Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Don't Talk to me About Economy Any More

If such a useless and exorbitantly priced gadget as iPad2 was sold out as soon as it was released, that means there is no economic crisis any more. I don't know if it did exist at some point, but this is conclusive evidence that it's over. If people are willing to shell out over $700 for this useless extension of i-store, then they must be in a really great shape financially. Since iPad has no practical use, what people are paying for is bragging rights and an opportunity to spend even more money purchasing apps.

Something tells me that it isn't their own money that people are wasting on this silly toy, of course. There is a huge probability that, yet again, people are getting massively into debt to own yet another useless piece of junk. Which means that we are in for yet another round of collective insolvency.

6 comments:

fairykarma said...

Apple has always been an expensive brand so the demographic that would typically buy those products wasn't that badly affected by the economy.

College students and some recent graduates, the least financially educated people and at times very insulated from the realities of life, are also part of that target demographic. I weep when I see these dandies buy 200 dollar T-shirts and jeans, mostly because they were made by the same lady who made my $20 jeans, except she sewed a different emblem on mine.

It could also be people are still in denial about the decline of the middle class.

NancyP said...

A segment of the upper middle class is doing just fine in the current economy, and their children are the IPad customers.

The people buying the IPads are the hipsters and wanna-bes, by and large, with a few affluent geeks thrown in the mix. The IPads are lovely, but simply don't have the functionality of a laptop of any size (or of a "smart-phone" such as the IPhone). Apple has positioned itself as the "designer" electronics company, and people are willing to pay extra for the "coolness factor".

There's a common phenomenon of purchasing the relatively less-expensive luxury to distract oneself from the inability to afford long-term durable goods or real estate eg, the "starter home" or "dream house", or the perceived or real inability to save and invest.

Apple has a good computer product with a sensible operating system, although their hardware has been expensive relative to the PC hardware world.

Anonymous said...

From one Clarissa to another... I thought the same way both of you did, till my husband bought one and I started using it. It is an incredibly useful piece of merchandise and trumps the PC in many ways. Consuming of content is way easier on the iPad than PC... reading magazines, newspapers, and books are joy. It is great for doing research, much better than lugging a PC around. With the backlight you can read in bed or in dark areas. Streaming movies to watch is fantastic too. If you are a writer, you can download PDF's and use a stylus tool to take notes upon it which beats printing out miles of paper and taking notes upon it. It is the answer to revitalizing the magazine and newspaper industry which sitting in front of PC to consume this material was not. We use it for recipe books, magazines, movies, writing... it is also great for those afraid of technology as the grandpa who doesn't want to commit to a PC is able to use the iPad much easier. Many things work better on the iPad than a PC and iPhone namely the consuming of content.

Clarissa said...

This is very interesting. I might be given a free iPad by my university this summer and I really hope you will come back to the blog and give me advice on how to use it.

Anonymous said...

Oh and yes... it's exorbitantly priced... but worth it, when it is about your work and used for your work. They're made for those in the arts... writers, photographers, etc. and most of us will forgo several months out to dinner to have a better piece of equipment to create with than a standard PC which is a nightmare.

Anonymous said...

It's so simple! I fought it as well... my husband got one for his birthday and I made fun of it, then found myself addicted to it!