back to article Social levelling with the iPad

People with Fords wish they had BMWs; people with BMWs wish they had Porsches, and people with Porsches wish they had Ferraris. Social class is alive, well and flourishing with cars, and also with clothes, with wrist watches, with holiday destinations, with all sorts of toys - but not with iPads. If you can afford the iPad …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Like Coca Cola

    Coca Cola is even more classless. An amazing brand. If you're a poor dude in a third world country a president or a multimillionaire gangster or an opera singer - it's just as desirable and highly accessible.

    I'm off to get a Coke now...

    1. HighlightAll
      Megaphone

      Coke and Apple have lots in common

      http://killercoke.org/ and http://www.cultofmac.com/report-another-foxconn-death-this-time-on-ipod-line/54098 . Classless at the user end and classfull at the rich owner end.

  2. Fazal Majid

    That's probably what will kill the Vertu

    Some people won't balk at the $7000 cost for a glorified Nokia, but won't pay for one since it falls flat compared to a bog-standard iPhone.

    Oh, I have a BMW, but the car I dream of is a Tesla, not a Porsche...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Badgers

      And when it breaks down

      or runs out of juice, you'll be dreaming of your beemer again.

  3. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Hole in one

    "What other uber-desirable toy is so ridiculously classless"

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      "uber-desirable"?

      What other uber-ridiculous toy is so undesirable?

      I'm not sure what it means to be "over-desirable" - overly desired, maybe? - but I suppose this means I'm immune to whatever intellectual defect it is that makes people want gadgets for the sake of having gadgets. (Or expensive cars for the sake of having expensive cars, and so on.)

  4. Daniel Warner
    FAIL

    Affordable??

    Whilst I agree with your sentiment how can you call the ipood, sorry ipad, affordable? It's £500 ffs!! Yes, it's sexy for a geeky toy and everyone's first impression is 'cool!' but when my 5 year old £300 laptop wil do EVERYTHYING it can do and more and it has keyboard, the battery lasts hours and is replaceable. No, it isn't a touch screen but boohoo.

    Affordable my a***!

    1. Chris McFaul
      WTF?

      wow

      " 5 year old £300 laptop wil do EVERYTHYING it can do"

      your 5 year old laptop has a touchscreen? thats very impressive....

      1. kwikbreaks
        FAIL

        Well...

        ..clearly the screen on whatever you are using needs fixing - he said it isn't a touch screen.

  5. Spassmonkey

    what about the geeks?

    Classless maybe, but there are already Android tablet users who look down their noses at those using ipads, and folks using windows 7 tablets who can't believe anyone would be proud of a device that can't even view flash websites, or attach USB accessories.

  6. Arnold Lieberman
    FAIL

    It just replaces distiction by class...

    ...with another differentiator - iDiots vs everyone else.

  7. Starfish

    Video Consoles & Games

    I've had the same thoughts before about video games - no matter how rich or powerful you are, the chances are you'll be sitting down to the exact same version of Call of Duty or FIFA as everyone else who has forty quid in their pocket.

  8. Bassey
    FAIL

    Affordable?

    Is the Register recession proof then? £500 stopped being affordable for lots of people (me included) about 18 months ago.

  9. lk1d

    I don't often post comments...

    This article is hogwash -based on what? I'm not anti Apple, but I am against propaganda posing as journalism.

  10. Jacek
    Flame

    Affordable NOT!

    Apple toys are NOT affordable! It is possible to buy their functional equivalents for fraction of their price.. Apple gadgets ARE status marks! By buying them the buyer is declaring: I'm too stupid to use something more functional, but I'm earn enough to do something useful...

  11. Mark Aggleton
    Stop

    Affordable

    Personally I think it's a POS but I understand people who don't. However even the Register shows you can pay as much as you want to differ from the oiks with 'standard' ones: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/15/diamond_ipad/

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Trend

    I can see a trend happening here. I remember the days of the 68K macs which were usurped by the PPC macs and themselves usurped by the Intel macs. Apple are now cuddling up to ARM for the processors in the iPads, so I bet that will be the new mac platform soon enough.

    Apple are beginning to hate those who provided them business, the likes of Adobe for instance. Flash is not supported on the iPad, partly to do with the battery life it reduces and partly because they don't want to be sleeping with Adobe any more. I'm sure its the same with Microsoft and others that have made their money on the backs of Apple.

    The market has changed from being a one button mouse, designer world to something you can multi-touch. Publishers can use PCs now to design their work at a fraction of the cost of a mac. They are now in the up and coming business market now, the traditional products will fall by the wayside.

    Oh and the i in these products stands for idiot. Anyone who will queue for hours to get the latest Apple tech product or suck up to Steve Jobs is an idiot. I'm sure Steve Jobs is a great person, but he is not a god and you don't have to follow him like a lapdog.

    Can Notion Inks hurry up and release, I haven't bought an Apple product yet and I want a decent tablet.

  13. Kataku
    Dead Vulture

    You're kidding right?

    "That's a great design trick to pull off Mr Jobs, kind of a core thing for Apple you might say."

    The ipad is classless like toilet paper is classless, can we please not praise people for that.This is a property of consumer electronics and much else besides and Mr Jobs does not deserve recognition for it!

    Also, it still costs a fair bit. Within that price bracket most things are classless. I have the best phone i could have right now and on contract it wasn't much...but if i won the lottery i probably wouldn't get a new phone on account of a better one not being out right now.

    What you've done here isn't journalism, its idolatry.

  14. The Unexpected Bill
    Happy

    Me, want a BMW? Bah!

    Yes, I know it's not really/strictly the focus of the article, but bear with me here...I once bought a Plymouth Reliant from a friend of mine for the princely sum of $100. I had more fun with that car than was probably legally allowed, and wish I still had it sometimes...

    (For the record, I do have a nice and relatively new vehicle in the form of a Chevrolet pickup truck.)

    Quoting from somewhere within my web pages...

    "More than once, the fine old Reliant had the occasion to mix it up with some much newer BMW automobiles.

    Later on, shortly before the Reliant was taken off the road, I was going down a rural blacktop when I saw this black car in the background coming up hard and fast from behind. I decided to show whoever this was what a rickety hundred dollar car could do. I had plenty of time (a necessity given how long it took this thing to get up to speed) so I just let the Reliant unwind. Got it up to 90 MPH by the time whoever was in such a hurry was behind me. The radio was playing, and I felt like I was on top of the world. (Yes, it was a cheap thrill. What of it?)

    Oh, would you look at what's back there? It's a BMW! Sure, the guy driving it passed me, but I looked over to him and he looked back, shooting me the dirtiest look ever. I could only offer a raucous laugh in response."

    I don't think I'll buy an iPad either. Yeah, it's a nice looking thing, with a slick UI...but what would I ever DO with it? I just *might* buy into a Kindle, however...the one with the smaller screen. I can think of some good uses for that.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    My Fords were more reliable

    "People with Fords wish they had BMWs"

    Not necessarily.

    I've owned and operated both, and FWIW the Fords were always much more reliable - i.e., didn't require fixing as often - even when operated in a nearly identical manner. Maybe I just had a bad batch... YMMV.

    Personally, I prefer tried-and-true dull reliability, rather than stuff that screams "I have more money than sense!" ;)

    Also, I found that my customers were more trusting when I showed up in a simple Ford, because they weren't likely to be wondering if I was overcharging them just to buy myself fancy cars.

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