6 ms·

Apple sells the ability to be part of an 'in-group'. People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users

Apple sells the ability to be part of an 'in-group'. People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users. Its a psychology trick that took decades of marketing to pull off, but they are deeply entrenched as someone's identity. These users have a religious devotion and will defend them, because an attack on Apple is an attack on them and their group. If you don't care about a corporate in-group, you are most likely wanting a quality computing platform. Which is why people are so hard on Google an Microsoft when they restrict computing.

splendor_spoon 3y ago
This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.
- monsieurgaufre 3y ago
  I'm in that group. I like the "openness" of Android more. But the iphone 7 gifted from my mother is still supported while the samsung i bought in 2019 is not anymore. I don't really care particularly about the icloud/imessage ecosystem but all close people around me have iphones (the network effect was not the primary reason for the switch).
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  >Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be. That is just the bare minimum. Its 2023, every phone is like this. Anyway, any teenager can tell you what its like to have the wrong kind of bubbles. They are extremely susceptible to in-group bias. Heck I wore Abercrombie and American Eagle, it wasn't because the clothes fit. I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart. At some point, its denialism to think in-group bias doesnt exist. Not that someone exploited can easily admit to it, its far too difficult to imagine your brain being incorrect about something. Much easier to say things like "they are reliable and consistent" than to accept that marketers have exploited us.
  - noisy_boy 3y ago
    > I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". All the people she didn't date thank her.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I don't think it makes sense to confuse the preferences of teenagers (a market group who, overwhelmingly, don't buy their own phones) with adults. In other words: the fact that teenagers prefer the same kind of free devices as their friends have is not particularly strong evidence that adults make purchasing decisions based on just chat bubble colors.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart. Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way. People do the same thing about cars, shoes, clothing, alcohol, zip codes, etc. The only upside is that it lets you very quickly identify and avoid them. In the messaging case, it’s important to remember that Google is currently funding a huge lobbying campaign trying to get governments to restore the market position they gave up a decade ago. SMS messages have been green on iOS since the first iPhone – and shortly after the App Store launched most people were using Google Chat since everyone using Gmail was on it and it even federated with other XMPP services. Google spent the next decade pushing users away with a bunch of poorly conceived and executed attempts to lock users into their proprietary system. Only after those failed did they start picking up RCS, but most of their catch up with iMessage work has been proprietary extensions which help sell carriers on Google’s Jibe cloud service. I like the idea of open protocols but Google is acting out of self interest and I have no doubt that they’d try to lock things up in a heartbeat if they think they could get away with it. Let them park for their own PR, and we can talk about more open alternatives.
    - philistine 3y ago
      Exactly. The power over iMessage is in Apple’s hands. Yet Google, with their RCS push, have not made something open-source were they have less power than Apple. RCS is controlled by Google just like iMessage.
- bacchusracine 3y ago
  >This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Likes this post. Yeah, there isn't anything going on beside out-group cope. Really glad most plans have unlimited text these days. Having spam texts where the person I'm communicating with just parrots what I'd just typed with the words "Liked this" would have driven me insane back in the days when you only got a thousand texts for the month.
- 8note 3y ago
  Which is also what a computer should be, and thus why windows should only allow edge I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    > "I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop" All you have to do is search HN for "linux laptop", look: "newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewrite but has since been fixed, the fnlock key LED didn't update properly, which I spent a while debugging and submitted a kernel patch for, and while over the years the fingerprint scanner has been implemented, it's a pain to install and support for fingerprint scanning in linux is still in a very sorry state. Oh and bluetooth still can't connect more than one device at a time" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872 Reply: "With Wayland, Gnome and KDE have no way to adjust the scroll speed on a laptop trackpad. Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. In 2022." "I have a slimbook pro (the model before the silver keyboard) and sadly I am very unhappy with it, I got a fairly maxed out version and it's fans are always on full blast and I have found no way to keep the power management under control except throttling the CPU - so it is constantly overheated, suspend is not working properly and the chassis is not strong enough so the fans stall unless you have it on a flat surface. [...] Still I will keep buying these things.. eventually someone will figure out how to make reliable laptops that align with the ethos of free software. I've researched system76, puri.sm and also lately the way too expensive MNT reform, but really the only laptop people seem to be happy with is thinkpad x220 / x230 which came out 12 years ago.... This makes me sad. I would pay a lot for a super sturdy laptop which works (and aligns with the free software ethos)." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729 NB that they say what they want is 'super sturdy which works' but their actual behaviour, and the market signal they send, is they pay a lot for an unreliable and inconsistent piece of junk, knowing and expecting it will be that way, and that they will keep doing so indefinitely as long as companies keep making them, and as soon as companies make a good thing they will stop buying. Hmm.
coldpie 3y ago
I don't know whatever weird psychology junk you're talking about. I bought an iPhone Mini because it's literally the only phone on the market that fits in the human hand. iOS sucks and I'd love to go back to Android, but there are zero Android phones of a usable size available for purchase. So iPhone it is.
- lowercased 3y ago
  > but there are zero Android phones of a usable size available for purchase. So iPhone it is. My local dollar store has a couple of prepaid android 5.5" phones. Not much size diff from my iphone 12 mini. Point still taken though - 'regular' sized phones from 6 years ago are mostly gone from the mainstream market. I really hope there's another mini or a bumped up iphone se. I would like them to keep the physical home button with touch id as well. Or maybe a touch id sensor someplace else...?
  - eldaisfish 3y ago
    those android phones will have terrible materials, terrible internals and non-existent support. Their existence doesn't really say much. I also dislike many things apple does but all too often, their hardware quality is good and lasts a long time. I'm still using a 2014 macbook. it is on its last legs but eight years out of a piece of tech is borderline amazing.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      >it is on its last legs but eight years out of a piece of tech is borderline amazing. I think that is pretty normal. I'm still using my 2014 $700 Asus 'gaming laptop' for CAD, emulators, gaming, etc.... Only reason I even upgraded was so I could have 6gb VRAM for various AI purposes. Time for my kid to use it for a few years... Then I'll turn it into a server.
reaperducer 3y ago
Apple sells the ability to be part of an 'in-group'. People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users. This reads like the whining of a 14-year-old standing in a dark corner during the school dance. Translation: "Look at me! I'm different! I'm so very counter-culture. People like Apple products, so I'm going to pretend it's a problem with the people and not other products. That way I can cosplay like I'm better/smarter/cooler than all those 'lemmings.' Now I'm going to smoke cigarettes, wear jeans, pop a leather jacket because nobody's been doing that since the 1940's. I'm special!"
- whelp_24 3y ago
  I mean that is exactly what happened more or less. Apple made their phones a status symbol, and locked in users to their ecosystem. And now, even if you don't care about being cool you care about imessage and airdrop with friends.
perfect-blue 3y ago
I agree on all points, but the access you get to other Apple users comes with access to iMessage, FaceTime, and all the other services specifically tied to the iOS ecosystem. A lot of people, me included, hate Apple for the way the wall their garden, but these services are valuable to me and others. So I would caution against everything being a psychology trick. They objectively do make a great product.
whstl 3y ago
This only applies to the US, if anything. I don't think I ever used iMessage or Facetime in my life and I've been using iPhones for 15 years. Most people I know that have an iPhone also don't care, in the 3 countries I lived in. We use WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram.
nullindividual 3y ago
> People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users. Since you're projecting onto people, I'll provide a counter point in that I dislike Android enough, the hardware is often of poor quality, support for updates don't last very long, OEMs install unremovable software (unless you root). All in all, an awful ecosystem, in my personal experience.
wlll 3y ago
I buy Apple stuff because it's good quality, largely secure and generally Just Works and gets out of my way while I concentrate on the stuff that matters. I'm busy, I've got better things to do than try to make my tech work the way it should. I don't buy Apple for fashion reasons, some mythical "in group" or any of the reasons you say.
scarface_74 3y ago
Yes, it’s all “marketing” that 60% of phones sold in the US are iPhones. Poor little Google couldn’t just “market” their phones better? I was just talking to my 80 year old mom yesterday and she was telling me how much she loves being part of the “in group”

splendor_spoon 3y ago

This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.

