Class signaling via Apple products

[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?

Comments

[merielle]

Wow, I'm feeling a bit defensive now.

There are at least three pieces to the notion of status symbol - the possessor of said objects deploying them as such, the way those objects are perceived by others, and the extent to which the producers of the objects deliberately craft a public image and attempt to sway public perception of their objects and, by extension, the consumers thereof.

Generally, I think the author of this piece is assuming a lot of intentionality and neglecting a lot of practical concerns. On the first point, the deployment of objects by users, I think the laptop is different from the other products. iPods and iPads are pricey toys (though you can actually create content on an iPad, not just consume it, I'm aware that's not how most people use them), but laptops are tools. There are loads of reasons why someone would choose a MacBook Pro that have nothing to do with social status. If one is an artist, a graphic designer, a filmmaker, or in related industries, Macs are the industry standard and yeah, the software works better.

I own a MacBook Pro. I did not choose it because I think it makes me cooler. I chose it because 1) I prefer OSX to any other operating system out there right now; 2) I do enough desktop publishing, photo editing, design, and statistical analysis that I do actually need this much memory and computing power; 3) I'm a graduate student at a giant state school at which, the IT department tells us quite frequently, the average time it takes for a computer on the local network to get infected with a virus or spyware or otherwise invaded is about 10 minutes; given how much of my work is stored in this machine, the dearth of viruses and spyware for Mac is a significant selling point. Also, my partner works for Apple, so we're pretty much a Mac-only household; it's what he's most familiar with, we both like them, and I get the added benefit of expert, in-house, 24-hour tech support. :) But fundamentally, I have this laptop because it best suits my needs. For me, as a savvy end user who can usually fix my stuff when it breaks but would rather not, straight-up UNIX is impractical. And Windows flat sucks. The story I always tell is that when I went to DC to intern several years ago, I was sitting next to a another intern who had a Dell-made Windows laptop. It took her almost an hour to successfully get internet access - I can't remember at this point what all the various issues were, but she was heaving huge sighs, cussing, and fiddling for more than 45 minutes. Me? I plugged in an ethernet cable. Took me about two minutes, and it only took that long because I had to unroll the cable and then crawl under the desk to plug it into the wall. That's the thing - the Mac just *works* the vast majority of the time, and it lets me do my actual work instead of fucking around with the tools I need to do my work. If I'm going to cook a meal, I don't want to have to re-attach my knife handle to the tang three times, you know? I just want to chop my damn onions.

I take my MacBook Pro to coffee shops and cafes because I have meetings in those places for which I need my laptop. I often need to meet my advisor, people I'm interviewing for projects, people with whom I am working on community organizing/activist projects, etc, and it is convenient to meet at coffee shops. I know several freelance graphic designers and artists who do the same thing. We all do this because we work from home and we need relatively safe public spaces to meet people for work purposes - particularly those of us who are women and/or queer and thus extra cautious about putting ourselves in situations where we are vulnerable to strangers. I know some writers who take their laptops to public places just to get out of the house and out into the big world. None of these actions are about plumage display; they're about the practical day-to-day details of many kinds of knowledge work. Of course knowledge work is linked to economic and education privilege, but that's a different matter than hipster showing off of shiny titanium toys.

I am aware that some people deploy Apple products for status purposes. I am also aware that Apple products are coded in the public sphere as connoting individualism and creativity, which are associated with leisure and education and therefore with the upper classes; I think at least part of what's going on there is the fact that Mac is the industry standard in several creative fields, and the marketing department at Apple knows this and leverages it to sell a certain amount of coolness by association. The individualism/iconoclasm piece has been a part of Apple's internal culture and the image it chooses to project since the company's inception. Intertwined with the class issues here is the notion of authenticity, which is generally associated with lower classes. It seems to me that part of what many people find distasteful about Apple products being used out in public is the sense that the user is a poseur - if you're not *actually* an artist, you shouldn't get the coolness cred. And maybe even if you are an artist and own one of these laptops, you're still a poseur because artists aren't supposed to be able to afford them; they're supposed to be poor and suffering.

And as an aside, I'm pretty sure the biggest reason most people use the white earbuds is simply that that's what comes with the iPod/iPad and they work well enough that it's not worth the effort or expense to replace them.

[firecat]

There are at least three pieces to the notion of status symbol - the possessor of said objects deploying them as such, the way those objects are perceived by others, and the extent to which the producers of the objects deliberately craft a public image

This is an excellent point.

I have Apple stuff for several of the same reasons you do. It didn't ever occur to me before that someone would identify me as a brand-for-the-sake-of-brand consumer for using it in public.