Reasons for Apple Success

 

As of now, Apple Computers is one of the most valued companies in the world. They have left not just most other tech companies behind, but also most other businesses as well. They are making billions and billions of profits.

However, if you look at Apple products from a rational techie point of view, they are very underpowered, ridiculously overpriced and very poor quality. They would be a questionable buy even if they were 80% discounted, that is unless you plan to resell them on ebay for more.

Quite an anomaly here. Why such a poor product succeeds as much as it does. The short answer is feelings.

We like to think that people are rational beings and make decision based on logic and facts. Such a view would be prevalent among the engineering and tech community as you do need these things together with math to actually make any product work at all. Thus, mostly logical and rational people succeed in engineering careers. including software engineering.

However, world is bigger than just engineering community. It has people who fail at math and sciences who nonetheless succeed in life based on other abilities such as emotional "intelligence", favoritism, cronyism, beauty and such. 

Such people as well as those who promote or marry them clearly do not make their decision based on logic and facts. They make them based on either feelings or social reputation. I will analyze each of these parameters separately.

Social reputation is the idea that certain items signify your status in society. For example, in military there are chevrons, starts, bars and other such devices denote rank. One star general is below the 5 star one. These ranks and devices that represent them are coveted by people.

Some extrapolate this logic into civilian world and luxury item manufacturers make a lot of money on it by associating their brand with high social status, Rolex, Versace, Rolls Royse are an example. 

To a certain extend Apple did tried to associate their brand with a social status. For example, these old ads of Mac vs PC were aimed at precisely that impression. These have not succeeded, but eventually they got there by other means.

Second and most important aspects is feelings. Feelings do seem rather simple on the surface: just because I like it. They see something, they love it and buy it. No thought process involved whatsoever. Sometimes people even buy things as expensive as cars for such superfluous reasons such as because its red, cool, pretty or has good vibes. Laptops or smartphones are much less expensive and important so such approach would be followed by more people in regard to their tech. It is because of people like that marketing departments exist and every so often invent various over the top ad campaign.

Sometimes emotional people later rationalize their decisions with some hastily combined arguments. Such arguments mislead people around them into thinking there are some rationales behind such decision when in fact there was none. It was an emotional decision.

However, what makes people like this or that and dislike something else is a rather tricky question. Many people as different as fiction writers, philosophers, astrologists, politicians and psychologists pondered over this question. So far biologists and psychologists have not produced a definitive mapping of the feelings compartment of human psyche, at least it's not publicly available.

Because there are no concrete set of rules for appealing to feelings, certain people with a knack or gift of getting such things often succeed in life or business. I do not know Steve Jobs personally so I cannot know if he reversed engineered feelings or just stumble upon the solution randomly, but whatever he did worked. However, if reverse engineered feelings do exist somewhere in Apple, value of this information is indeed high as it will all but guarantee business success.

In fact, I myself try to reverse-engineer feelings and become rich from that.

Tech world is crowded with companies that are run by rational tech savvy people who make sound rationally good tech products for equally tech savvy rational customers. In a world like that a company that appeals to feelings rather than logic would have no real competition for irrational emotional technically and mathematically illiterate casuals who buy based on feelings and emotions. Apple is such company. Apple's success made some of them try to imitate them in various ways in order to snatch at least part of their huge customer base. 

However just imitating Apple design decisions will not guarantee success. Line of thinking that it's something in their usability or convenience is fundamentally wrong. There is nothing rational in what makes Apple as popular as it is.

All Apple success comes from such non-engineering things, such as marketing, design, presentation and vibe. Outer appearance over the substance. 

Because of that one way to imitate Apple's success is to just take a sample of such illogical emotional Apple fans and just show them different design options to see what they like more.

The other is to reverse engineer feelings. To do this we need to take samples of what succeeds against any logical sense and try to figure out common patters behind these successful examples.

There is a lot of money to make by exploiting the stupid illogical people who do not think rationally. Apple's success is a proof of that. There are still a lot of room for more out of the box thinking tech companies who will manage to grasp illusive vibe that makes such people buy Apple products like hot cakes.

PS: Fundamentally emotional illiterates who cannot into math want to feel they are as savvy and advance as smart guys who actually get this stuff. Apple gives them feelings. The feeling. It does not offer then a choice that is actually smart. It only makes them feel they are making a smart choice. All Apple sells is an illusion (delusion) that their products are good. People buy into the delusion and refuse to wake up from it.

That is just one of the delusions, emotional people like to indulge.

