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Wired: iPad owners are "Selfish Elites"

I am 41 and seem to fit the demographic....

I believe iPad does touch others lives in a good way, for example when they see me using it in coffee shops it makes them feel worthless and that their lives are empty due to not owning one, so they go out mug an old lady for her pension money then go to the apple store and buy one.

This I believe is called redistribution of wealth.

;)
 
Well if the press can use blatant and baseless generalisations, so can I:

Breaking news - majority of journalists just in it for the money and will report anything but the truth if there's profit to be had.
 
Ciclismo said:
Well if the press can use blatant and baseless generalisations, so can I:

Breaking news - majority of journalists just in it for the money and will report anything but the truth if there's profit to be had.
Click to expand...
Even if that "reporting" is just echoing a Facebook survey that was started before the iPad was even released by a company trolling for PR.

And the journalist actually uses the word "science" in relation to this!
 
barkomatic said:
"They are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds,”
Click to expand...

Does this mean I have to give my iPad away, because not one word of that description describes me in the slightest?

Well, maybe the power hungry.

Well, maybe the over-achieving also.

And I do think I'm very sophisticated, mainly because my iPad allows me to be so. There's an app for that you know.

I think I deserve to keep it because 3 out of 7 isn't too bad. :D
 
Everyone is taking this way too personally. The author of the Wired article just pasted what the survey company said, and they said that because they wanted attention.

By saying that iPad owners are "selfish elites" and that the people who don't like iPad are geeks who hate the iPad because it is "a mainstream, closed-platform device whose major claim to fame is ease of use and sex appeal, the iPad is everything that they are not", they've trolled both people who love the iPad and people who don't into hitting their articles and ads. Cha-ching!

Meanwhile, the survey company gets attention (any attention is good attention).

I read Wired and I find some of their articles cool, but just like John C. Dvorak at PC Magazine, there are authors at Condé Nast who recognize the revenue they can gain by trolling.
 
My new app will feature Monte Burn's Mercedes star that he uses to sight in on and run over peasants. Simply mount it on the dash and even if you drive a cartoon car it will seem like you are in a giant Mercedes limo.

Money back if it doesn't improve your aim.
 
barkomatic said:
"They are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds,”

Ouch! I'm an iPad owner and that hurts--a little. Oh well, I'll just step on some homeless people while playing with my iPad. That always makes me feel better.

What about you? Are you unkind, un-altruistic and selfish you nasty iPad owners?

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/ipad-owner-are-selfish-elites-critics-are-independent-geeks-says-study/
Click to expand...

+1
 
Um, I wonder if anyone at Wired considered the fact that this: "They are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds" also does a pretty good job of describing the demographic of subscribers to Wired??? Don't crap where you live, people ... :)

Cheers
 
It's a pretty stupid article.

Aside from the obvious Facebook tie-in..

I'm confident that people buying iPads are MORE LIKELY to be wealthy than not. I mean nobody HAS to have one, and they aren't cheap. And remember how folks define wealthy these days. If you're middle class or better then you're considered wealthy.

And I'm sure you can make a correlation that wealthy people are more likely to be successful, educated, driven... etc.. than not.

Then throw in the fact that it's not politically correct to be wealthy these days. Success is bad and shameful nowadays, so let's label these people as selfish elitists.

Roll all this up and wow, you have a contrived stick to poke with while you troll for web hits.
 
barkomatic said:
"They are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds,]
Click to expand...

Other than being called unkind and non-altruistic, it's better than "poor, uneducated,lemmings, non motivated,unsophisticated, children." If it's six times more likely, I should play the lottery. Beating the odds may mean something.... Like fulfilling the 'wealthy' category. :D
 
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black?

I like to load photo's of food and booze on my iPad and show the photo's to all the homeless people in my neighborhood as I walk by. Come on!! How stupid is this study?
 
Did anyone notice this?

Consumer research firm MyType conducted the study, in which opinions of 20,000 people were analyzed between March and May.
Click to expand...

So this study of iPad "owners" began in March, one month before the product actually shipped. And it ran through April, the early adopters' month, and terminated in May, about the time the product was breaking out into the mainstream in the US, but still before it was introduced in non-US markets. So what population exactly does it pretend to be studying?
 
Unless there is something in it for me, I cannot be bothered by the pettiness and ignorance of this thread any longer.
 
I think more accurately, the article is describing early-adopters of most any technology.

I will consider this study worthwhile if they can prove that the same figures didn't hold true for the first iPods, the first CD players, the first HDTVs, the first Laptop Computers, etc...
 
That perfectly describes me and my entry level 16GB wifi only iPad. I look down on everyone when I go cruising with my iPad in my old civic.
 
Ugh, I got into an email argument over this the other day.

This is pretty crappy "linkbait" journalism.

If you read the wired article and follow the link to the origional story you see that they are both full of crap.

I took a look at the original article. Mytype said they surveyed "over 20,000" Facebook users.

Look at this. Only 1% of those surveyed owned an iPad, only 2% plan to get one. 54% don't even give a crap.

1% of 20,000 is 200 people. That's a pretty small sample size. Something the wired article does not even mention.



Both articles fail to answer one question . What percentage of iPad owners sampled(200) are "selfish elites"?

Instead they give us the delta of 18% of selfish elites sampled are iPad owners (or intend to buy one, which is bs).

It's easy to play around with the numbers to write an article that, although interesting, says nothing.

I like wired, but they are not above linkbaiting on a slow news day.
 
wyneken said:
Did anyone notice this?

So this study of iPad "owners" began in March, one month before the product actually shipped. And it ran through April, the early adopters' month, and terminated in May, about the time the product was breaking out into the mainstream in the US, but still before it was introduced in non-US markets. So what population exactly does it pretend to be studying?
Click to expand...
Yep, and if you go the "consumer research firm" MyType's website you'll find out that this "study" was a Facebook survey - "What's your personality type?" It's right up there with all the other lame Facebook surveys I get spammed like "What kind of shoe are you?" (Converse high top, apparently) and "Who was I in a past life?" (Guess what folks, I was Elvis!)

So I think people calling this a "study" are being far more generous than is warranted.

Also, I'm not a Facebook expert, but when I went to click on the survey, that had to be the largest list of "permission to access the following things" I have seen in Facebook. So not only do they claim a lame Facebook survey is "consumer research", but they want to access every piece of your Facebook info they can. Very reputable company there.
 
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