Media love affair with all Apple products

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Does anyone believe as I do that popular media are in love with the Apple corporation in much the same way that, fifty years ago, they were in love with John F. Kennedy? By in love, I mean that they seem blinded to any shortcomings and blatantly ignore the existence of any competing products.

For example, in TV dramas characters are almost exclusively seen using Apple computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc (with the possible exception of BBT!).

Reporters routinely use Apple trademarks as a synonym for the entire category of product for example (not an exact quote but close to what I've actually heard) "the teenage girls at the One Direction concert all got out their iPhones and started tweeting".

Also concerning apps the popular media only review iOS apps (although they may mention the existence of an Android/Windows version).

This (on Wired) struck me as a blatant example of a piece having nothing to do with Apple but the writer cited Apple in the headline as a way to communicate his opinion that the product is innovative:

[url=http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/home-depot-reinvents-buckets/
]How Home Depot Copied Apple to Build an Ingenious New Bucket[/url]

in fact had they actually copied Apple they would have gotten sued!

I just felt like venting there is nothing inherently wrong with Apple products (although much to complain about) but it annoys me they get so much free advertising compared to their competitors who are forced to pay.

So it's not because Apple is the most popular and well known brand?
Does BBT= Big Bang Theory? Um in the latest episode when Amy asks everyone to stop looking at their phones, Sheldon retorts, "blame Steve Jobs." I guess he could've given a different name, I doubt I would know who it was.
And about the Home Depot article. Your argument is rather simplistic. Lots of things get copied but not sued.

There are shortcomings, not all technology is manufactured in sweatshop.

For better or worse, Apple has an ubiquitous, iconic product. You can't put an Android product on TV and pick just one because so many varieties of phone runs Android.

iPhone is iPhone. Regardless of model they have a similar look and identical interface (if the iOS is current).

This also may make it easier to "stage" screen actions for filming. If they use the same product, one script will work with all the props.

Also, many products displayed on TV and film PAY to have that product placement. In the case of Apple, they probably provide unlimited tech support to get the product to do what the directors want for any given scene as well.

The media industry has been using Macs for decades - makes sense that when they had to grab some gear to fill a set with, they'd just grab a macbook or iMac out of their IT department and plop it down.

There's also the aesthetic - Apple products *look* good on TV.



Apple was first to market on a lot of key pieces of technology - iPod, iPhone, etc. Same reason a huge portion of Americans refer to soft drinks as "coke" or tissues as "kleenex".

Apple leads market-share on mobile devices, it makes sense that the majority of reviews would be focused on the platform that most of their readers use.

It's also an easier platform to review for - the hardware and software are coupled so you only have to test with one or two different hardware configurations to get a good sense of the app - whereas on android systems you have to worry a lot more about whether an app is sucking it because of the android version you're running on, or maybe the hardware you're using to test.

It's not a grand Apple conspiracy - there are benign and reasonable explanations for everything you've mentioned.

I can dispute this one statistic. According to Gartner:

Gartner Says Smartphone Sales Accounted for 55 Percent of Overall Mobile Phone Sales in Third Quarter of 2013

Samsung had 32.1% of smartphone sales in the 3rd quarter of 2013 (presumably the latest for which accurate data are available) whereas Apple had only 14.3%.

That covers "most popular" as for "well known" I wouldn't know how to research that.

Yes, exactly - Apple has 55% market share in the mobile phone market - which means *over half* of all people who own a mobile phone own an iPhone. That certainly sounds like "most popular" to me. They also lead the next highest market share by over 20%.

Please read the post before replying.

The headline says "Smartphone Sales Accounted for 55 Percent of Overall Mobile Phone Sales" which means that 55% of all mobile phones sold in 2013Q3 were some sort of smartphone.

The numbers taken from the article say (to the best of my ability to understand them) that of these smartphones, 32.1% were Samsung products and 14.3% were Apple.

Please feel welcome to question the validity of Gartner's research but let's at least agree on what the article says.

Sorry - I was trying to read posts without my glasses. I missed two things about the article you posted.

1) I missed the statistic, as you pointed out.
2) I missed that the article is talking about new sales, *not* overall market share. iOS still accounts for over half of all phones used, standing at 54%. http://www.latinopost.com/articles/2746 ... e-2013.htm

And the article you link to uses a figure "for the world's most utilized operating system between mobile phones and tablets." If we're talking phones only, I'm pretty sure Android is now comfortably number one world-wide and might even be the most popular phone type in the US which, if so, would be quite a come-down for Apple.

But...I think this kind of stuff is also the sort of thing that makes my Spectrumite brain short out... as in this informative but (for me) hard to follow article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... ogle-apple

Interesting article, claiming the Android is about 50% in the US, vs. 40% for Apple, notes that that is much higher for Android in the rest of the world, but also offers cautions about how you count Android phones in China that don't connect to anything like the Google Play store, etc.

FWIW, it still does seem that the I-Pad is comfortably running away with the tablet market, and least for now.