Good examples all, but how about Microsoft?

think of the 'damage' people/companies have suffered w/ their buggy, porous OS.

The only computers I've ever owned have been Macs, so that puts me in the Apple-snob category, but I've also never had even the slightest OS problem either.

There is no other company that has so much market share dominance (though it is apparently slipping) and yet put out such a crummy product.

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I'm sure this "buying the brand" does go on a lot of the time, but to claim that it's ubiquitous--well, it smacks of an advertiser's creed, frankly:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, Wyatt, but I have always been under the impression that the view that branding is ubiquitous was a lefty-Naomi-Klein-inspired meme, not a capitalist advertiser's meme.

This:

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We buy "brands" mainly when we don't care about the products.

is very wise, and is probably true 90% of the time (it's also what I understood WOM to mean when he said we mostly "buy the brand"). But sometimes a company which invests a lot in a brand does actually have a product worth buying and which one does like a lot. In my case, let's go with Starbucks coffee, which I do find a little bit on the burnt side but is better than *most* small shops in Toronto and infintely better than the smaller brands in Canada (Tim Horton, Timothy's and Second Cup) Yes, the downside of Starbucks is that there might be a few fewer "local" coffee shops. But I'm not sure how many of these there really used to be, and the upside is that I can get a coffee I quite like pretty much anywhere in town and in most places when I'm on the road.

Is it Italian quality? Of course not. I wish I could get Italian-quality coffee here, but I can't, not really (Dooney's on Bloor makes a decent cappuccino, though). But in the absence of that, Starbucks will do.

Why should I hate them just because they happen to be large and have a recognizable brand?

And on the Guantanamo point...the US has had a naval base there for 100 years. It's about 50 square miles and had 10,000 inhabitants. It's not a surprise to me that American businesses like Starbucks have pitched up there (just as there is now a Tim Horton's in Afghanistan for the Canadian troops). If Starbucks does have an outlet there (they are not listed on wikipedia's list of Businesses in Guantanamo Bay, though that's hardly definitive), I'm fairly sure that it's not to specifically sell to workers at the detention camp there, but rather to base workers (and their families) as a whole.

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The only computers I've ever owned have been Macs, so that puts me in the Apple-snob category, but I've also never had even the slightest OS problem either.

Apple are far more evil and insidious than Microsoft as has been pointed out before. If Apple had had their way, they'd control the software AND hardware supply.

In addition to which, Apple computers are designed to work with Apple hardware. Windows is designed to work with everything. That much freedom has a reliability overhead, usually caused by shit driver creation by the hardware producers.
As a final point, as I've said any number of times, Macs are as unreliable in my support experience as PC's/ They have less niggly problems, but when something goes, they go completely. I've only ever owned PC's at home and I've never had an OS problem there. It's hardly conclusive evidence that Windows is pefects.
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I think I mostly have concerns about ethics, the environment, etc etc. And while Starbucks make a big deal about fair trade and non-GM and organic milk etc, I believe that only 1% of the coffee they buy is fair trade? And I have a distrust of big businesses simply because they are in existence to make profit, not to act ethically.
And the current awareness of green/ethical issues that they like to tell us they now have is of course just the latest thing that sells. Oh they have fair trade, they must be OK. But you only have to look at the number of car adverts - cars! - that try to claim some kind of green credential to know that this kind of marketing is all about the image.

So even if I liked coffee which I do not, I wouldn't go to Starbucks, but I am lucky in that there's 2 or three independent places near me that will also do fair trade/organic milk etc. I understand that not everyone has this. But I feel that the companies are quite duplicitous and I have a hard time with the idea of supporting that.

i'm not championing apple as a noble brand by any stretch -- their ipod monopoly is not much different than Microsoft's -- and Microsoft is in an unfortunate position in that they have to take years to gear their new OS code to all the apps out there...

that said, they are still a 'damaged' brand in my opinion as their product is one that is far from perfect yet consumed by millions who seem to think they have no other choice

i have friends who run the IT depts of universities and hospitals and they speak far differently --- the apple networks run smoothly, and they are constantly putting out fires w/ the microsoft one

you'll never get me to believe that Apple is MORE evil than Microsoft -- sorry

Imagine if Microsoft and Dell were one big company.

