The term "empathy" is repeated ad nauseum in the Genius manual. It is the salesman sine qua non at the Apple Store, encouraging Geniuses to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes," assuming that mile ends at a credit card swipe machine. It is not, the book insists in bold type, "Sympathy, which is the ability to feel sorry for someone." Geniuses are directly told not to apologize in a manner anyone would call direct. If someone walks in sobbing because their hard drive is fried, you'll receive no immediate consolation. "Do not apologize for the business [or] the technology," the manual commands. Instead, express regret that the person is expressing emotions. A little mind roundabout: "I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated," or "too bad about your soda-spill accident," the book suggests. This is, of course, the equivalent of telling your girlfriend "I'm sorry you feel that way" during a fight instead of just apologizing for what you did.
Note : This is the
female way of selling things. Not the male way, which is *always* appealing to the Ratio. To the Logic.
The female way appeals to the Emotions.
They are basically using a female selling technique to sell male stuff.
And, by the way, Macs are not unpopular among womwen, I think.
Your happiness is just a means to the cash register, and the manual reminds trainees of that: "Everyone in the Apple Store is in the business of selling." Period.
Selling is a science, summed up with five cute letters: (A)pproach, (P)robe, (P)resent, (L)isten, (E)nd. In other words: Go up to someone and get them to open up to you about their computing desires, insecurities, and needs; offer them choices (of things to buy); hear them out; then seal the day in a way that makes it feel like the customer has come to this decision on their own.
This reminds me very heavily of my theory of "games becoming tools for achieving a greater revenue". Not the "playing" part in them is important, in the end, important is only to make the customer happy - so that he'll or she'll spend more money on the same franchise, or for DLCs.
This is psychological indoctrination at its best.
Customers are slowly yet steadily trained to become "cash-cows" every business can milk. Personal life isn't impotant anymore; important is to consume, and thus, to generate revenues, which will - to a great part - flow into the bank accounts of the managements (of the firms), because they usually hold the biggest single part of stock.
The Menschenbild (image of humanity) behind that is a a very terrifying one : No need anymore of humanity as such; all hat is considered is the part of humans which is giving away money. No other part of "humanity" is necessary for firms that are cashing in on us like that.
Edit : And, releasing this is to me like a revenge upon the court ecision pro Apple and against Samsung. Of course it is. The time frame is (to me) just too small for a different explantion.
