On Apple

Go to Apple's website. As of this writing, you'll be greeted by a full-page spread of the iPad, along with a line describing it as "Magical and Revolutionary".

This has been bothering me for a while.
A little while ago, Apple released the "Magic Mouse", which replaced the already single-button apple mouse (or the however many button 'mighty mouse') with a touch-sensitive surface.

I watched the speech where Steve Jobs revealed the iPad, months ago.
He stood up there and called it "Magical".
Like, not even joking. It was as if he was calling it, "awesome".
Except he called it Magical.

Magic doesn't exist.

But what does exist, is a famous quote from Sir Arthur C. Clark, the writer of 2001, A Space Odyssey: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

And everyone knows that science fiction writers are always right.

But the quote is pretty accurate. Think back to things like electricity, magnetism, the first computers... as far as anyone in the general public was concerned, it might as well have been magic.

But for a company, especially one as in-the-limelight as Apple Computer, to actually assert that their product is Magical is entirely nutty.
Maybe they're trying to be cute.
I'm sure Apple doesn't actually believe their product to be magical.
They probably know that their latest offering will work magic with their stock prices, but there's nothing unexplainable about it.

Here's what I don't like.
Even with the recession and people remember how to be thrifty, we're still a completely consumer-entrenched culture. Companies aren't even trying to sell us their stuff anymore- they don't have to, we buy it anyway. Advertising dollars are literally spent for the sake of selling brands and corporate identities rather than the products that merely carry those identities into peoples' homes.

And you know, i'm sure Apple payed out a pretty penny for that slogan. Have our minds become so numb that a company has to yell "LOOK AT OUR MAGICAL PRODUCT" in order for us to be interested?

Its insanity. I don't like being treated like a consumer.
RPI tried to convince the class of 2013 that we were gonna "Change the world".
Whatever that means.
I'd rather go around yelling at people, "LOOK AT MY MIRACULOUS JESUS" than buy an iPad that claims to have magic.