Lustful, Gluttonous, Selfish Elites
Once in a while, someone on the Internet emits some high-quality bullshit that far exceeds even Andrew Breitbart’s high standard. For example, consider this item by some psychological profiling firm, which shows that iPad haters are most likely to be “independent geeks”, that iPad owners count lust and overeating as their most deadly sins, and that whites are least likely to know what an iPad is. It’s replete with enough charts and graphs to launch a million flame wars.
(via)
July 27, 2010 9:36 am
Posted in: Science and Technology
44 Comments
44 Responses
beltane - July 27, 2010 | 9:43 am · Link
This story sounds like something that emerged from the bowels of HuffPo. Americans are addicted to this kind of faux-psychological pigeonholing.
El Cid - July 27, 2010 | 9:46 am · Link
Hey, overall gluttony and lust may be better as most deadly sins over wrath, greed, sloth, pride, and envy.
Tom65 - July 27, 2010 | 9:51 am · Link
I have an iPad, and I approve this message.
burnspbesq - July 27, 2010 | 9:55 am · Link
Must be a slow news day.
Zifnab - July 27, 2010 | 9:57 am · Link
In other news, there is a strong correlation between correlation and causation. From that, we can conclude correlation causes causation. Also, iPad owners have younger hotter wives, drive more italian sports cars, and grow stunningly manly mustaches.
scav - July 27, 2010 | 10:08 am · Link
eek! A snapshot survey of a recent expensive high-profile branded product reveals adoption by trendy people with money! whodathunk?
Sentient Puddle - July 27, 2010 | 10:09 am · Link
None of which are necessary for this thread to balloon to 200 replies. Alls you needed to do was mention the iPad!
dmsilev - July 27, 2010 | 10:10 am · Link
Survey methodology FAIL.
dms
QuaintIrene - July 27, 2010 | 10:27 am · Link
Okay, I can buy gluttony. But lust? Gives me disturbing images of Comic Book Guy in bed.
shirt - July 27, 2010 | 10:31 am · Link
I believe this link out-tunches you.
http://www.dependablerenegade......fin-1.html
RSA - July 27, 2010 | 10:40 am · Link
@dmsilev: Exactly what I thought, though I’m no expert.
They don’t mention the response rate, and while they do talk a bit about self-selection in the report, it all reads kinda half-assed.
RareSanity - July 27, 2010 | 10:50 am · Link
This,
probably correlates to this:
Especially the, “we need more Beatles’ era users”.
The whole “study” is a steaming pile. It is just amazing how the definitions of words get changed so easily. Used to be something like this would have been called a “survey” not a “study”, because “study” used to imply that it was actually scientific, not “science-y”.
r€nato - July 27, 2010 | 10:58 am · Link
Go ahead, world, hate on us Apple fans. We feast upon your envy.
I use Apple products because their shit just works right out of the box, they deliver tremendous value for the money, their understanding of human interface design is miles ahead of the rest of the industry, and it’s just beautiful hardware.
The only truly satisifed consumers of Windows/PC products that I’ve ever met, are those who have the technical background to keep it running and virus-free.
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 11:07 am · Link
Anything said about i* fans is true.
iPhone4 vs HTC Evo (Youtube; some “adult language”)
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 11:09 am · Link
@r€nato:
That’s what Sarah Palin fans say, too. Coincidence?
...as long as you don’t hold them wrong.
...as long as you don’t compare them to competing products.
If you have to mention looks… again, another Sarah Palin overlap.
Incertus (Brian) - July 27, 2010 | 11:13 am · Link
Got Amy an iPad for her birthday a few weeks ago, and we’re hardly what you’d call elite except in the amount of time we’ve spent getting an education. It’s a hell of a thing to read on, that’s for sure. I’ve almost 3/4 of the way through Ulysses now, which is way farther than I ever got in the paper version.
John D. - July 27, 2010 | 11:15 am · Link
@r€nato: You forgot gamers. Though, there is significant overlap between gamer and technically competent.
Incertus (Brian) - July 27, 2010 | 11:17 am · Link
@Winston Smith: Thanks, Winston, for proving that no matter how irritating Apple fans can be—and we can be, no question—you can still out-douche us.
Mnemosyne - July 27, 2010 | 11:18 am · Link
@Winston Smith:
Try it sometime. Most of those “comparisons” try to claim that a bottom-of-the-line Dell laptop is exactly the same thing as a MacBook Pro.
