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Help me. This is not normal behaviour. I saw the Apple Watch and didn’t think, “That is a preposterous piece of absurdly overpriced crap”. I saw the Apple Watch and thought, “Come to me, you thing of beauty, for I must have Siri on my wrist”.
If I am not to turn into a younger Stephen Fry, reacting to every new technological device like a four-year-old on a sugar high and ejaculating amazement and wonder with every new tweak, it may be time for an intervention.
The case against Apple is well known and convincing: it is monopolistic and exercises a sort of nannyish tyranny over its users – hence the constantly renewed “jailbreak” software. The Apple that in 1984 railed against Big Brother has become Big Brother. It is also a parasite.
The technological basis for Apple’s products, as Mariana Mazzucato has pointed out, was developed entirely in the public sector. The click wheel, microprocessor, micro hard drive, liquid crystal display, signal compression and lithium ion batteries that went into the first-generation iPod were all developed by employees of the US government, in the department of energy or the department of defence, or in other sectors of the public defence industry. The internet, touchscreen, GPS, Siri and cellular technology that went into the iPhone and iPad were all similarly developed by the state.
What Apple has effected, just like Microsoft before it, is an act of enclosure. It has taken public property and commodified it. It has done this with the support and protection of the US government, which has consistently sought to batter down all trade walls – Chinese walls included – while simultaneously preserving its intellectual property. It has been careful, subsequently, to patent as much of its product as possible to prevent competitors from emulating it and forcing down prices. With that monopoly edge, it also enjoys access to some of the most exploitable labour on the planet. The returns are considerable: Apple made £4.5bn profit in the last quarter.
Taking the example of the iPod, we can break down the process like this. The US defence, energy and scientific research bureaucracies produce innovations, which are then – in the spirit of enterprise – freely appropriated by Apple.
Apple then designs and patents its product, with the hundreds of parts mostly made in south-east Asia and assembled in China at the Foxconn plant. It is then sold for more than twice the factory cost of the device, with the added revenue being split between Apple and official Apple retailers.
The first generation iPod sold at $300 (£186), with Apple and the retailers accounting for $155, and the factory cost accounting for $145. Workers are exploited but consumers still pay vastly over the odds.
Not only this, but it isn’t even necessarily better technology. Practically everyone you run into has a better, faster, slicker smartphone than your iPhone. Other tablets don’t have the ridiculous exclusions that Apple operates in terms of apps. Techies sniff derisively at the iMac and tell you with weary disdain that you should have got a normal PC and installed Ubuntu like any civilised human being. Apple Maps has got me lost more than once. And as for the autocorrect, the surfeit of Buzzfeed-style articles listing embarrassing hiccups while texting a loved one, or a stranger, is evidence that the ghost of Steve Jobs enjoys making us look stupid.
It would be far better for all concerned, except the shareholders, if we simply expropriated Apple and its competitors, and turned the entire industry over to the public sector, with innovation and new products paid for with general taxation.
And yet. Apple products are beautiful, smooth, ingenious, luxurious. As every Apple addict knows, they’re “just better”. This is surely the sweet spot of unreasoning loyalty that advertisers are always looking for.
The Apple Watch is going straight on my wish list. Please help.
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