Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I actually work at an Apple store as a genius bar tech associate. One REALLY funny observation I make is that many who come in to make appointments to see us are not serious tech types, most are people who see our products as fashion accessories.
I had a funny experience last week when a girl came in & needed help with her new iphone she just got. She got it to replace some HTC phone her parents had bought her. I about died when she said "I was always so embarassed to carry that phone around, those are very out of style and only for poor people."
That's funny.
Although I do agree with you about the Apple branding and a certain cachet that some people associate with the brand. I remember when iPods were still relatively new, I had a Creative MP3 player and someone asked why I didn't have an iPod - as if I had a lower-end type of knockoff...my response was that Apple didn't invent these types of players, and other companies made better players. Apple simply had the better marketing strategy which led to the iPod becoming the more "household" name (the way people refer to any brand of tissue as a Kleenex).
I have one & it's mostly b/c it'll do everything except butter my toast in the morning...seriously. The other day I parked my car at a stadium that has over 12,000 parking spots, I used an app on iphone to find my car quickly instead of wandering about for a half an hour.
They have signs you know. In parking garages. They have signs to help you find your car. Big ones. HUGE ONES. All you have to do is look at them and remember where you are parked.
Now there would be an interesting statistic... percentage of people classified as living in poverty who have a modern gaming console in their living room.
Just curious...what don't you have that most others do? There's a key difference between having the latest, greatest technology and keeping the same devices (i.e. tv, cell phone, computers, etc.) for several years. Doesn't necessarily mean someone is behind with the times, just that they see no need in replacing them until they break or they have other priorities.
The only person I know that doesn't have a cell phone or computer is my 87 year old grandfather.
very good point. i waited to get an LCD until it hit a price I was comfortable with. I wanted a blu-ray player, but i wasn't about to jump on that early-adoption bandwagon because I remembered how quickly prices fell with DVD players when I worked at Circuit City when they first came out. I only ended up with a blu-ray player about 18 months ago because I had "sony points" i needed to cash in, so i bought a home-theater-in-a-box that happened to have a blu-ray player...but i paid only a couple hundred after redeeming my points.
I want a new TV in my bedroom for space reasons, but can't justify buying one since my 27inch CRT (10 years old) still works just fine. the tv stand might give out before the TV does. So eventually, when the time is right, maybe I'll buy an LED TV for the living room (more energy efficient) and retire the LCD to the bedroom (though it's entirely too large for a bedroom TV), and the 27 inch CRT to the attic (guest room/playroom) where it will still get some use until it croaks.
i'm techie, but i don't buy the latest and greatest. my wife's laptop was 8 years old when it died. so i got a new laptop 2.5 years ago. though i'd love to get a lot of gadgets, i just can't justify it. my wife won a kindle last week. now that we have it, i can see why one would buy it. we'll save some cash on ebooks vs real books also. but i still like reading an actual book.
it's funny though how people look at different things. my cousin's wife when they got married question why he would register for an electric can opener. her family never had one, she didn't see the usefulness of it. she refused to let him add it to the registry. so he jokingly said to her....why don't we sell the dishwasher? obviously, not a one-to-one comparison...but the point is...there's lots of things we don't need, but they may make our lives more convenient, save us some time which i think many people undervalue, or just provide some level of enjoyment.
i'll never comprehend why a woman would spend $500 or $1,000 on a purse that she might use occasionally. but many people will never comprehend why i want a high quality home theater system, when the time is right. different strokes for different folks.
back to the iphone/smartphone though...it truly offers me far more than I even thought it would. with the apps i've been using, i've saved hundreds of dollars through coupon apps, gasbuddy, and being able to respond timely to certain things. it's been 100% worth it to me, when i used to think it was silly. i was forced to get one, then i got one i wanted after that...and now i love it.
This is interesting. Let's take the thread in another direction and turn your question around. Others are welcome to join in.
What electronic devices (media or otherwise) would you expect to find in an upper-middle class suburban household that includes two adults, one teenager, and one elementary-schooler? Also, how many of each do you think do you think is typical?
i would expect to find a cell phone for each person, but possibly not the elementary schooler. I would suspect a tv 36 inches or larger in the room you watch TV in, probably an LCD TV if you've bought one in the past 3-4 years. I'd expect a TV in the teenager's room, depending on your parental choices. I'd expect a desktop computer, or possibly 2 laptops, not including work machines.
