iPad owners are parents and like business - selfish elites?

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 28 July 2010 10:23

Opinion and Analysis

iPad owners are selfish elites because they're interested in business and they tend to be parents while iPad haters are gamers and geeks who love Linux, high tech and are altruistic humanists. Those are the conclusions of a new survey that appears to say more about the value of online pop psychology than iPad owners.

According to online pop psychology blog, mytype.com, a survey of 20,000 of its users on Facebook between the ages of 13 and 49, 'people interested in business and finance are much more likely to be iPad Owners than those interested in movies, music, books and literature, the arts, the internet, video games, shopping, food and drink, nightlife or family.'

In addition, 'iPad Owners are an elite bunch.  They're wealthy, highly educated and sophisticated.  They value power and achievement much more than others.  They're also selfish, scoring low on measures of kindness and altruism.'

Meanwhile, 'iPad critics, on the other hand, tend to be independent geeks.  They prize self-direction, shun conformity, and are interested in video games, computers, electronics, science and the internet.  One of the strongest single indicators of being an iPad Critic is a preference for the Linux over Windows or Macintosh.'

Furthermore, 'iPad Critics do tend to be young men.  To add even more color: they tend to have no children and little interest in family.'

Finally, 'Parents love the iPad. Parents are much more likely to be iPad Owners than non-parents.'

Is anybody out there besides this middle-aged parent beginning to see a reality disconnect here?

The people that mytype.com seems to claim parents who are highly educated and sophisticated - and presumably also wealthy - are nasty selfish elites.

Meanwhile all those young, single male gamers, geeks and Linux lovers are the true unselfish altruistic humanists of the world.

Hello! Hello!! As a parent with a degree, a mortgage who likes both the iPhone and iPad, who started his own business and employs people, I resent being called selfish and elitist.

If I'm more selfish than a young pimply faced pizza scoffing, cola guzzler who spends hours on his backside playing COD then I'm happy to be called selfish.

If I'm elitist because I work hard so that I can send my kids to good schools then ditto.

Now I'm not sure about the respective experiences of this column's reader base but I do know that there are readers who are from a wide range of categories - gamer geeks, apple fanbois, Linux afficionados, and lots and lots of parents in business with mortgages and school fees to pay.

I also know plenty of iPad owners - and guess what? They span all of those categories.

Let's be perfectly honest here, the fact that this survey was done at all is because the iPad is wildly popular and successful. It's so easy to use and so closed that it doesn't lend itself to geek prying.

In other words, the iPad is not a techie device; it's a people's device. Therefore it is definitely not elitist (unlike techie devices) and it is not for selfish people - just people who want to get work done.