There is a retreat where stressed City executives can go and let off some steam, for a nominal fee. When the suits that control everything have wound themselves up by winding up a perfectly good business, firing everyone and selling off its constituent parts for a handsome personal profit, or raping the world of its resources for their short term gain, they are probably in need of some tension release. They can do this by hoovering vast quantities of the Bolivian Marching Powder up their hooters and paying a lady called Svetlana to be their special executive stress release co-ordinator. A head full of the Magic Bogey Dust and a dose of the clap might not do the trick though.
What seems to work is barking like dog. I am not making that up. City types are paying to act like the farmer's best friend and herding sheep like a border collie. It's out in the open, it's physical exercise, not much mental strain involved and a clear goal with great satisfaction at its completion. Sounds perfect. Except for the countryside part. Being in the countryside is anathema for young urbanistas. Apart from the smells and the weather, they simply don't have anything to wear. Happily, a solution is at hand. If wandering around in a green and brown sea of sheep product is not your thing, how about herding the sheep that queue for the new iThing outside Apple stores on the eve of its release. You could call it Nerd Wrangling. There's money to be made, I am certain.
The people that have allowed themselves to be deluded by the notion that Apple is somehow different from every other company on earth, and cares about them personally, so that they feel that they owe the company their unthinking custom, form a ragged queue of completely male (always completely male) dupes who are upgrading to the new whatever it is that Apple Corp is releasing.
It seems to be an illness, like drug addiction. The new iPad is almost completely identical to the last one, with the exception that it has more pixels and a better camera. If you are using a thing the size of a dinner plate as a camera, then you need your head examined, so it's all about the display. Fully functioning adults are paying an extra £400 for the cheapest model for a slightly clearer screen on which they can watch grainy footage of a dog on a skate board or whatever YouTube waste of time they will employ to convince themselves that they aren't being duped by the PR campaign of a faceless multinational corporation to consume, consume, consume. You know, like sheep.
The iPad has to be the only thing that has ever been invented that the purchaser wondered what to do with it AFTER he'd bought it. All other purchases that man has ever made are to fill a void in their lives or wardrobes. We knew for what we would use everything we have ever bought, before we bought it. The iPad users had to think of what they could do with it after they had queued for two nights in the rain to be the first to slide their thumbnails along the taught shrink wrap of their shiny new box. The search for justification came after they'd spent the kind of money on it with which you could buy a perfectly good car.
It's not as thought they appear to be a particularly nice company. In that regard, they are exactly like every other company on earth - maximising profit and minimising costs. Steve Jobs was by all accounts a bully boss, someone you really wouldn't want to have worked for and they don't manufacture their wares in China because the factory is handy.
Yet, its apologists and acolytes seem to be gripped with the notion that it is somehow a more godly concern, that it's heart is bigger and warmer, its philosophies greener and more caring than any of its multinational competitors. They want to believe that its products are other-worldy and somehow superior morally and technically. They are certainly better in terms of the amount that they can get away with selling them at, from the point of view of those who have shares in the company.
And now those people have their new, almost identical tablet, to replace the old one which they used to cherish and now seems so old and over. They will persuade themselves that they are ahead of the curve, at the cutting edge, special. They will put things in their electronic diary that they could remember without it, just to have something to use it for. They will watch videos on a screen so small that they wouldn't consider owning a television in that size if they were giving them away. They will hold it up with two hands and take bad photos they will never look at and download apps they don't need which will waste time they don't have.
All in all, you'd have to say that as a money making machine, Apple is probably the Coca Cola of the electronics world. It's all about the advertising and the finely manipulated public perception. Only in Apple's case, they don't have to advertise - the world's press do that for them for nothing. Acres of free puffery about the new company release are guaranteed for this company and no other on earth. Samsung must be pulling their hair out. Maybe the CEO needs to buy a few roll necks.