Why We Should Learn from Muslim Approach to Women and Relationship

Often Islam associated with a lot of restrictive rules that mostly apply to women. Some even call it oppression. People see Muslim women covered from head to toe and think they are as conservative and restrictive as Amish, Jehovah Witnesses or other radical Christian groups. 

At the same time there is another aspect about Muslim women, based on (in)famous harem of Turkish Sultans that is occasionally used as an inspiration for harems in porn movies.

So where is the truth in all that. In reality is in between these two extremes, both of which are actually true.

Since I have a number of Muslim friends, some of them have invited me to visit their place. When I visit unmarried guys, we hang out in their place just like we would with people from other places. 

However, once I was invited by a married Muslim guy who had four kids. One might expect to be able to meet his wife and see his kids, but that is not what happened. He told me that per Islamic tradition a part of house where wife and kids live is off limits to anyone, but husband and we have to make do of the only room not used by them. It wasn't that the guy was inhospitable, far from it. It was just an Islamic tradition. Together with me there was another Muslim guest who had to abide by the same rules. I did not meet his wife or kids, but we still had good time as he showcased various things.

Back in the days I did not think too much of this experience. However, many years later I came back to this and decided to analyze this tradition and decipher the reasons for such approach. Connecting dots from several separate pieces of information got me to an interesting conclusion. 

Muslims make their women cover their hair and keep parts of home where they live off limits to any visitor to prevent spousal infidelity and adultery. Most of the rules about women have this simple goal in mind. The less other men see someone's wife, the less likely they would want to sleep with her. That is why wife is kept in an area off limits to visitors. That is why when she is in public she is covered from head to toe. Some go even further by forbidding married women from going out without husband supervision.

Adultery and infidelity is a common problem in the Western world as well. A lot of marriages and relationships collapse because of infidelity. Reducing female attractiveness to strangers is one way of fixing it. The problem does need fixing and younger generations increasingly refuse to enter relationships and marriage because they do not want to repeat mistakes of those whose marriages have ended in a painful divorce.

However, there is one more thing that I have discerned from these rules. The word harem or haram actually means forbidden or off-limits. It is used for variety of things forbidden for different reasons.

Fundamentally every Muslim household function as famous harems of Turkish Sultans. The only difference is in size. Someone as powerful and influential as a ruler of the Ottoman empire can afford a huge palace for his wifes' together with eunuch servants and other fancy things. A more ordinary Muslim can only afford a designated off-limits room or several. 

Rules for each are the same, husband is the only male who can enter and the whole place is serves as entertainment area for him. That is wifes are not expected to be modest when they are alone with husband, they expected to be sexy, entertain him and seduce him into fucking them. All that of course happens in the closed-off area away from curious prying eyes. I could not verify it myself as I had not opportunity, nor a talent for sneaking into closed off areas. 

Of course, each household is different, not everyone has private orgies with their wifes, but such a possibility is not too farfetched.

Thus, approach when wifes are modest with people other than their husband and only allowed to be sexy when there are alone with their husband is fundamentally much more adequate arrangement that will lead towards greater relationship satisfaction. Why so? Imagine the opposite situation, that often happens in relationship in the West and Russia.

At home wife is lazy and takes this time to relax and do nothing. She wears old clothes as she is too afraid to damage expensive fancy dress she is saving up for some special occasion. Any husband is unlikely to find that attractive and they do not. Instead, they look at their wife and think why they were so stupid to marry in the first place. It's a wife's problem but most of them do not think this way and instead blame their husband for being impotent.

Then when she goes out for that special occasion, she puts her best dress, does make up and so on. In doing so she often takes longer than necessary, making her husband worry if they will be late and so on. After all this stress with being late he no longer cares if she looks good or not. 

However, once they finally arrive at the special occasions, there lots of strangers can see his wife at her best without seeing how much trouble she caused her husband to get this pretty. Some of them might like her so much, they will try to cheat with her.

All in all, a typical western approach I outlined above is a self-defeating way of life, that will only cause more divorces and unhappy marriages. Sure, not everyone takes it as far as that but there is a clear tendency for self-defeating behavior that leads to divorce and unhappiness. If wife wants to be loved by a husband, she has to work hard to look good at home in his presence, not on special occasions when she meets outsiders. It she does not do that her husband will lose interest, and it will end up sad.

Sure, not every Muslim would be able to elaborate on all that as much as I did, must just do it because God says so. However, it does work, and their marriages are more stable and happier than those in the West. It's not that divorce is forbidden in Islam, it's not. However, few ever go this way. 

