Religion of Apple + iPhone

Excellent piece about the "Religion of Apple" and the 'Jesus' mysticism associated w/the iPhone.

Note: You'll need to be logged in @the Uni (or the library proxy) to access this to save and/or print

Marketing prof Russell Belk of York University and Gulnur Tumbat of San Francisco State study the parallels between Apple's fanbase and the followers of religion, assembling a framework for Apple's mystical mythology. They believe the entire Apple brand is based on four key myths. Heidi Campbell, a scholar at Texas A&M aggregated their work for a recent article

"How the iPhone became divine"

Here are Campbell's four key "myths" about Apple:

1. a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin and emergence of the Apple Mac as a transformative moment
2. a hero myth presenting the Mac and its founder Jobs as saving its users from the corporate domination of the PC world
3. a satanic myth that presents Bill Gates as the enemy of Mac loyalists;
4. and, finally, a resurrection myth of Jobs returning to save the failing company...

Abstract: This article explores the labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ in order to demonstrate how religious metaphors and myth can be appropriated into popular discourse and shape the reception of a technology. We consider the intertextual nature of the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology and demonstrate how this creates a unique interaction between technology fans and bloggers, news media and even corporate advertising.