Are Apple Gadgets More Female Friendly?
All of you dudes who take pride in being macho bastions of masculinity may need to shut down the iPhones, Macs, and iPods, according to Bridget Brennan, CEO of Female Factor. While Brennan is probably attempting to celebrate Apple's appeal to female consumers, her editorial piece for Forbes on Apple as 'The World's Most Discreetly Feminine Brand' merely comes across as highly offensive to both men and women.
The column is littered with belittling comments masked as empowerment. She portends that Apple is more feminine-friendly because its devices don't typically require "instructions that are poorly written and hard to understand," implying that men enjoy ineligible instructions and highly complicated gadgets that require painstaking assemblage. Woohoo! And, are women so technically inept that they require instruction-less, dumbed-down gadgets? C'mon. What decade is it?
She goes on to say that, "small, elegant and curvy" designs are geared toward women. Anthropologically speaking, aren't those attributes supposed to be enticing to men, as well? Huge, clunky, and obtuse gadgets don't sound very attractive to anyone. Finally, she asserts that Apple's excellent customer service has a "huge female appeal in virtually every industry." Yeah, men love lazy, abusive, and insolent sales people, and women simply want to be catered to.
Why even make such divisive comments based on gender? The overall point here should be to celebrate the fact that Apple gizmos appeal to almost everyone, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, age, or gender. Unlike people, technology doesn't discriminate. [From: TUAW]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
winger said 10:33AM on 8-04-2009
It's true. Apple is geared towards women. (And men who are in touch with their feminine side).
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Jordan said 10:59AM on 8-04-2009
Agreed
Allerious said 4:28AM on 9-21-2009
The article and its primary contention are correct, whereas your commentary is riddled with logical flaws.
First of all, Apple is geared towards people who are less tech savy than PC users.
Women are less tech savy than men. Women also tend to care more than men about the types of features that Apple includes as selling points.
Things like aesthetics, user friendliness, customer service. You're creating a straw man by going to the opposite extreme and sardonically suggesting that men like to put up with ugly, technical devices and poor support.
That isn't the point. They don't. But in a world of limited resources, you can't have it all. The question is where do people put their priorities. On aesthetics or functionality? Customer service or solid engineering? Price or performance?
All of the following is true:
Apple appeals to liberals.
Most women are liberals.
Liberal men are more effeminate and have less testosterone than conservative men.
Apple is basically a company that panders to white, middle-class hipsters who are liberals practically by definition.
Given all of the above, it basically goes without saying that Apple products are more "female friendly". This is so obvious that it hardly needs to be explained.
Nearly everything about the company is feminine, from it's "clean white" image to its "curvy, minimalist" design aesthetic, to its endorsement of overwhelmingly liberal pop stars like U2, to its support of the liberal "green cult".
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