Have Apple now become Big Brother from it’s 1984 advert?

Way back in 1984 Apple launched an iconic marketing campaign for their brand new Apple Macintosh.

Set in a grey dystopic time, where people are prevented from their own thoughts and ideas, and were ‘brainwashed’ by a Big Brother, who during the 60 second advert, celebrates the anniversary of the “Information Purification Directives” which he claims will be an end to “contradictory thoughts”.

Apples aim was clear -- to free and empower the people, combat conformity and allow originality in the computer market.

Now lets look at Apple today, and what they are doing with the iPhone:

• Apple have a massive influence over its loyal fan base
• They have tight control over the iPhone platform
• They dictate what functionality a user can have on the iPhone
• They dictate what apps are appropriate to run on the iPhone

Hmm, it now seems that the reverse is true of the original 1984 advert, where Apple once aimed to break the controlling nature of the computer industry they are now themselves the controlling Big Brother of the mobiles.

While I appreciate that what makes Apple’s products stand out over everything else is the thought that goes into the user experiences, this though brings an element of ‘this is how you are going to do it’ which may not always be in the users best interests.

Dictating too much, not allowing openness, and freedom for the user does bring some parallels to 1984.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of the iPhone, I just think that they need to loosen control of their grip on the handset, and make it a little more open.  Let the users decide what they can do with the incredible iPhone platform.

What do you think?