That is what you'd have had if Apple had successfully pursued their business plan in the 80's.

In addition to which, Bill Gates is a seemingly far more decent human being than Steve Jobs. In fact you could argue that the jobs that microsoft creates, added to the fact that Gates has announced that he intends to use the vast bulk of his money for altruistic purposes (and indeed already has spent billions) that Microsoft are a company we should admire. They redistribute money from the wealthy the comfortable and big business to those who have little and create a thriving economy while they do it.

Shouldn't you be declaring an interest around about here?

Heh. It's a bit tongue in cheek I admit, but there are few companies and owners who would do what Gates and Microsoft have down.

And I have no vested interest. I work for a financial company. I support whatever stuff they have.

Having just got back from Manchester city centre I'd like to nominate Glasgow Rangers.

Gangster Octopus wrote:

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The_Liquidator wrote:

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The other guy in Forgetting Sarah Marshall?

His name is Russell Brand. Geddit?

Be fair to Inca, he doesn't live in a "culture" utterly infested by the git. I was just about to post about how lucky it was to be an American...

Yep, I had never heard of or seen him before. I suppose I can Google him to find out his deal, but I'll assume I'm not missing much and pass.

Though perhaps our nations can arrange a loan swap of him for Heidi & Spencer.

I think he's pretty funny sometimes.

"It's not like there's been a proliferation of independent cafes dedicated to producing a variety of coffee styles and flavours."

I don't know about the variety bit, but in a lot of places in the US there has been a proliferation of independent and local chains of cafes since the emmergence of Starbucks.

In some cases, the independent or semi-independent places emmerged in a town before the Starbucks (inevitably) arrived. I know that's the case in Williamsburg, VA and State College, PA, for example.

Which makes me wonder if Starbucks can really claim to have created the industry. Perhaps they are just the company to have most-successfully taken advantage of a much larger shift in consumer tastes. Either way, I see little evidence that Starbucks is putting smaller coffee shops out of business the way Wal-Mart does.

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

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"It's not like there's been a proliferation of independent cafes dedicated to producing a variety of coffee styles and flavours."

I don't know about the variety bit, but in a lot of places in the US there has been a proliferation of independent and local chains of cafes since the emmergence of Starbucks.

Spot on.

Besides independent coffee houses, there has also been the emergence of smaller coffee chains that people like me go as an alternative to Starbucks. Some of them, like Peet's or the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, had been around as maybe one or two stores for many years, but have grown into somewhat big regional chains, and others like It's a Grind (which I think is only in California, but gets a lot of exposure on the Showtime show Weeds) started as one independent store--in my hometown, Long Beach--and are growing into chains.

Coffee Bean features prominently on Entourage.

Interesting note: The orginal Mr. Peet was the guy who taught the original Starbucks founders how to roast coffee properly. The original Starbucks just sold coffee beans, not coffee by the cup.

On the fair trade issue, my understanding is that places like Starbucks pay a premium for expensive beans, so the farmers they buy from are doing relatively ok. It's the big mass production stuff like Folgers, etc, that are harder on the farmers, so I'm told.

I think all of this info is coming from a talk I saw on CSPAN by the guy who wrote this.

Obviously, when a Starbucks moves in to a place it replaces something and often that something is a locally owned business but, and given that there are already so fucking many of them, it's reasonable to ask why we need another. However, it seems, it doesn't usually supplant a similar coffee place.

It's also reasonable to ask what all of this caffeine is doing to us. I know that I need to cut back but I'm addicted. I'm in a viscious downward spiral of no-sleep and trying to stay awake with caffeine. It's brutal.

Along those lines, Chris Connelly made an interesting observation that Singles was actually the 1990s first great drug movie and the drug was caffeine. All of the characters are messed up because they think too much because they're all wired. Interesting thesis. It may also explain why I like that movie so much and relate to the characters in it.