Thus, we should study Muslim experience and use it to improve our own relationships between genders. We do not have to become Muslims ourselves and follow other rules of Islam, some of which are rather useless. Instead, we should create a composite system that will work in our secular society.

For example, it would make sense that only women in a marriage or in a relationship would dress modestly in public. Single women still need to look attractive to interest potential partner. We do not want to go path or arranged marriages, negotiated between families as this have plenty of issues on its own, for example, differences in tastes between parents and children.

However, the rest is possible for any couple to do on their own volution. Every wife can and should dress modestly in public, but at the same time wear sexiest lingerie at home for her husband. Doing this will make relationship more stable and satisfying for both sides.

Satire is best form of Humor

To think of it most to all comedies and humor that I like is satire. Gintama, Excel Saga, Nichijou or Kill Me Baby are all mostly satire. Even South Park or ZAZ movies are satire.

Other types of humor do not appeal to me. For example, I dislike Konosuba or Azumanga Daioh

Positive Qualities Grow Out of Negative Ones

Some unwise and misguided people think that negative qualities is something that can just be eliminated.

However, that is far too simplistic way of looking at it. Even Astrology proves that positive and negative qualities are two sides of the same coin, and every set of positive qualities is balanced out with relevant negative ones.

I would go even further and say that positive qualities ultimately grow out of negative ones. 

For example, a prideful and arrogant person might one day become a genius. People tend to think genius is some sort of gift of God or just random luck. However no, to really wrap your mind around all these complex problems you need time and determination. An average person can give up in no time. However, if a person is arrogant and prideful, their own pride would push them towards figuring it out, simply because they are too much of a genius to not be able to get something so trivial. That believe that you are unparallel genius head and shoulders above the rest is what makes them able to solve complex problems.

Other times people go to great length for fame and acclaim.

Desire to appeal to opposite gender makes people work on their beauty and sexual attraction and so on.

Thus, all positive qualities are grown out of negative ones.

Sure, there can be people with just negative and no positive qualities, but I am very skeptical there are any with just positive ones.

Mask of Virtue

Dealing with my parents cause me to mistrust people who put their "virtues" on the forefront. 

My mother would tell her friends and relatives that she spends a lot of time and effort to take care of me and my brother. However, in private when her friends and relatives cannot see, she would not do anything for us. Even simple ketchup was too expensive for her to buy me. On the other hand, selfish cunt tried to use me to do household chores in her place.

Father used to say that honoring one's word is most important thing in the world. He used to say I can tell him anything only to betray my trust and go batshit insane when I said something he did not like. He promised me to sell the apartment and give me the money. He sold it and kept money to himself, making up half ass excuses to make it look like he did not just steal them.

They both are hypocrites who hid their rotten self behind mask of virtue to good will and honoring promises. These fake to the core people made me skeptical about other people who profess good intentions. Sure, far not all of them would be like my parents and some can genuinely help me, but other will be the same kind of wolfs in sheep skin and will curry trust only to betray me later.

Because of all that I do not trust people with my life and my secrets.

Since Western Word does not produce humble women, we have to import them from Asia.

Since Western Word does not produce humble women, we must import them from Asia. We can trade Asians our spoiled princess wannabees if they want them.

I Like to Kill

I often write how exterminating all retirees would make life better for all other demographics. I even praise Hitler for reducing population with his genocidal policies and with that making life better for those who were left. I also lament the fact all current politicians are pathologically incapable of similarly brave actions to fix overpopulation and resulting homelessness, poor working and rental conditions, lack of housing and cost of living crisis.

However, that is not all there is. I enjoy killing. In video games I kill all the time and find it fun and fulfilling. I also like to loot bodies for valuables. Diablo II games are all about that. I like powerful spells that make this job fast and easy too. I do not want to get mired in long fruitless struggle where some stupid club only maims but does not kill the target. I want them to stop living as fast as possible. I also like to delegate killing to subordinates as I supervise them, that I why I run skelemancer build.

Alas there is too little opportunity to kill anyone in real life. Even military nowadays is mostly about digging trenches, servicing machinery and discipline. Because of that I spend time playing video games instead. Only in video games I can kill and steal. However, I can do more than that and take it to a higher level, I can lead a country and an army, make them kill millions and then steal all the valuable provinces from other countries in my world conquest spree. 

Video games make life what it should be. I was not meant to clean toilets or push shopping trolleys; I was chosen by heaven to rule, set my name by decree to rule.