monsieurgaufre 3y ago
I'm in that group. I like the "openness" of Android more. But the iphone 7 gifted from my mother is still supported while the samsung i bought in 2019 is not anymore. I don't really care particularly about the icloud/imessage ecosystem but all close people around me have iphones (the network effect was not the primary reason for the switch).
hospitalJail 3y ago
>Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be. That is just the bare minimum. Its 2023, every phone is like this. Anyway, any teenager can tell you what its like to have the wrong kind of bubbles. They are extremely susceptible to in-group bias. Heck I wore Abercrombie and American Eagle, it wasn't because the clothes fit. I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart. At some point, its denialism to think in-group bias doesnt exist. Not that someone exploited can easily admit to it, its far too difficult to imagine your brain being incorrect about something. Much easier to say things like "they are reliable and consistent" than to accept that marketers have exploited us.
- noisy_boy 3y ago
  > I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". All the people she didn't date thank her.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I don't think it makes sense to confuse the preferences of teenagers (a market group who, overwhelmingly, don't buy their own phones) with adults. In other words: the fact that teenagers prefer the same kind of free devices as their friends have is not particularly strong evidence that adults make purchasing decisions based on just chat bubble colors.
- acdha 3y ago
  > I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart. Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way. People do the same thing about cars, shoes, clothing, alcohol, zip codes, etc. The only upside is that it lets you very quickly identify and avoid them. In the messaging case, it’s important to remember that Google is currently funding a huge lobbying campaign trying to get governments to restore the market position they gave up a decade ago. SMS messages have been green on iOS since the first iPhone – and shortly after the App Store launched most people were using Google Chat since everyone using Gmail was on it and it even federated with other XMPP services. Google spent the next decade pushing users away with a bunch of poorly conceived and executed attempts to lock users into their proprietary system. Only after those failed did they start picking up RCS, but most of their catch up with iMessage work has been proprietary extensions which help sell carriers on Google’s Jibe cloud service. I like the idea of open protocols but Google is acting out of self interest and I have no doubt that they’d try to lock things up in a heartbeat if they think they could get away with it. Let them park for their own PR, and we can talk about more open alternatives.
  - philistine 3y ago
    Exactly. The power over iMessage is in Apple’s hands. Yet Google, with their RCS push, have not made something open-source were they have less power than Apple. RCS is controlled by Google just like iMessage.
bacchusracine 3y ago
>This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Likes this post. Yeah, there isn't anything going on beside out-group cope. Really glad most plans have unlimited text these days. Having spam texts where the person I'm communicating with just parrots what I'd just typed with the words "Liked this" would have driven me insane back in the days when you only got a thousand texts for the month.
8note 3y ago
Which is also what a computer should be, and thus why windows should only allow edge I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  > "I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop" All you have to do is search HN for "linux laptop", look: "newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewrite but has since been fixed, the fnlock key LED didn't update properly, which I spent a while debugging and submitted a kernel patch for, and while over the years the fingerprint scanner has been implemented, it's a pain to install and support for fingerprint scanning in linux is still in a very sorry state. Oh and bluetooth still can't connect more than one device at a time" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872 Reply: "With Wayland, Gnome and KDE have no way to adjust the scroll speed on a laptop trackpad. Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. In 2022." "I have a slimbook pro (the model before the silver keyboard) and sadly I am very unhappy with it, I got a fairly maxed out version and it's fans are always on full blast and I have found no way to keep the power management under control except throttling the CPU - so it is constantly overheated, suspend is not working properly and the chassis is not strong enough so the fans stall unless you have it on a flat surface. [...] Still I will keep buying these things.. eventually someone will figure out how to make reliable laptops that align with the ethos of free software. I've researched system76, puri.sm and also lately the way too expensive MNT reform, but really the only laptop people seem to be happy with is thinkpad x220 / x230 which came out 12 years ago.... This makes me sad. I would pay a lot for a super sturdy laptop which works (and aligns with the free software ethos)." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729 NB that they say what they want is 'super sturdy which works' but their actual behaviour, and the market signal they send, is they pay a lot for an unreliable and inconsistent piece of junk, knowing and expecting it will be that way, and that they will keep doing so indefinitely as long as companies keep making them, and as soon as companies make a good thing they will stop buying. Hmm.

