I strongly disagree with that. Apple's marketing has always been honest. And talking about the honesty or transparency of the product marketing is kind of a surface level thing compared to what I'm really talking about, which is the kind of myths and narratives that these companies tell about themselves, as well as what others say about them.
I think there's something more fundamentally deceptive about how Google has carried themselves out to be for the past 20 years than there is with Apple. And I think you're actually seeing the result of that now with the turmoil that's been taking place for the past couple of years at Google.
>There's a lot of snobbery, marketing and heavy-handed "evangelism" about using Apple products.
I think I covered this with:
>It's always been confident, others would say arrogant about its products.
They've always used effusive marketing about their products but I just think that makes them good at marketing. If the products weren't good they'd never have had any success, especially over a sustained multi decade period. Even tech people who have an aversion to the proprietary, appliance-like nature of their products started using them in the early 2000s because it was UNIXy and they realized what a pain in the ass it was to use something like Linux on their laptop or desktop. My point is that the fundamental relationship between Apple and the tech industry was honest. You might not like what Apple represents but you bought the products because you liked them because of its inherent qualities.
All the people that go to work at Apple are there because they probably used Apple products as a child/teen and they want to work on them. Apple didn't court them with a con.
I think the surprising thing is that people are surprised.
It took basically until now for the bloom to come off the rose. Think about that. For 20 years Google has been supposedly hiring the smartest guys in the room and all it took was free food, some ball pits and slides, contributing some tech to open source, and working on a handful of "moonshots" that haven't gone anywhere to keep the sheen of innovation going. And it worked. For 20 years.
People have been saying Google is the new Microsoft for a few years but it basically took until now for that to become consensus. Microsoft, who's been on the back foot until recently, has recast themselves as the new Open Source Champion, basically using the Google playbook from 20 years ago. And it's working!
If you think about it Apple is the only company that hasn't changed. There's never been a bait and switch. It's always been proprietary. It's always been confident, others would say arrogant about its products. They've never tried to cloak themselves with the mantle of open source. The only reason the tech industry uses their products is because of its inherent qualities. No one had to be tricked into liking them. And they've always been honest about this.
All the "privacy cranks" were right about Google. But from 2000 to about 2015 they were casually dismissed as fringe. People really bought the "Don't be evil" slogan externally (and I'm sure internally as well). Before Facebook, they mastered the art of doing something bad then walking it back with an apology and some opt-out privacy setting that they knew no one would enable. Privacy was always an afterthought (read Steven Levy's book about Google).
I think there's something more fundamentally deceptive about how Google has carried themselves out to be for the past 20 years than there is with Apple. And I think you're actually seeing the result of that now with the turmoil that's been taking place for the past couple of years at Google.
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...