Actor Danny Trejo embraces Kool-Aid Man at the Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D premiere in August 2011.
Certain people who dislike Apple products still reflexively refer to people who do like them as mindless, Kool-Aid-guzzling cultists. They’re entitled to their opinion. But the whole notion of the average Apple fan being a nutty fetishist feels like a throwback to the era when the company was on the ropes and its customer base was tiny. And a new CNBC survey says that half of American households now contain at least one Apple product.
In other words, watch out, Apple unbelievers: you may soon be outnumbered.
CNBC’s All America Economic Survey 2012, which polled 836 Americans, found that half of them live in a home with a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod or an iPad. Actually, it found that the average household has 1.6 Apple products, which makes me feel sad for whoever’s stuck with using 60% of an iPhone. Out here in the west, CNBC’s respondents own an average of two Apple products, suggesting that the reality-distortion field emanating from Cupertino may be particularly strong on the left coast.
Not surprisingly, more affluent consumers are more likely to own Apple stuff: According to CNBC, 77 percent of households that earn at least $75,000 have it on the premises, vs. only 28 percent of under-$30,000 homes. On the other hand, Democrats and Republicans are equally Apple-smitten: 56 percent of the members of both parties have at least one of the company’s products.
I’ve been saying for a while now that Apple’s customer base looks like America to me, making the always-silly cultist stereotype even sillier. But even if the day comes when a survey shows that 99.99% of American homes own Apple products, I predict that some among the other .01% will keep on angrily accusing everyone else of being the wild-eyed zealots.