Look at a PC laptop and a Mac laptop with the same specs (screen, processor speed, memory, etc.) and the price difference is really quite small. The big difference between a Mac and a PC is that you can’t buy a stripped-down, build-it-yourself Mac like you can a PC.
NobodySpecial - July 27, 2010 | 11:36 am · Link
@r€nato:
This is not your grandfather’s trials and tribulations of Kernel32 faults.
And virus-free? Try not going to 90% of porn sites and ‘free warez’ bs. And don’t open attachments in your mail. I haven’t had anything stronger on my computers than Spybot for years now and have never picked up a single virus.
Zifnab - July 27, 2010 | 11:39 am · Link
@Mnemosyne:
Okaley dokaley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvA8Hdmit-U
(Think John threw this up weeks ago).
Zifnab - July 27, 2010 | 11:49 am · Link
@Mnemosyne: And while I admit that if you compare a Mac product to an equally high end PC product, they come out roughly the same in specs, Mac simply refuses to sell stripped down low cost products.
I mean, christ. 80% of my laptop usage centers on web content. Why do I need a quad core processor with a terrabyte of memory to surf the damn web? Why buy an iPad when I can by an equivalent laptop for $100-$200 less? Why spend $3k on a high end video rendering rig that I will need bolt cutters to upgrade six months from now?
Apple took the same shitty product it had in the 1980s and slapped a shiny case on it. They don’t make computers. They make appliances. Overpriced, over-hyped, single-use appliances.
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 11:49 am · Link
@Incertus (Brian):
I appreciate the generous assessment of my capabilities, but let’s face it, you couldn’t out-douche an Apple fan, even if you constructed a Frankenstein monster out of the entire case of Jersey Shore and mated it with Ashton Kutcher.
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 11:51 am · Link
@Zifnab:
Kinda like Abercrombie and Fitch—and for much the same reason.
Sentient Puddle - July 27, 2010 | 11:52 am · Link
@Winston Smith: I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one.
Catsy - July 27, 2010 | 12:07 pm · Link
@Winston Smith: Your douchey sin was responding to an Apple fanboy’s parade of smug, condescending taunts with a line-by-line takedown. They’re like Republicans that way: they love to bleat about how much better they are and toss around sanctimonious insults they’ve mistaken for facts, but return fire and you’re a hater.
Your comparison of Apple fanboys to Palin fanboys was more on point than not.
befuggled - July 27, 2010 | 12:07 pm · Link
@Mnemosyne: You got a link for that? Not that I doubt you, but it would be nice to have a reference.
And yes, it would be nice to be able to afford a low-cost Mac for my father-in-law. My wife was toying around with the idea of giving him an ipad instead, but I think a netbook is more reasonable.
Incertus (Brian) - July 27, 2010 | 12:15 pm · Link
@Zifnab: For fuck’s sake, it’s not trying to be a laptop. It’s a media consumption device, and it does that a fuckload better than any laptop ever could. Want to watch streaming video while laying in a hammock? Good luck getting comfortable with that cheap laptop. Have you tried reading a novel on a laptop? No thanks.
So you don’t think it’s a good deal. I get that. But please, don’t act like the iPad and a laptop are meant to do the same things. They’re not, and no one I’ve ever heard of is claiming that they are.
Incertus (Brian) - July 27, 2010 | 12:16 pm · Link
@Catsy: Maybe it’s time for a Palin corollary to Godwin’s Law, at least on liberal sites.
RareSanity - July 27, 2010 | 12:19 pm · Link
@Mnemosyne:
I think that was the exact point being made.
Sentient Puddle - July 27, 2010 | 12:20 pm · Link
@Incertus (Brian): I don’t think just yet. All that happened was Winston said a stupid thing to try and rile people up. Beyond that, I think the only Palin comparisons I’ve seen around are to Republicans (a given) and Alvin Greene.
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 12:28 pm · Link
@Incertus (Brian):
When did the world decide that the benchmark of life quality was the circumstances in which you can watch video?
Get off my lawn!
No, but I’ve read a novel in a hammock. It wasn’t difficult or uncomfortable, and it didn’t run out of batteries. I’ll let you guess at the remarkable technology that allowed me to do that, but here’s a hint: Apple didn’t invent it.
Silver - July 27, 2010 | 12:29 pm · Link
@Zifnab:
How is a more capable computer a single-use appliance just because you don’t use the extra features?
