{"id":30830,"date":"2015-03-30T04:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T08:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30830"},"modified":"2015-03-29T09:30:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-29T13:30:37","slug":"apples-cultural-significance-as-illustrated-by-reactions-to-the-apple-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/03\/30\/apples-cultural-significance-as-illustrated-by-reactions-to-the-apple-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s cultural significance, as illustrated by reactions to the Apple Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Lileks<\/a> points out that Apple does not get the media attention for being innovative (at least, not just for innovations):<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that, you say? You don\u2019t want an Apple Watch? <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about that. <\/p>\n

People seem obliged to offer substantial, reasoned arguments why they don\u2019t want one \u2014 and that seems proof that Apple\u2019s cultural position is enormous. I mean, imagine it\u2019s 1956, and Kelvinator just brought out the new Fido-Matic Fridge that automatically extrudes moist dog food into a bowl at preset intervals. The press wouldn\u2019t say boo. The Today<\/em> show wouldn\u2019t do a live report from people queued up at the Kelvinator store. There wouldn\u2019t be bitter battles in the letters-to-the-editor section about Kelvinator fanboys falling for the latest gimmick, and besides Frigidaire did that last year. <\/p>\n

But Apple invents something, and the world is riven into two camps. Those who desire, and those who decline. The former group is regarded with less interest than the latter, since those who want the Watch are assumed to be devotees of Apple who would pay $199 for a white plastic brick used to prop open doors. <\/p>\n

The people who don\u2019t want them \u2014 ah, they\u2019re the ones who make for good copy. They\u2019re the rebels now. If I were a New York Times<\/em> editor, the day the Watch was released I\u2019d run a lifestyle-section story about men in Brooklyn with carefully curated beards who repair 1950s watches, and how this attention to the craft \u2014 nay, the art \u2014 of timepieces stands as a Contrast, and perhaps a Rebuke, to the overcomplicated Watch the sheep are lining up to get. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just an honest thing,\u201d the watch-repair guy (Josh, I\u2019m guessing) would say. \u201cYou hold it to your ear, you hear it tick. It manifests time in a real way. The delicacy of the movement \u2014 it\u2019s almost intimate, to have a machine on your wrist with such precise detail, devoted to just one thing. The time.\u201d <\/p>\n

Yeah yeah. Go have a sarsaparilla, hipster. Look: You don\u2019t want an Apple Watch, you don\u2019t. But reject it for the right reasons \u2014 and that\u2019s not because it\u2019s another screen that takes you away from dealing with humanity, because that\u2019s not what it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Lileks points out that Apple does not get the media attention for being innovative (at least, not just for innovations): What\u2019s that, you say? You don\u2019t want an Apple Watch? Let\u2019s talk about that. People seem obliged to offer substantial, reasoned arguments why they don\u2019t want one \u2014 and that seems proof that Apple\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[160,262,174,428],"class_list":["post-30830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-culture","tag-innovation","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-81g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30831,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30830\/revisions\/30831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}