Few brands stir the passions like Apple. Be it a rumor, stock speculation, a glowing gadget review or a president’s bombastic tweet, Apple, its devices and the people who make them always seem to be part of a conversation.
So to curate the best quotes about Apple for 2018 is as daunting as choosing your favorite word in the dictionary. There are so many — and best is a matter of taste. How do you pick?
No matter the conversation, Apple makes news and, on some days, there’s something new about Apple every hour. There are hundreds of Apple news sites and fan blogs around the globe.
A good review on a new product can cause a line to form outside an Apple Store. A cynical financial analyst can make stock prices drop.
A wild year for Apple
This year may be like no other in Apple’s history. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a market value of more than $1 trillion but by fall, its stock prices routinely fell and its status as the most valuable company was supplanted by, most recently, Microsoft.
Apple released three iPhones with incredible features that had fans abuzz. Yet, they’ve been not exactly flying off shelves in part because the price tag is too high for many.
A daughter’s disturbing memoir, a hate-mongering conspiracy theorist in the Apple Store and a president raising tariffs trying to make China bend to his will…
And that’s just a fraction of the stuff that made Apple the center of conversation.
Units, units, units
Illustration: Cult of Mac
“The second thing is this is a little bit like if you go to the market and you push your cart up to the cashier and she says or he says, ‘How many units you have in there?’ It doesn’t matter a lot how many units there are in there in terms of the overall value of what’s in the cart.”
– Apple CEO Tim Cook, explaining on an earnings call in November while Apple would not longer disclose the number of units sold
“When is less information better for me? Don’t ever tell me on a call.. what I should know and what I shouldn’t. I’ll decide what’s relevant.
“I just don’t understand this lack of transparency and (Apple’s stock prices) are going to get punished more and more.”
– Investor Kevin O’Leary explaining on CNBC why he no longer owns Apple stock
The Data Divide
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
“The narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is: ‘I’ve got to take all of your data to make my service better.’ Well, don’t believe them. Whoever’s telling you that, it’s a bunch of bunk.”
– Cook during an interview with Vice News Tonight regarding Facebook and Google selling data to third parties
“I don’t think at all that that means that we don’t care about people. To the contrary, I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me.”
– Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an interview with Vox
Wanting the best and paying for it
Screenshot: Jonathan Morrison
“Now that the new iPhone is out, I can now finally afford a second hand iPhone 4.”
– Warren Mduduzi on Twitter following Apple’s rollout of new iPhones
“Just fainted at the price of a new iPhone XS, fortunately, my new Apple Watch 4 has detected this and dispatched an ambulance.”
– Andy Hair on Twitter reacting to the price of the new iPhone XS and XS Max
“If we’re going to push the upper boundaries with XS and XS Max to make something the best, how do we make something that’s more affordable for a larger audience? To make the overall iPhone audience even larger? What choices can we make and still make it a phone that people can hold and say, ‘I have the best too’?”
– Phil Schiller in an interview with Engadget regarding the iPhone XR
It’s a lifesaver
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
“Every bone in my body tells me this is very significant. “(Apple Watch Series 4) will be a more marked tipping point in understanding and adoption of the product. I’m so zealous about the watch because I see it as making a material difference to people’s quality of life and actually their ability to be alive.”
– Apple design chief Jony Ive in a Washington Post interview about Apple Watch Series 4
“As soon as it came back it said ‘atrial fibrillation’ and I thought that’s odd,” Dentel said. “OK, it’s just a glitch. Tried it on my left wrist on top: AFib. Left wrist on bottom: AFib. Right on top: AFib, AFib, AFib. I looked at it, I said there might be something to this.”
– Ed Dentel to WPVI-TV, Philadelphia, on his Apple Watch alerting him to a potentially fatal heart condition
The iPhone killed the photography star
“I do believe that everybody is a photographer. Were all taking billions of pictures so photography is more alive than ever and at the same time more dead than ever. The trouble with iPhone pictures is nobody sees them. Even the people who take them don’t look at them anymore, and they certainly don’t make prints.
“I take selfies myself, of course, but it’s not photography. Looking into a mirror is not an act of photography. I’m in search of a new word for this new activity that looks so much like photography but isn’t photography anymore.”
– Oscar-nominated director Wim Wenders to the BBC
He’s ‘outta there!
“I was taken down not because we lied but because we tell the truth and because we were popular.”
– Conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones about Apple’s decision to pull his content from the App Store
Gone but still a newsmaker
Photo: Apple
“His ability to incisively critique a creative endeavor was second to none. And his intuition, his understanding of what customers would respond to was unparalleled. It was a gift for me to work with him because you’re always in business when you’re inventing things you’ve got to balance the dream with the data. Most people the data overtakes the decision making and then you don’t have a dream.
“Steve always stayed focused on the prize. You know he could articulate it so clearly like he used to love to do things in three or four words.”
– former Apple retail head Ron Johnson on working with the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in building the first Apple Stores
“I was a blot on a spectacular ascent, as our story did not fit with the narrative of greatness and virtue he might have wanted for himself. My existence ruined his streak.”
– Lisa Brennan-Jobs in her memoir Small Fry about growing up the daughter of Steve Jobs
