The smart companies out source their gorilla marketing to a third party, having realized their own inadequacies.
Oh shit, I didn't know Marketing exists! Different thing from what OP described.
If you’ve hot any occam’s razor left in you, consider:
1. Apple is a masterful media manipulator, carefully planting stories like this by gradually seeding fringe media first, then more mainstream, with a clever and subtle goal of making themselves look dumb in order to trick people into, uh, ok, I’m lost here, but something. Maybe drum up demand for products they can’t keep in stock anyway?
2. Media outlets chase clicks, and when fringe media finds a hit, mainstream media follows because you can always write a story about the fact that other people are writing stories. Low cost, proven clicks, nobody yells at you for missing a trend.
Which is more likely? I’ll cheerfully stipulate Apple is pure evil, serves cooked babies in their cafeterias, whatever it takes to discuss based on reason rather than big-evil-corpos.
Maybe. More likely is there are AI bots used to proliferate messages much cheaper than "paid posters."
> Why would anyone defend a billion dollar corporation so vehemently and not earn a single dime?
Because some like the products made by said billion dollar corporation?
Because others like to be contrarian?
Because not everyone is motivated by being paid?
Maybe, just maybe, people are different and have differing motivations not easily reduced into being "am I getting paid for this or not."
https://www.businessinsider.com/nyu-professor-says-apple-is-...
And, this isn't making them look particularly dumb. It is making them look dumb the way that most people make themselves look "bad" when they list their biggest weakness in a job interview. Silly Apple, not seeing how fantastically great their product is and how much people are dying to have it.
The most serious point in favor of this being organic nonsense is just the sheer lack of any actual evidence that it isn't, but the case is being wildly overstated, in part because we're using the non-standard term "psyop" to describe what I'd consider to be mundane marketing practices.
At this point I feel like there is no reasonable way to draw a conclusion. However, viral marketing like this is common and in fact, incredibly easy. This is done through PR services (and even shadier sources) all the time... I'm a bit surprised people on HN are unfamiliar with how utterly common the practice is, it wasn't new when I first came into contact with the industry over a decade ago. The hallmark of this is very similar articles appearing suddenly through the Internet and in the news. It's often not just random plagiarism. This is why the news is constantly running stories about how suits are back in vogue and other vain crap like that.
”Oh wow our product is so amazing we can’t keep up with demand you better buy before we run out”
It's not a “complicated psy-op”, promoting viral stories is the basics of marketing in the age of social media…
WOW, this is some remarkable (would rather use different word starting with R) desperate attempt to somehow turn the reality upside-down,of Apple being overpriced unrepairable unupgrade-able junk sold through pure marketing of exploitung insecurities of losers by selling them something that makes them feel "elite".
Unsolicitated "send via iPhone" SMS footer is perfect example.
> Which is more likely? I’ll cheerfully stipulate Apple is pure evil, serves cooked babies in their cafeterias, whatever it takes to discuss based on reason rather than big-evil-corpos
Why would they produce "low-end, low-margin Macs" then?
I don’t think there’s a direct guerilla marketing division, but I would absolutely bet money that Apple’s marketing/comms team is encouraging creators, influencers, etc to promote Mac Mini and Mac Studio for AI.
And when those teams brief and speak to people, even on confidential terms, they almost expect some things to get leaked; or will keep sharing it with more people until a third party leaks what they want leaked.
So they may seed things like “super confidential, we were internally really surprised by the demand for AI”. Intentionally.
No, Apple is not content with however much it makes from the iPhone. That’s why it stuffed cringeworthy ads in Apple News, filled the App Store screen with ads and is now doing the same with Apple Maps. It’s a company focused on making money through every avenue possible, even if it means being shortsighted and losing the goodwill of developers and users.
I mean, it's pretty much just blind conjecture that they may be marketing in stealth in the first place, so really who knows on that front. But you gotta be smoking something to think Apple doesn't want their low margin products to sell like hot cakes. I mean sure, they'd love even more for their high margin products to sell like hot cakes (like the Mac Minis that are useful for AI like in this story), but the low margin ones literally make up for it in volume so you'd sure hope they sell well.
They are a trillion dollar company, that wasn't by accident. They are marketing and sales monsters. Arguably of the big companies, they are the ones that have mastered consumer perception the best of any company on Earth. They would like all of their products to like crazy always.
Most companies have that division. It's called marketing.
That… isn't how capitalism works…