand them you husband's credit card, and pick out what they tell you to, or what you've seen on TV.
Plus, I really don't care about your impromptu survey of the local college "hipsters". I went to community college with them late in life, and "studied" photography. The majority of them couldn't buy a decent piece of equipment if their lives depended on it. If your iPhone is more than about 9 months old, Apple has already "gestated" another one, with the features the one you own should have.
That's sort of emblematic of Apple. They're "pregnant" with last years idea, and will bring forth the fruit of their labor in Q4 of this year, minus a few primary genes, which they're saving for their next child.
Since you went out of the way to tell me you're a mom, I thought I'd explain that to you in "suburban housewife-ese".
I'm re-posting an earlier response, for your convenience, since I'm sure you've got a ton of shopping to do:
Look, I'm an old man, and I do things that others don't see as being sensible. I have 1meg DSL, because I get it for 17.95 a month. I go to RedBox, and rent DVDs for $1.20 a night.
I don't need Apple's help with my TV viewing, , I don't need the Pirate Bay to help me with ISo files.
So, all the s*** you think you need, or Apple is going to "innovate", I can thankfully, quite well live without.
I've never bought so much as an iTune, and I almost certainly never will. Save your energy and enthusiasm for people sitting on a fence about Apple. With me, you're just banging your head against a wall.
And I'll run this by you one more time, whatever Apple does in the TV arena, I hope they get sued for it. As near as I can tell, "Apple TV" is just another hazing, and an attempt to bully their way into someone else's wheelhouse.
"Apple TV", "Google TV", turn it upside down it all looks alike.
Now, "the light bulb on top of your head" should be glowing, albeit rather dimly, when you realize I'm exactly what my screen name stands for.
I don't live in the fantasy world that advertising and marketing has created for you, period.
A man named John Watson is credited with being the "father of behavioural psychology". He later went into ADVERTISING...!!!
His Wiki Bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson
And a page on his contributions to advertising:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/02/15/the-psychology-of-advertising/
Read them, you'll understand how they programmed you for "brand recognition", and possibly why our female children keep going into puberty earlier in life. First, it's the hormones sometimes used in cattle production. But, (IMH guess), it may also be the abundance of sexual stimulation they received via TV advertising. In any event, nobody's going to give me a an exorbitant grant to study that, and Al Gore won't kick a few shares of his Aple stock over to me so I can sell them and fund the research myself.
In the meantime, I'm considering changing my screen name to "Kingcranky". This so I can argue from a better position, when passing guests accuse me of having a god complex.
A do have yourself a nice day..
(That was the reflexive mood of the verb, more often used in Spanish).
(*) Indian, as from India. I think she was the anthropomorphization of an "exotic art model", whose photographs I may have accidentally seen recently.
