Futurism
The thing Apple seems to know better than any other company that exists today is pretty simple:
This is the future
What that means is that our science has far outstripped our culture — it always does — and that there is an incredible arbitrage between them. Apple is selling us something out of a dream people had back in the 70s. Something real, physical, beautiful, impeccable.
And one better, it looks even more fantastic than the things people dreamed of in the past.
So what is there to learn?
There’s an immense arbitrage between the our cultural understanding of the untouchable things that define the future and the fact that science and technology have slowly moved into the position to build those things.
The LHC was straight out of the future. I think it’s humanly impossible to look at it without being awed by its sheer alien nature. It’s perhaps one of the few things that humans have built and yet still must be in awe of.
The iPad is also straight out of the future, but it’s so slick and cheap that you already can imagine one looking beautiful on your coffee table. You can buy the future, affordably, and have it shipped to you. It’ll be at your door in a week. Real, living, breathing future.
Apple is the only company that seems to have figured this out, really. If you tap into that cultural arbitrage, you get to sell real, working magic.
