Religious reaction in brains of Apple fans is one reason for the brand popularity

What utter nonsense!
I hardly know where to start - with the fallacy that Apple's success is due to clever marketing or rediculous notion that religion is simply stimulated brainwaves measured on an MRI scan.
Typical of a BBC documentary I would say. Modern England is a country paralysed by political correctness and cultural cringe.

Well isn't it? Try to watch any video of Apple announcement, and write down how many times they say amazing, absolutely fantastic, magic, first in the world etc. etc. While all they do is show devices with functions we already know. Take iPad 2 for example, it's design is practicaly THE SAME, while SJ said it's absolutely new design (and people bought it oO). And FaceTime, they bragged how they are "bringing video-calling to the world" 5 years after first 3g video-calling handsets, ridicolous, but that's what keeping Apple not only alive, but so prosperous.

I agree with admad either Apple have sold their souls to the Devil or there is an organisation more secret than MIB whose only purpose is to ensure Apples world domination. Whatever it may be its success sure isnt for its innovative breakthrough in Technology. Facetime is a joke, not being able to change ringtones on the Iphone without jailbreaking or connecting to itunes is ridiculous. What is soooo original about the iphone that I should go out join the masses and buy one? I nearly cracked a rib laughing when the "white" Iphone came out.

Pekos, just a question...why do you think Facetime is a joke? I haven't tried any video calling system, from 3G, skype, yahoo, Tango, Oovoo, that's as clear or as easy to use as Facetime. There are professional/business solutions out there that charge you per minute of video conferencing... but no where near as portable or as convenient.
I use Android as my primary phone, but I do make Facetime calls at least 3x a day while tethered. Tango and Skype are extremely sad attempts imo and I would consider them the Friendster and MySpace of the video call world.

Well I'm pretty sure he ment things like it's only Wi-Fi, I mean come on, why couldn't they do it over 3G? Lame. And all the fuzz there was when Apple "invented" video calling, it was pretty funny

Personally i don't have a problem with Apple they are good at what they do and make great products which people actually want to buy no one is forced to buy from them as its all down to us the buying public who make that choice.

Interesting to see that after all these years, people still feel the need to put iphone down despite its longevity and popularity.

I'm just downloading the program via iPlayer but I'm sure from what I've read that they have it wrong with me.

btw... I wonder why BBC called it (i)Player! perhaps they were also taken in by Apple!

I definitly don't have a religious bone in my body and if Apple marketing had any effect on me I'd have been buying Macs for years rather than my lovely Vaio's.
Indeed it was 6 months after the iPhone first came out before I even got interested, and it was only from reviews and feedback from people I knew who had it that I first got tempted, not by any hype.

anyway, I'll watch the program a bit later and maybe I'll get more from it, but I reckon you can classify anything and anybody into little boxes without too much effort

Nice jutaxposition of the Apple store with the glowing cross I tend to agree, no other brand (not even Sony) inspires the same fanaticism from it's more rabid followers as Apple does. Can't count the number of times an anti-Apple post or article elicited pages & pages of vitriol from offended parties.
The kind of marketing Apple does (& the quality of its products of course) develops a brand loyalty that's pretty hard to match - in some people that same loyalty becomes something more than your typical intense geek attachment to the gadgets you use.
One thing I like about the Esato site is that no matter how much it's members love SE products , they're not hesitant in pinpointing specific stuff (or models) that they don't like. They don't pile on other people (who don't like SE stuff) in quite the same way as Apple fanatics do either.
Keep it up guys

"taste of the mortal fruit" - Apple
might be a correct study, so is it that all those who use or love Apple and its product are religious.

I have seen the entire episode and though the Microsoft part was particular funny.
They didn't say everyone owning an Apple product was like this, but the woman operating the MRI scanner said "It is quite interesting because we see quite amount of changes in the brain when he's (An Apple fan site owner) actually looking at Apple products. Which is quite fascinating. We often see this when people are loyal to a brand"
The show didn't talk dirty about Apple products at all. They were just curious why people would stand in line for 24 hours to be the first to get hold of a piece of hardware.

I think you'll find the vitriol is directed at Apple fans rather than by them. Case in point, THIS THREAD, where assertions are made that Apple releases only features commonly found in other phones and 'claims' to have invented now-obsolete tech like video calling.
All along, the iPhone has been a revolution not in hardware features (capacitive touchscreen aside) but in USABILITY. In truth, previous 'smartphones' were pretty stupid, hence the rise of the feature phone. Since Apple redefined the smartphone, their apps and the ecosystem that links them, feature phones (and SE whose whole company relied on selling them) have been all but wiped out. The fact that people are still going on about hardware features shows that some just can't adapt to the times, even after 4 years. All the 'hardware feature' debaters used to use Symbian to point out the iPhone's so-called flaws, but hardware features couldn't save Symbian and now that the same excuses have been carried across to Android phones they still don't carry any weight. All the Android phones added together only now can exceed the sales of iPhone - just. This is because iOS and it's ecosystem provides a better experience than Android. Android's market is fanbois and people who want but can't afford an iPhone, pure and simple.
Apple don't do much marketing. They don't reply to rumours, they don't 'accidently on-purpose' leak info and Steve Jobs doesn't do the rounds of the talk shows like actors do when they have a new movie out. They announce their products at internal industry events, not press conferences. It's the demand from the public that causes the press to clamour for tickets to a SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS conference (WWDC) to live blog the inside info on the phones.
Ferrari don't do a lot of marketing either and they're products are sold out in advance too. It's what happens when you have a reputation as an industry leader and manufacturer of the best products in your field.

What is best? For whom? We can agree on that Ferrari is a better car than Volkswagen Golf. But for 99% of us, the Golf would be a better choice. It is cheaper, has cheaper insurance, larger storage compartment, makes less noice, use less fuel, has room for 5 people. The list is long for the car parallel and some of the same things should be valid for the iPhone as well. The iPhone is better than most smartphones, but you are stuck with limited storage space, it is expensive, needs iTunes to sync media, no Adobe Flash, no models with hardware keyboard, fixed battery and more.

Did they spend the USD 691 million advertising last year on nothing?

But isn't buying a product be it a car or phone about image and status also?we want certain products for their image and brand and not because they are better its why for the very same reason we wear designer clothes even though cheaper clothes are in some cases nicer so that's not really an argument to knock Apple like that.

@julias
I agree. It is also about image and status. Some buy Apple products because of the status it gives them, and some buy iPhones because they think it is the best product they can get for the money. It is many cons and pros here, and everyone need to weight those against each other. Personally, I wouldn't even think about buying a desktop PC without the posibillity to add more memory or add a new hard drive. Same thing about my digital camera an mobile phone. I would not consider buying one of those without being able to use my old memory cards.

Then that is your individual choice and its why one person buys a basic no frills £10 Nokia phone because all they want a phone to do is make calls and send texts and then you have others who will pay many thousands for a Vertu or other high end mobile phone all because image means everything to them.

Found this picture which sums up the power Apple has on some of us

I just gotta post this pic on facebook - made my morning thanks

Just watch this(WARNING! watching this may cause doubt in human race) in : http://www.youtube.com/watch?[....]yGYG_A&feature=player_embedded