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A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

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Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#41
post #39
post #34

> they form group chats centered around trips that only one participant was on It never occurred to me until now, but there's actually a somewhat-coherent "sharing philosophy" woven through many of Apple's products. It seems like Apple envisions a world where social networks and "broadcast"-sharing of content don't exist. In this world, when people want to "tell people" an update about their life, they share that upd…

I think this is mostly how human communication worked until the internet era. Those who aren’t plugged into social media still operate this way - sharing directly with others. In real life, when people interact, they begin by asking “how are you?” Which is the opposite of social media.

Social networks work a lot like mass-mailing your friends and relatives with postcards / greeting cards.

Also, the lack of gossip in "Dimension Apple" is a crucial distinction. You don't need a social network to spread news, if you know that everything you tell that one aunt is going to be repeated on every phone call she makes for the next two weeks. (And she makes a lot of phone calls.)

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#42
post #39
post #34

> they form group chats centered around trips that only one participant was on It never occurred to me until now, but there's actually a somewhat-coherent "sharing philosophy" woven through many of Apple's products. It seems like Apple envisions a world where social networks and "broadcast"-sharing of content don't exist. In this world, when people want to "tell people" an update about their life, they share that upd…

I think this is mostly how human communication worked until the internet era. Those who aren’t plugged into social media still operate this way - sharing directly with others. In real life, when people interact, they begin by asking “how are you?” Which is the opposite of social media.

I'm on no social media (besides this site). The number of times a day I have to say, "no, I didn't see [insert random event here]." Would honestly surprise you.

There is just an expectation in society today that you know everything that's going on in everyone's life. It's very, very strange to me. It's hard to explain why, but I get serious black mirror sort of vibes from it.

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#43
post #7

If you worked on these images, surely you would be irresistably tempted to leave little easter eggs referring to past characters? "Hey Kim, how are you doing?" "Great, thanks! Apart from going a littleh hard on the ravioli last night!".

> "going a littleh hard on the ravioli last night!"."

Mmm. that. looks. delicious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jK37C4CxA

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#44
post #34

> they form group chats centered around trips that only one participant was on It never occurred to me until now, but there's actually a somewhat-coherent "sharing philosophy" woven through many of Apple's products. It seems like Apple envisions a world where social networks and "broadcast"-sharing of content don't exist. In this world, when people want to "tell people" an update about their life, they share that upd…

I feel that a line from this could be traced back to the era prior to ubiquitous social media, where the vast majority of sharing was happening over messengers like AIM, MSN, and Skype or via email, and if you go back Apple stuff at that point was fairly geared around sharing through iChat (AIM) or Mail.app. There was a period earlier on where macOS and iOS had Facebook and Twitter posting built in where those got so…

> where the vast majority of sharing was happening over messengers

Arguable — mass-mailing async updates (think: postcards) about your life has been ubiquitous for as long as people have been going off and doing interesting things. This evolved into mass-emails. I was BCC'ed a lot of "wedding photos.zip" and "in paris.jpg"s emails in the 1990s; much more often than such a thing was ever directed at me by a friend or relative, let alone directed at me synchronously in a messenger app.

Remember also: messengers back in the 90s and early 2000s didn't have a concept of "server-buffered message sends." For a message to transmit over AIM/ICQ/MSN/etc, both people had to be online at the same time. If you were travelling — and so potentially in a separate time zone — messengers really didn't work very well as a way to send large image files. Until very late in the lives of their protocols, most of them didn't even support sending files!

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#46
post #23

This is very funny, but it's also disquieting, because people who text like this absolutely do exist; I know because I'm on the list for the block I live on. Modulo a lack of spelling and grammar errors, this is what normal people sound like. The idea that very normal people behavior is this odd or telling is, itself, pretty telling!

I text almost exactly like this. Probably both Dimension Apple writers and myself are pretending to be normal in the same way...

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#47
post #34

> they form group chats centered around trips that only one participant was on It never occurred to me until now, but there's actually a somewhat-coherent "sharing philosophy" woven through many of Apple's products. It seems like Apple envisions a world where social networks and "broadcast"-sharing of content don't exist. In this world, when people want to "tell people" an update about their life, they share that upd…

Well, this is how I live. I don't use any broadcast-based social media. The only form I consume would be YouTube or Twitch, I believe without any parasocial weirdness.

After I finish a trip (recently I went to Supai, AZ) I send little bundles of photos to different people via my phone very much like these screenshots.

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#48
post #34

> they form group chats centered around trips that only one participant was on It never occurred to me until now, but there's actually a somewhat-coherent "sharing philosophy" woven through many of Apple's products. It seems like Apple envisions a world where social networks and "broadcast"-sharing of content don't exist. In this world, when people want to "tell people" an update about their life, they share that upd…

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Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#49
post #28

No article about Apple's staged sample content can be complete without at least an honorable mention of the Raccoon Basement Incident: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-displays-weird-message...

A screenshot of (an ominous excerpt from) the basement message is in the article’s “iOS 17” section:

“Hey Mom, I figured out what all that noise coming from the basement is.”

Re: A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials

#50
post #48
post #34

> they form group chats centered around trips that only one participant was on It never occurred to me until now, but there's actually a somewhat-coherent "sharing philosophy" woven through many of Apple's products. It seems like Apple envisions a world where social networks and "broadcast"-sharing of content don't exist. In this world, when people want to "tell people" an update about their life, they share that upd…

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