Class signaling via Apple products
18 Apr 2012 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firecat"A Macbook Pro is just as much of a status marker as a Louis Vuitton purse or a BMW."
I recoil at the notion because I think Vuitton purses and BMWs signal a different class than ones I identify with. (At least I tend to have prejudices about people who have those things—I'll assume "not like me" unless I get evidence to the contrary.) But I do think that, in California at least, there's a class I might call "hi-tech professionals" and having Mac products can signal identification with it.
FWIW, I think I'm kind of clueless about class.
Anyway, it's interesting to contemplate. What do you think?
I recoil at the notion because I think Vuitton purses and BMWs signal a different class than ones I identify with. (At least I tend to have prejudices about people who have those things—I'll assume "not like me" unless I get evidence to the contrary.) But I do think that, in California at least, there's a class I might call "hi-tech professionals" and having Mac products can signal identification with it.
FWIW, I think I'm kind of clueless about class.
Anyway, it's interesting to contemplate. What do you think?
no subject
Date: 19 Apr 2012 12:06 am (UTC)My landlady, on the other hand, has an iPod touch and a new iPad, and she can barely use either of them. I've messed around on other people's devices-of-that-nature and offered to teach Landlady how to do whatever she wants to learn how to do on her own, but she turns me down with "If you can't afford one, I don't want to learn how it works from you." She carries these with her to work and pretty much everywhere else and sits there pretending to work on them despite not actually being able to use them. That looks like status marker to me, and that's behavior I associate more with the non-laptop Apple products. (Or, increasingly, the MacBook Air, but in my experience, not the regular MacBooks or the Pros.)
But I have my Pro because I love the Mac interface. Half my previous-college was Mac labs, half Windows. But I also went to a super-nerdy high school where we had access to about a gazillion different operating systems, so when it was laptop-buying time, I knew what I liked best, and I shopped for something that would suit me long-term.
And yes to what someone said in one of the comments - I find every single one of my graphics-related programs works better on my Mac than on comparable PCs. (Not that I'm an artist; I just mess around with stuff. But. It works faster and is more easily controlled and just has a nicer interface or whatever. idk.)
Ooh side note re fashion. I have two friends who carry big-name purses. One uses the same purse every day and treats it like, y'know, a thing that carries stuff but also looks nice. Carry it on a shoulder, half-under an arm. The other has at least forty purses, and each of those purses has either NAME IN LARGE FONT ON SIDE OF PURSE or NAME ON TAG HANGING FROM PURSE HANDLE. These purses are carried by the handles in one hand, arm held at what looks to me an extremely awkward angle to get that purse up there in eyesight. Set on a table in the restaurant when everyone else has purses on the booth beside them. Always with that BRAND NAME facing out. I think that's an (extreme but useful) example of useful object vs status marker - and it all comes down to how the people use it.
(I love my uncle's BMW because it handles really nicely. I didn't notice it was a BMW until after I'd already fallen in love with driving it. I'm observant.)
no subject
Date: 19 Apr 2012 01:57 am (UTC)"If you can't afford one, I don't want to learn how it works from you."
WHAAAA?
I'm either oblivious to "PURSE BRAND NAME FACING OUT" behavior or I don't know people who do it.
I don't get people who have 40 purses. I HATE transferring things from one bag into another.