The Religion of Apple

The undying devotion of fanboys to Apple is nothing new, but researchers have reframed Apple's relationship to its consumers/fans into something else: religion.

There are scholars who study Apple's consumers as religious devotees. Consumer behavior specialists Russell Belk of York University and Gulnur Tumbat of San Francisco State, even put together a framework for assessing Apple's mystical mythology. The company
was built on four key myths, they argued.

Here are the four narratives, as summarized by media scholar Texas A&M's Heidi Campbell, who distilled their work for her May paper "How the iPhone became divine":

- a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment;

- a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world;

- a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;

- and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company...

Link - via kottke