Apple was more fun when it was small enough to ignore

I have been writing about Apple for more than 20 years and, at the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud, I am here to tell you that it ain’t what it used to be. It used to be more fun.

No, don’t get up.

Here, have a raspberry candy. I have a whole bowl full of them. I don’t know why. I don’t even know where they came from. They just showed up after my most recent birthday. Already covered in dust. I should probably look into that.

Anyway, it is true that it’s easy for me to say that covering Apple used to be more fun. I started “covering” Apple by writing a fake Apple rumors site back in 2001. Every day I’d just let my imagination run wild, work Apple into it, and type it up. Man, those were the days. (Before you get jealous, I made about $50 a month doing this, if I made anything at all.)

Even when it was making the best-selling digital music player, Apple was still somehow the little guy, always on the verge of being driven out of business by its competitors.

But talking about Apple used to be just talking about technology. At first, it was Macs. New ones, old ones, ones that were rumored to be coming, features of macOS, apps (back then they were called “applications,” if you can believe that) and peripherals. Technology was tangible. Then it was iPods. Apple shipped new ones every year, giving writers plenty to cover. Sure, we talked about icky stuff like DRM and there was even a minor brouhaha over Steve Jobs’s stock options. But even in the early days of the iPhone, things were mostly just… fun.

Too big to play with

You know the history. Until Apple revolutionized the smartphone world with the iPhone, it was the little guy. Even when it was making the best-selling digital music player, it was still somehow the little guy, always on the verge of being driven out of business by its competitors. “Microsoft will ship the Zune and it’ll be curtains for Apple!” Apple’s demise was always just over the next hill.

With the launch of the iPhone and the App Store, that all changed. Turns out that the monkey’s paw we all wished on in the mid-1990s to prevent Apple from going out of business had a downside. Who knew monkeys’ paws could have a downside? Not me.

Apple’s astounding growth from 2007 to today has put it in an entirely different category of company. Depending on the day, it’s literally the biggest company in the world by the value of its stock. Regardless of how many people the company employs, it is simply too big to ignore. It has gone from a dwarf star to a black hole.

Do we have to talk about politics?!

On the holidays?! Yes, we do. That’s part of the problem now with talking about Apple. The company has drawn the attention of governments across the globe and Apple now feels compelled to fight back where it can and only grudgingly play ball everywhere else.

You’ve heard of too big to fail? There’s also too big to just tiptoe by. Apple has drawn the scrutiny of both Democrats like Elizabeth Warren who says the company should be broken up and Republicans like Donald Trump who Tim Cook personally feels the need to appease with factory visits and congratulations, lest the company be hit by tariffs. The company has further run afoul of the National Labor Relations Board. And the EU and Apple almost certainly have each other on speed dial.

Seriously, I just want to talk about computers. Is that asking too much?

Yes, that’s asking too much

Apple just isn’t the same little company we grew up with. And it’s not looking like the company is going to shrink to a more diminutive size any time soon. It went big time and it dragged us along with it, like a friend from high school who struck it rich but still invites you to parties with their new, rich friends (who are all jerks). Of course, there are still and always be products the company ships and those products will foster the same rumors, launch events, reviews, and how-to-use pieces we’ve always enjoyed. But now there’s all this other stuff.

Of course, all that “other stuff” was always there because technology is political (I hate to be the one to tell you, but everything is in one way or another). It was just that we could ignore it because Apple was smaller. At least now that Apple’s big enough to create its own gravitational field, people have stopped predicting it’ll go out of business anytime in the near future. There’s that.