Collegiate Times

With the ability to preorder the iPhone 5 last week, the nation got to see a little bit of Black Friday in September.

Every Mac loyalist was awake at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m. to preorder the next “perfect” Mac product. The Apple store sold out in just over one hour.

As the owner of an Android phone, every time someone brings up their iPhone, I tend to cringe because of the pretentious speech that usually follows.

The exclusive club of iPhone owners almost always inundates me with reasons why its phones are better and uses obnoxious hash tags on Twitter such as “#teamiPhone.”

These are also the same people who refer to me as a “hater” (a word that should not exist and has somehow slithered in to our vocabulary … much like “What’s Gucci?").

I’d much rather be labeled a hater than to cave under peer pressure.

(Note to future-self: After that completely unnecessary rant, you cannot ever get an iPhone. Doing so would make you the most shameful hypocrite there has ever been. However, based on your past, you will probably end up getting the iPhone 6. Just be aware this makes you an ass.)

Aside from all of my rambling, the thing I have taken most from the release is the brand loyalty Apple has garnered over the past 10 years.

Of the thousands who stayed up to preorder the phone — which will not ship for two weeks, by the way — none have actually seen it and are buying it just because its logo is a half-eaten apple.

Sure, they are aware of its new features by now, but I bet the majority of them were planning on getting it the day after they bought the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S — or both.

These phones are obviously not cheap, yet Apple could probably charge $1,000 for the phone and it would still sell out. After all, is there a set price on being cool?

In a time where the recession has made just about everyone tighten their pockets and made shows like “Extreme Couponing” the norm, Apple has found a way to peddle overpriced, shiny products without having to worry about whether or not people will make a pros/cons list and evaluate its true worth.

I have to come clean and say that I do have a MacBook Pro and yesterday, I shelled out $1,400 for a new (actually, it is refurbished) one because after three years, its LCD screen is so full of messed up, vibrating pixels that having a seizure while writing this is a possibility.

However, I have spent enough time with engineering majors to know that me owning a Mac is similar to wearing a giant pin that says, “I’m computer illiterate.” But I am okay with that — partially because I truly am computer illiterate.

Apple products have this emotional appeal that has the power to transcend any logic; it represents a status we all wish we had.

Even though a PC that costs two-thirds of a MacBook is far superior in terms of what it is capable of doing, we buy the Mac because of a cleaner interface and a sleek look.

Along those same lines, people even refuse to put protective cases on their iPhones because it might hide the fact that they are part of "Team iPhone." These are also the people who typically have a cracked screen less than a month after buying it.

So, while Samsung can try as hard as possible to prove that the Galaxy III is, on paper, superior to the iPhone in just about every way, it fails to realize that the dominance of the iPhone has nothing to do with actual logic.

Just like the "Washington Times" claims to be “the official newspaper of 2012” in radio commercials (I want to know how one applies for that distinction), as of right now, Apple is the official sponsor of being cool.

A version of this article appeared in the Sep 20 issue of the Collegiate Times.