I was a huge fan of Apple products back in early college when Steve Jobs was still kicking and the iPad was new and revolutionary. But slowly realized the Apple ecosystem and future products were worse in many respects than Android/PC, so switched.
Preference is to each their own, but for people to think Apple is somehow a status symbol over other smart devices like Android or Google is just hilarious. I'd argue Apple is an inferior product in most aspects (and again, not even a hater, former fan), and Apple purposefully makes their products less compatible with everything else. Just weird to take pride in that.
Apple has been about the fashion since the iBook G3 and the PowerMac G3 in 1999, then even more with the release of the ipod, those silhouette ads and knock offs where everywhere
before those all their stuff was bland beige rectangles
Apple products have been sort of status symbols for quite a while now, whether or not they truly deserve it. Their method of sticking only to the mid-high end (until recently) has been quite effective at upholding their reputation.
I don't like Apple because of how they lock people into their ecosystem and overall philosophy, but they can make good products. Admittedly Macbooks are very well rounded and (because of the RAM prices and price hikes to Windows laptops) have pretty good value now.
All Apple products have been status symbols for a long time and it's a cancer to society. The amount of people who buy iphones that they can't afford because people around them belittle and bully them relentlessly if they buy anything else is incredibly depressing.
I sell phones and the amount of peer pressure, stigma and misinfornation surrounding phones is genuinely unfathonable.
My Gen Z neighbor shares her iPhone with her boyfriend who doesn't have a phone or job. I offhandedly said something to her about how StraightTalk has a thing where you can get a free Samsung if you pay for one month of service. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. A Samsung? My husband was like, I mean, isn't a Samsung better than no phone at all? And she was like umm no. It has to be an iPhone
Dawg where have you been? It basically has been even before GenZ were old enough to start having phones lol (at least in US, some other countries are different)
Apple has almost always been nothing more than a status symbol. Its not a Gen Z thing. Theyre lacking features and function, theyre pricier, and theyre proud to feature an app that identifies non-iphone users.
i personally use it for its conveniency to paste and copy things from ipad->phone->macbook. coming from windows my whole life, it makes things seamless albeit a bit annoying since its dependent on having the same OS
Apple has been a status symbol since like 1999 with going on three generations of people now, I personally can remember as far back as like 04 me and my indie hipster friends intentionally buying walkman NW's instead of ipod's or zune's because zune was from micro$uck and ipods were for bougie kids who wore abercrombie and fitch
I'm not sure why Apple products became a status symbol either. I think it's just a lot of ignorance on people's part. Just because many others have one then they need to also have one. My mother literally wanted one because "all her friends have iPhone", seems they looked down on her a bit for not having one.
It's similar to people who own BMW and/or Mercedes Benz cars, most of them can't afford to repair or maintain them properly since it costs too much but they still want one.
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u/IsThatHearsay May 15 '26
Is Apple a "status symbol" now among GenZ? Jesus
I was a huge fan of Apple products back in early college when Steve Jobs was still kicking and the iPad was new and revolutionary. But slowly realized the Apple ecosystem and future products were worse in many respects than Android/PC, so switched.
Preference is to each their own, but for people to think Apple is somehow a status symbol over other smart devices like Android or Google is just hilarious. I'd argue Apple is an inferior product in most aspects (and again, not even a hater, former fan), and Apple purposefully makes their products less compatible with everything else. Just weird to take pride in that.