Dan Moren ended his “Stay Foolish” column at Macworld with a tremendous essay about what it means to be a “fan” of Apple or its products in 2025:
Over the years, those in the Apple community have long been called everything from the liturgical “Apple faithful” to the insipid “iSheep”, dating back to the days when the prevailing wisdom was that to hitch your fortunes to this weird company must imply a cult-like devotion. The simple truth was that most customers were simply fans of the products themselves: they liked the way they worked and looked.
That hasn’t changed for me: I continue to be a fan of Apple’s products. But as Apple started becoming more and more successful, I’ve become increasingly skeptical that one should ever really consider oneself a “fan” of a company.
On the eve of WWDC and, with it, the kicking-off of Apple’s coming year, I found myself thinking about this column published in April.
There was a time when rooting for Apple and calling oneself a “fan” seemed to make sense. The things it designed and sold had a clear ethos that gave me an impression of the kind of effortless confidence that only comes from a massive amount of effort. The business model felt like a simple exchange — as Steve Jobs said at D8, “we want to make the best products in the world for our customers. If we succeed they’ll buy them, and if we don’t they won’t”.
That era — the Jobs era, the simplistic worldview era, and the clear ethos era — is behind us. I am not saying Apple now takes everything for granted; I am sure it has teams of people working hard all day long to make improvements. But it is a corporate behemoth that cannot move quickly. Regardless of how cool its rumoured “Liquid Glass” visual refresh may be, I have a difficult time believing it will radically alter the way we use our devices. There are 2.35 billion devices on users’ wrists, in their hands and bags, and on their desks. At least a billion of them are iPhones. So, even though it is a bit exciting to be on the verge of something new and different, I do not think it will be that new and different, lest Apple alienate a huge number of people. It will look different enough, and that looks like progress — and maybe it will actually represent progress, too.
Visual interface changes aside, the expectations for this year’s WWDC do not seem to be high. We are still waiting on last year’s most impressive Apple Intelligence features, and the Vision Pro is a nascent device in the hands of few. The ideas factory is sputtering a little. But the money factory remains strong.
I am enmeshed in the Apple ecosystem so, in some ways, it should be exciting the company has to try a little harder. I am not. I do not think anyone expects Apple will sell dramatically fewer iPhones this year, nor will it lose subscribers to services, its increasingly important recurring revenue printer. Apple was a more interesting company when it could not be certain its customers would buy more stuff. I hope, after the Vision Pro’s release, it is also understanding it cannot take its developer base for granted, either.
Every time I use the Windows 11 computer on my desk at work, I am reminded of why I use MacOS. I still prefer it. But the post-P.C. device era has encouraged some nasty habits at Apple that have, consequently, made it one of the world’s most valuable businesses.
Apple has all the money it could ever want. It sells some very good products. But its size has smothered the fire it seemed to have, and dulled its edge. There are still risky bets it could make, but all of them are necessarily softened by its critical position in the world’s economy and in retirement plans. I see no reason to be a fan of that kind of company, even if you — as I — still appreciate many of the products and services it delivers. I am, as ever, looking forward to seeing what is being announced tomorrow, albeit with the understanding I will be watching a slick infomercial possibly containing concept videos. It is hard to see how one could be a fan of a multi-trillion-dollar company. I am just a customer, like a billion-plus others.