Anyone who doesn’t follow the Apple Mastodon drama will have no idea that a lot of the Apple punditry have scaled back or seemingly quit the service. I won’t go into the details as to why because other people have covered it better than I could. But out with the old and in with the new right? Well..wait… where are the new Apple Pundits?
We seem to have had the same cast or characters for a while now. Most have been around since before the launch of the iPad and a few much older than that. In other fandoms there seems to be a churn of people who rise to the top over time but not for Apple. Why is that? A few ideas that crossed my mind.
- I could be looking in the wrong places. I’m not on TikTok or Instagram so maybe they are all there. Though I find it hard to see how anyone could do extensive thought pieces on those platforms. Maybe that’s not required anymore.
- We are what the market will support and those established players have essentially become the big fish in a small pond. That could be true, money is in short supply in the podcast market and well youtube doesn’t pay hardly anyone. It’s hard to get into a niche like this without a day job to actually pay the bills.
- Apple doesn’t command the adoration that it once did. They aren’t the scrappy company fighting for a better more personal computer. If anything they are the corporate megastructure that swallows or kills all in its way. They are the establishment not the counterculture.
If I had to pick which one is most likely I put my bet on 3. I know Apple still holds the culture cachet but it’s the mainstream safe choice now. Being the mainstream choice doesn’t exactly elicit enthusiasm among the youth.