coldpie 3y ago

I don't know whatever weird psychology junk you're talking about. I bought an iPhone Mini because it's literally the only phone on the market that fits in the human hand. iOS sucks and I'd love to go back to Android, but there are zero Android phones of a usable size available for purchase. So iPhone it is.

lowercased 3y ago
> but there are zero Android phones of a usable size available for purchase. So iPhone it is. My local dollar store has a couple of prepaid android 5.5" phones. Not much size diff from my iphone 12 mini. Point still taken though - 'regular' sized phones from 6 years ago are mostly gone from the mainstream market. I really hope there's another mini or a bumped up iphone se. I would like them to keep the physical home button with touch id as well. Or maybe a touch id sensor someplace else...?
- eldaisfish 3y ago
  those android phones will have terrible materials, terrible internals and non-existent support. Their existence doesn't really say much. I also dislike many things apple does but all too often, their hardware quality is good and lasts a long time. I'm still using a 2014 macbook. it is on its last legs but eight years out of a piece of tech is borderline amazing.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    >it is on its last legs but eight years out of a piece of tech is borderline amazing. I think that is pretty normal. I'm still using my 2014 $700 Asus 'gaming laptop' for CAD, emulators, gaming, etc.... Only reason I even upgraded was so I could have 6gb VRAM for various AI purposes. Time for my kid to use it for a few years... Then I'll turn it into a server.

reaperducer 3y ago

Apple sells the ability to be part of an 'in-group'. People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users. This reads like the whining of a 14-year-old standing in a dark corner during the school dance. Translation: "Look at me! I'm different! I'm so very counter-culture. People like Apple products, so I'm going to pretend it's a problem with the people and not other products. That way I can cosplay like I'm better/smarter/cooler than all those 'lemmings.' Now I'm going to smoke cigarettes, wear jeans, pop a leather jacket because nobody's been doing that since the 1940's. I'm special!"

whelp_24 3y ago
I mean that is exactly what happened more or less. Apple made their phones a status symbol, and locked in users to their ecosystem. And now, even if you don't care about being cool you care about imessage and airdrop with friends.

perfect-blue 3y ago

I agree on all points, but the access you get to other Apple users comes with access to iMessage, FaceTime, and all the other services specifically tied to the iOS ecosystem. A lot of people, me included, hate Apple for the way the wall their garden, but these services are valuable to me and others. So I would caution against everything being a psychology trick. They objectively do make a great product.

whstl 3y ago

This only applies to the US, if anything. I don't think I ever used iMessage or Facetime in my life and I've been using iPhones for 15 years. Most people I know that have an iPhone also don't care, in the 3 countries I lived in. We use WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram.

nullindividual 3y ago

> People don't buy their phones for their computing abilities, they do it to have access to other Apple users. Since you're projecting onto people, I'll provide a counter point in that I dislike Android enough, the hardware is often of poor quality, support for updates don't last very long, OEMs install unremovable software (unless you root). All in all, an awful ecosystem, in my personal experience.

wlll 3y ago

I buy Apple stuff because it's good quality, largely secure and generally Just Works and gets out of my way while I concentrate on the stuff that matters. I'm busy, I've got better things to do than try to make my tech work the way it should. I don't buy Apple for fashion reasons, some mythical "in group" or any of the reasons you say.

scarface_74 3y ago

Yes, it’s all “marketing” that 60% of phones sold in the US are iPhones. Poor little Google couldn’t just “market” their phones better? I was just talking to my 80 year old mom yesterday and she was telling me how much she loves being part of the “in group”