DVD player.
possibly a video game console.
a digital cable box.
that's about it. i don't *expect* bluray players. i don't *expect* a TV in every person's room (though this is pretty common). and i don't yet expect GPS devices. but wouldn't be shocked if you had them.
I have no idea. How much does the iPhone cost? By the way, what does it do, and why might I want one?
I'm serious. Somebody tell me what it does. If I google it, all I get is a lot of techno-doubletalk. What, in plain English, can I do with an iPhone?
Somebody who has one, tell me the last five things you did with it that you think might be of interest to me. Besides make a phone call, which I can do with my five-year-old prepaid $10 Tracfone, for $65 a year.
1. Check my e-mail
2. Take photos of a property inspection if I forgot my other camera.
3. Look up a phone number I need via the internet on yellowpages.com
4. Get directions
5. Check location of a property via google maps
6. Pay my phone bill
7. Check my bank accounts
8. Use the compass, level, elevation, tides, etc.
9. use the calendar practically every hour - sync it w/ my outlook calendar at work and set a reminder to "ding" a few minutes before I'm supposed to be somewhere.
10. Enjoy many other apps for personal use such as check facebook to keep in touch with far away friends or family.
Good list, slackjaw. I'd add in at least one handheld gaming system, several iPods or other personal music players, and one gaming console like an XBox or Wii.
We have one personal computer (an HP Touchsmart) with high-speed internet, a laser printer, one iPod Nano, one cell phone (my spouse is a consultant and carries an HTC Incredible for both personal and work purposes), one flatscreen TV w/ a steaming-only Netflix subscription but no cable (a very recent addition to our previously TV-less household, which elicited much controversy from our social circle), and one digital camera.
As an aside, we do have a garage-door opener, but we do not have a microwave oven, which also seems to throw our friends and neighbors for a loop. (Doesn't anybody know how to cook using a range anymore?) Neither do we have two other staples of middle-class living: a cordless phone (we have one wall-mounted princess phone in the kitchen) and an answering machine.
i forgot the ipods! i'd assume 3-4 of those as well.
i'm actually surprised by the printer. we have 1, but only because it was free when we bought our laptop.
TV-less households don't shock me personally. If it wasn't for my obsession with baseball and some other sports, I wouldn't own a TV at all. especially now that i could watch most shows on a computer. maybe i'd have a TV for display purposes, but i could go without cable if i had a better way to watch HD-sports (i'm addicted, sorry).
i forgot about digital camera too. would have to include 1 of those.
we have a microwave because it was in the house, but we almost never use it. i like to reheat leftovers on the range.
cordless phones/answering machines SHOCK me in the year 2011. why anyone with a reasonable cell-signal in their area has a home phone is crazy. I know the triple-play deals make them virtually free, but i see no use for them in most places these days.
Although I do agree with you about the Apple branding and a certain cachet that some people associate with the brand. I remember when iPods were still relatively new, I had a Creative MP3 player and someone asked why I didn't have an iPod - as if I had a lower-end type of knockoff...my response was that Apple didn't invent these types of players, and other companies made better players. Apple simply had the better marketing strategy which led to the iPod becoming the more "household" name (the way people refer to any brand of tissue as a Kleenex).
i used to despise apple. i refused to get an ipod. but, as i looked and compared, apple really had the best interface for an mp3 player. the thing that annoys me is i hate iTunes. but, it's also the best interface out there right now for music management application. Their marketing strategy was great, but the way their device integrates with the software is a bigger player in why they became the household name and why the Microsoft Zune tanked (it's interface was ok, but the software is horrible), and the Creative Zen never really caught on (also a good interface, but the syncing was just not as straightforward).
Part of why Apple products work so well is because of the closed-architecture that the crazy-micro-manager Steve Jobs insists on. The openness of the Zen and the Zune is what hurt them. The complete control over what goes onto the ipod is what makes it work so well, which helped make it the player of choice.
iTunes has gotten better over the years, but I still long for a better application.
some portion of Apple customers are certainly buying it because of the "design". And Apple doesn't hide from anybody that design/fashion is a huge part of the creation process. But they also pay attention to detail far more than any other computer manufactur I've seen, except maybe Asus and Acer. The little things about the MacBook Pro that add to the price but make it better and more convenient are amazing, and stuff that most would never have thought of.
Oh no...i've become a fanboy! (but i still love my Droid phone).
Now there would be an interesting statistic... percentage of people classified as living in poverty who have a modern gaming console in their living room.
poverty in 2011 is different than poverty in 1950. lemme tell ya!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
