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iPad Owners Are 'Selfish Elites'
An anonymous reader writes "It's not exactly official, but should also surprise no one: According to a new study the psychological profile of iPad owners can be summed up as 'selfish elites' while have-not critics are 'independent geeks.' Consumer research firm MyType conducted the study, in which opinions of 20,000 people were analyzed between March and May. The firm's conclusion was that iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, 'selfish elites.'"
Maybe I'm fortunate... because the ordinary Americans I interact with are largely nothing like that. Then again, I have the privilege of living in a wealthy state (NJ) -- and while the state is liberal, my neck of the woods is blood red with only a sprinkling of blue.
I think to pity them is more natural than to despise. Unless you're a hater by nature -- but you've already established that.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As long as there are 20 something year olds continuing to embrace the social rejection they experienced in high school as a positive trait in order to rationalize it, there will always be Apple haters. It's the same as people who thought pop music sucked because they had VGM OSTs and music from the hit show, Naruto.
Aren't they buying a shiny etch-a-sketch already?
Apple has done a great job in convincing people to by their brand of designer jeans.
If you're into that sort of thing, letting brands define who you are.
The big thing to learn about Apple is you need to keep buying their premium-priced products in the time they release them. Purchase lock-in, forced renewal. Because there will be a time, very near, that that hardware you just bought from them will be instantly obsoleted or unable to upgrade, maybe lose your files or at a minimum your software won't work. Jobs is a fickle hardware leader -- he has changed and dropped lines of products to go with something new. Next week might drop that shiny new toy you just bought. For all the problems with Windows, you can still run many old programs. Meanwhile Linux will run on very old and very new hardware, flexible with files and software.
Seriously ... it's a fairly pricey, non-essential gadget.
Actually, from the article, it seems it's a fairly pricey, highly useful gadget that is essential to "workaholics" and "achievers". You only find it non-essential because you're jealous. This isn't a slur on you - it's science.
I'm really tired of the /. mentality on what an Apple product user is.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass...
Nearly every Apple *fan* that I've met has been a pretentious prick. Now now, I don't mean if you use Apple products you are automatically a prick...but Apple fanboys(girls) are rabid on a level that is just plain scary.
For the record, I personally think Apple makes decent products, they just aren't for me.
To be honest that covers fanbois/zealots in general, including Linux, MS, Sony and Apple ones. A fanboi is little better than a god botherer regardless of creed.
"For the record, I personally think Apple makes decent products, they just aren't for me."
That comes real close to sounding like "they're OK, I just wouldn't let my daughter marry one" :-)
Nearly every Linux *fan* that I've met has been a pretentious prick. Now, I don't mean if you use Linux distributions you are automatically a prick...but Linux fanboys(girls) are rabid on a level that is just plain scary.
For the record, I personally think Linux is a decent OS, it's just not for me.
Unfortunately for you, for every person with an aging mother or grandmother who likes the convenience of the iPad, there are 20 people who know Apple fanatics who wait slavering with their credit cards at the ready to purchase whatever slick new gizmo Jobs puts out. I don't own any Apple products, but there will always be people like that at the forefront of technology and - let's face it - that's where Apple currently is. Just because they are there doesn't mean that the products they buy aren't quality, even if they may be buying them for the "wrong" reasons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA
Brian: "Think for yourself! You're all individuals!"
Crowd (simultaneously): "Yes, we're all individuals!"
Brian: "You're all different!"
Crowd (simultaneously): "Yes, we're all different!"
Man in crowd: "I'm not."
Comment of the year
If you look at the actual survey, in particular the Sin Graph, you get quite a different picture.
For you see, iPad owners have much higher quotients of Lust, much lower quotients of Greed (than non-iPad owners), and iPad owners are incredibly less lazy than non-iPad owners.
How can you be a "selfish elitist" if you aren't greedy compared to the people that don't have an iPad?
So we can see that iPad owners have days filled with supermodels and apparently giving to charity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There was a hipster in that doc that refused to date men who owned a PC
Well if they were anything like the Apple Haters on Slashdot, can you blame her for wanting to date men who would not ridicule her simply because of her choice of computer?
I wouldn't use that criteria for dating but then I don't think there are many (any?) women who are die-hard Apple Haters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So you're saying the iPad is the computer equivalent of a high performance sports car? You heard it here on /. here folks!
I chose the Smart on purpose as opposed to a sports car precisely because the iPad itself is relatively low power, limited function device. A sports car would be much more like one of those behemoth laptops with a server chip crammed into it and a battery life measured in minutes.
I gave a couple of examples - watching TV was one of them. Watching TV on a couch with a laptop is annoying, on an iPad it is actually pretty enjoyable - it's just a screen, so you don't have to sit and accommodate the laptop, you can just sit how you want and the form factor works much better.
