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Issue 1 > The five rules of cool.

The five rules of cool.

Harris Collingwood ponders 'the lovable upstart battling the monolith'.

Almost since its founding in 1976, Apple Computer has enjoyed a prominence out of all proportion to its rather modest share of the personal computer market. That prominence can be measured by the attention lavished on the company's every move as well as every attempt to analyze its strategy and tactics.

Consider the uproar from Macintosh purists when Apple launched its brief attempt to license its operating system to other hardware companies. When Apple reversed course and opted to keep its operating system to itself, another camp bellowed just as loudly.

Whenever a journalist suggests that Apple might be something less than the most perfect organization in recorded history, the poor sap is deluged with emails and phone calls from self-appointed 'Mac Marines'.

The general perception of Apple as an exceptional entity rather than a profit-making enterprise is no accident. Apple's leaders have assiduously cultivated the image of a corporation that is hip, stylish, humane: the maker of 'the computer for the rest of us', the company whose epochal 1984 advertisement promised a machine that would liberate humankind from the tyranny of large, impersonal computer companies.

The effort has paid off handsomely. Despite some hooting and hollering on weblogs, the majority of the business press and the buying public don't seem to object when Apple, say, takes legal action against some of the biggest fans of its products.

When Microsoft, for example, is accused of bullying its customers and rivals, or reverses itself in public, it's criticized in the mainstream press, flamed on online tech forums such as Slashdot, and sometimes even sued by usually laissez-faire antitrust enforcers.

Similar accusations regarding Apple are ignored, minimized, or laughed off, while the company's earnings soar past Wall Street's expectations and iPods fly off the shelves at a rate of more than six million per quarter.

It's as if the entire company has ingested some magical elixir that immunizes it against bad publicity. Envious CEOs can only ask, 'Where can I get some of that stuff?'

Consider the reaction to the shorter-than-expected battery life that plagued some early iPods. Forrester research notes that a mere 12 per cent of iPod owners aren't satisfied with the device's battery life.

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