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 12:30 pm · Link
@Sentient Puddle:
Or, I said a clever thing and succeeded. I guess it depends which side of the chimp house you’re on.
RareSanity - July 27, 2010 | 12:34 pm · Link
@Zifnab:
It bugs the shit out of me when someone argues superiority based on marketing campaigns, but, Apple’s products are far from “appliances”. They may be “niche”, narrowly targeted and “fashionable”, but they are not toys by any stretch of the imagination.
dj spellchecka - July 27, 2010 | 1:16 pm · Link
is this “whites are least likely to know what an iPad is, “a misprint? that can’t possibly be right even among facebook users…the whole “i’m a mac” series of tv ads is the whitest thing this side of seinfeld…one of the very first topics written up at thingswhitepeoplelike.com was “apple.”
Zifnab - July 27, 2010 | 1:22 pm · Link
@Incertus (Brian): A fuckload better? It’s a laptop without a keyboard! I watch videos and read books (and blogs, lots of blogs) from my laptop all day long. I have yet to suffer terribly from the experience.
But, it’s not only a laptop without a keyboard. It’s a laptop without a keyboard which means I’d have to run out and buy a peripheral if I ever wanted to use the damn thing to type. I can buy a nook or a kindle for less than half the price of an iPad if I really feel the need for a small media reader. Or I can just use an iPhone, a device I’m sure every iPad owner already has.
@RareSanity: I’m not arguing superiority based on marketing. I’m arguing that Apple’s appeal is largely aesthetic. If you took the Apple hardware and put it in a Dell case, far fewer people would want to buy it.
@Silver:
I think you just answered your own question.
Winston Smith - July 27, 2010 | 1:56 pm · Link
@Zifnab:
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
Oh, and if you want to use a USB keyboard, you need to by the docking station that provides access to the USB ports.
John D. - July 27, 2010 | 2:12 pm · Link
@Zifnab: Not quite.
It’s a laptop without a EXTERNAL keyboard. I can type upwards of 60 WPM on the virtual keyboard on my iPad without much issue, so I find the lack of an external keyboard a non-issue.
Also, there is not a laptop on the market that can touch the battery life of this thing. Seriously. I use it in non-standard, highly power-hungry ways (I VPN into my servers at work with this), and I get in excess of 11 hours of CONSTANT use without any charging whatsoever. It does take quite a while to recharge from an outlet, and doesn’t charge via USB, though.
RareSanity - July 27, 2010 | 2:48 pm · Link
@Zifnab:
I agree.
I think we are saying the same thing. My point was that their products, technologically, are not in the realm of “appliances”.
Brachiator - July 27, 2010 | 3:49 pm · Link
@Zifnab:
Sorry, it’s really not Mac vs PC. It’s geek vs common sense. I watched a couple of podcasts of some people I usually respect jump through all kinds of hoops defending Apple’s iPhone antenna gate debacle. But later, one of them fell all over themselves slobbering over android phones because of its operating system and all the open source possibilities and customization.
Ultimately, they all came together in a rather curious place, the notion that smartphones were really computers with cameras and their utility as a goddam workable phone was secondary.
Someday, Apple, Google and Microsoft will all make cars that only get 2 miles a gallon, mysteriously come to a stop when you make left turns, and will require software updates every other week before you can start them, and have a battery that will only last 2 hours before requiring a recharge. But geeks will love them because every smart car will come with two cameras and will let you download and play games while you are parked in the garage, incapable of going anywhere.
scarshapedstar - July 27, 2010 | 4:04 pm · Link
Lolwut? Who the fuck wrote this?
The way I read it. 99.9% of Koreans know what the iPad is, and 98.6% of whites know what the iPad is.
Which is a difference of 1.3%. Not 800%.
Thlayli - July 27, 2010 | 4:29 pm · Link
@Zifnab:
Does that not count? Do you like having an ugly black box in your living room?
I almost used “beige” in the last sentence. But nobody makes beige boxes anymore. You can thank Apple for that. And for using USB to connect everything. And for flat panels on the desktop.
Winston Smith - July 28, 2010 | 10:36 am · Link
@Thlayli:
Oh, so being black is ugly now. Typical elitist white Apple fan. *
Actually, the companies who created USB were Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel.
You can thank Apple for the incremental cost added to all the PCs that support FireWire (IEEE 1394).
* Just kidding, relax!