Typing email/IM/text when standing up. Much easier when using an iPad. I was catching up with some emails while in the kitchen and it was much nicer than having to set a laptop/netbook down on the counter - I could just hold the iPad in one hand and use the other for typing, pot stirring/kitchen stuff etc.
Word games. It's much easier to play scrabble with my friends on an iPad than it is to use the trackpad on a netbook (unless my friends are actually over here, in which case I just use a real Scrabble board).
It works well as a computing device that you don;t have to specifically sit down/engage with. You can treat it much more like a phone - whatever you happen to be doing, you can interact with it and then put it down/set it aside because you're doing something else. With a laptop or netbook you have to have it on your lap, which limits you a little, or put it on a table which limits your movements. Portability factor is very high with the iPad, while obviously sacrificing some elements (kb/CD drive/ports etc).
Then the iPad is not for you; good for you.
No one said it had to be - but people are challenging owners of them to qualify its use, and those are examples.
I check my emails on my iPhone, as well as my main machine, an iPad would just be another window on my IMAP box (like I said, I don;t have one, but I borrowed one for a couple of weeks).
BBC iPlayer is awesome on it, and is almost worth the cost of the base model for me - I loved that I could watch anything that had been on in the last week without getting out of bed, or while I was eating breakfast. Sure, a netbook can do that too but the form factor really worked for me (and I also use my computer as a TV, and have an XBMC box hooked up to the TV in the main room, it doesn't mean I always have to watch my TV on either of those devices. It was nice to have the option.
I think a lot of this "it's useless, [thing X] can do everything it can do!" but if you rewind even 10 years people were saying the same thing about cellphones. Why buy a cellphone when you have a perfectly good phone in your house, and can use a payphone if you are out of the house? I'm not suggesting the iPad will become that ubiquitous (if ever the form factor takes off properly it will be with a plethora of different tablets from all manner of manufacturers), but new things come along all the time that change the way we do things we have always done.
Right, so you are not the target market for an iPad. I am not the target market for a netbook - there is no way *ever* I could get by with a netbook as my primary machine, which gives me a potential need (read: want/would be useful but not essential) gap for a portable extension of my main machine. That is being filled by an iPhone at the moment. Just because a netbook can be a replacement for a main box does not mean that would work for me (in exactly the same way that an iPad might not work for you - funny that, eh?)
The rural family extension of the analogy is stretching it. It was merely an indication; I'm not suggesting an iPad/tablet/iPhone/HTC Desire/XBMC box is an essential requirement, just that the parallel can be drawn. Want to send a quick email to Bob asking him to pick up some milk on the way over without having to get up because you're watching TV? The iPad (or a netbook) can do that for you, much like jumping into the Smart car and running to the store yourself instead of getting the big car out of the garage. If a family owned one car they could run to the store in it. If they owned another smaller, car they duplicate the functionality of a car and provide extra convenience though form factor. Not essential, but useful.
I do sometimes boil water in a metal kettle - my best friend has an Aga, so we make tea on it. She also has an electric kettle but hardly ever uses it; the Aga is already hot so it makes sense to boil the water that way. I also cook food in an oven, even though I own a microwave - the microwave has in no way superseded the oven, it has complemented it.
This article doesn't "confirm" anything. It just pats the back of Apple-haters like yourself for believing what you already believed. iPads are a new product, so naturally the people who own one right now are more likely to be wealthy, but that will change over time as more people adopt the platform.
I think some Slashdotters are still bitter that Apple took the thunder out of the late 90s/early 00s "Linux on the desktop" push. This story is completely juvenile. I can't help but wonder what kinds of stereotypical personalities a study of Linux users would reveal.
> There was mobile web browsing pre-iPhone but I found it unpleasant. On the iPhone, it worked.
No it doesn't. The web has just been replaced with "apps". Apps replace parts of the web that aren't suited for a "mobile" web browser.
This isn't even getting into flash.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The North American country club set banned the Iroquis' originators of the sport from playing in what is essentially the Iroquis' own religion
Then they play the sport at posh private academies, colleges and universities where they can rape the help if so inclined, and buy off the bosses of local prosecutors with buckets of money.
Only if you use bad hacks that are unecessary on more open systems and actually make the iPhone MORE DIFFICULT to deal with than open systems.
But I was talking about opening and viewing Word/Excel files. The iPhone/iPad reads those as-is - no hacks required.
Opening strange file types.
With the iPad and iOS3.2 SDK support for applications to declare support for file types was added. No hacking there either, it's all official.
I'll agree that the printing solutions currently require a third party app, but that's still not a hack and I generally do not print much from a mobile device. It is however annoying so I'll grant you that aspect is still pretty weak.
If you can't acknowledge these as the bad hacks that they are then you've certainly lost any perspective.
If you can't do basic research on what the thing you are critiquing supports, you end up looking rather foolish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley