
There is a Horse in the Apple Store - blasdel
http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/1059696119/there-is-a-horse-in-the-apple-store
======
_delirium
For me personally, some of the not-being-that-excited-ness is that I grew up
reading sci-fi and cyberpunk, and basically always assumed these things were
possible and likely, just a matter of implementation details. A device that
can translate any language at a button-push? Sure, I heard about it when I was
eight. A device you carry around that instantly connects to some sort of
communication network? Yeah, I've probably read about a dozen takes on those.
Etc.

Weirdly, actually having it doesn't seem to make a huge difference to me. The
_idea_ of something like a smartphone was pretty exciting when I read about it
in the 1980s, and it was interesting to follow early PDA forays like the
Newton. But now that they exist and work well, I haven't even gotten around to
buying one yet; by the time reality caught up, it wasn't that exciting
anymore.

~~~
danilocampos
I grew up with a ravenous appetite for science fiction too. In particular, I
was fascinated by handheld computers.

Tricorders, PADDs, Al's Handlink, SELMA, they all drove my imagination nuts.

From my early Handspring visor to today's iPhone 4, real life handhelds have
been exciting because they slake my childhood thirst for a piece of the
future.

I'm a little sad, though. The first iPhone pretty much put all scifi handhelds
to shame, and the iPhone 4 with FaceTime beats even the video communicator
from Earth: Final Conflict. After playing with Epic Citadel and seeing the
ridiculous graphical power in that tiny package, there's nothing left to
thrill in me in the land of pocket computers. The depths of those childhood
fantasies have been plumbed.

Ah well. We still have ocular implants with augmented reality HUD overlays and
telescopic vision to look forward to!

~~~
_delirium
Hmm, I can see that on the technological front, but culturally to me it hasn't
surpassed the imagined future. I might've read too much cyberpunk, but when I
was a kid I really thought this kind of tech was going to totally change
things... we were going to live in _cyberspace_ now. Somehow, using
smartphones to look up yelp reviews, traffic directions, and email doesn't
seem like what I was hoping for. In some weird way, BBSs were more exciting
and futuristic to me, creating an ASCII-based virtual world out of beeps on a
telephone line between my computer and some random sysop's computer, and with
a cultural ethos that this was a new world we could define. Maybe I'm jaded,
but now the internet just feels like an extension of irl.

~~~
philwelch
Having grown older, I've become more and more convinced that spending a lot of
time in cyberspace is a fundamentally bad idea. Using technology to enhance my
life in the real world? Fantastic. Using technology to escape into a virtual
world? Doesn't sound healthy.

~~~
_delirium
I guess I don't do it much anymore (posting on forums like this
notwithstanding), but I'm not sure I've changed my mind overall. There's a
certain kind of community that BBSs, along with medium-sized Usenet groups /
webforums / mailing lists / etc. gave, that is somewhat different from IRL
kinds of communities, and also different from both very small online
communities (people you already know) and very large online communities
(places like reddit, Slashdot, and HN). Not to promote a _replacement_ of rl
with cyberspace, but I think it's an interesting experiment where something is
lost by it not persisting.

------
aaronbrethorst
Maybe I'm just drunk, having just been kicked out at bar time from the place
around the corner[1], but this resonated with me: "When does the magic of a
situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional?...We define a
pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?"

I'm surrounded by exceptional situations every day and they just seem mundane.
Tonight I congratulated a guy who just signed a record deal with Sub Pop
Records. Earlier this week, I landed a development contract for an iOS app
that I think will revolutionize its market come early next year. It goes on
from there. These sorts of things seem normal to me now. At 15, I would've
been, to quote the article, gobsmacked by my involvement—however tangential—in
any of them.

Are human beings just so easily adaptable to their circumstances that they
start missing the depth of these 'big' events after a while? What must it be
like to be Bill Gates or Bono? "Had dinner with Queen Rania of Jordan and the
food was middling to fair. My Gulfstream's flight to New York was delayed due
to weather issues. What a joke. Don't they know I'm supposed to have coffee
with Bill Clinton tomorrow morning to talk about his philanthropic efforts?"

Where's the magic? What does it take to surprise and delight us? Obviously not
a pony.

[1] the haagen-dazs ice cream bar I'm chewing on right now doesn't hurt
either: having a 24 hour supermarket across the street is the bomb. Get kicked
out of the bar, go buy ice cream. Not a bad way to end a Friday night.

~~~
retube
There is a well-known corollary here with happiness. People think that if they
are million- or billionaires, or have a super-fit girlfriend, or drive a
ridiculous car or live in a massive house or whatever they'll be happy, or at
least happier. However all studies have shown that rich people are not happier
than poor(er) people. And more interesting is people that have suffered
catastrophic accidents or contracted disabling diseases: on average these
people are no less happy than anyone else.

~~~
zackattack
Your statement is just wrong. Angus Deaton at Princeton found "Each doubling
of national income is associated with a near one unit increase in average
life-satisfaction measured on an eleven point scale from 0 ('the worst
possible life') to 10 ('the best possible life')". I'm all for deluding
yourself with baseless platitudes to rationalize your lack of success, and
then getting a Yeah! Yeah! rally of upvotes from people similarly situated,
but please don't advance such falsity here.

~~~
thorax
I don't think the rude dismissal is warranted.

I think the point retube was trying to reference is that studies have shown
that people vastly overestimate the magnitude and duration of changes in
happiness due to a windfall or catastrophe (the most recent source I have for
this is Dan Ariely's _Upside of Irrationality_ ). While there is a shift of
overall life satisfaction, major changes are much less impactful to your long-
term happiness than you would predict (presumably due to growing familiarity,
adaptation, and the general "the grass is greener" bias we all have).

At any rate, I, specifically, would be happier without reading personally-
attacking rebuttals on HN. Is that really needed to make your point?

~~~
retube
thanks

------
ugh
I know it’s not the topic of the submission but I would have very much liked
to get an explanation. Is it maybe a guide horse? See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse>

~~~
naner
Yes it is an assistance animal[1]. It is kind of sad that the guy never
figured it out. At least he didn't go and try to pet it or something.

[1]:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Creatures-t.html)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Yes it is an assistance animal[1]. It is kind of sad that the guy never
figured it out.

Are you sure. Why could it not be a pet? The image in the OP doesn't appear to
show a harness (as in the NYTimes article) as is usual for an assistance
animal. In my country assistance animals usually wear some high-vis in public
too.

~~~
naner
It could be a pet, I'm no expert. They don't have to have a harness, though,
I'v seen seizure alert dogs with just a leash. They do usually have to have
some kind of identifying clothing on, though, so you're probably right on that
one.

------
chaosmachine
Wow, I wasn't expecting an actual horse. I thought for sure this was some kind
of Trojan Horse metaphor about Ping and the iTunes store...

~~~
ElbertF
Yup, I was thinking an "elephant in the room" kind of thing.

------
greengarstudios
This reminds me of the time I saw Steve Jobs in the Apple Store, Palo Alto. No
one was looking at him, except me. Eventually, I walked up to him and said
hello. Then, I showed him Whiteboard: Collaborative Drawing, the iPad app I
developed, on the new iPad I had just bought.

To modify part of the article to fit my experience...

I asked one of the Apple Store employees: "Do you realize Steve Jobs is behind
you?"He sighs at me and says, "Yes, he’s in here all the time."

~~~
scotth
What did he think of your app?

------
alexophile
I really like the observations his niece makes, specifically _“When I play
hide and seek with my friends I have to hide, but if I don’t want to be seen
by grown-ups I just have to be quiet.”_

~~~
jacoblyles
The interaction between children and adults in our culture is weird nowadays.

I was at the zoo with my girlfriend in the reptile section. A little boy was
staring into the same tank that we were, his mom was maybe ten feet away. You
know how reptiles are, they are always hiding behind some rock or branch or
just blending in nefariously. So I ask the boy, "Do you see the snake?" It
felt awkward to ignore another human being crowding around the glass with us
and I figured I would give him a chance to feel good by showing off his
superior reptile-spotting ability.

He seemed shocked that an adult he didn't know would talk to him. There's
something weird about that being weird.

~~~
Splines
Probably a U.S. cultural thing. I find it weird talking to other parents' kids
too (I'm a father of two), as you don't know how the other parents will handle
it. I'd like to think there are places in this world that aren't so paranoid.

~~~
akadruid
It's not just a U.S. thing. I'm a UK father of 3 small boys, and it's a given
over here that you should be very wary of interation with any child unless you
have some kind of relationship with their parent. It's somewhat relaxed where
parents feel more comfortable; a zoo might qualify for that.

------
famousactress
That article brought me more enjoyment-per-paragraph than just about anything
in a while. I do wish the photo was revealed somewhere in the middle of the
post though. I shared it with my wife that way, and it really has a pretty
profound affect to wonder if it's just a metaphor for the first half-dozen
paragraphs.

~~~
plorkyeran
Even with the photograph I thought it was just a metaphor until the end. I
assumed he had just photoshopped the horse in to make the article more
amusing.

------
neilk
I am in love with the title. "There is a horse in the Apple Store". I want it
on t-shirts and cereal boxes and in graffiti on highway overpasses.

I am not even sure what it really means. I know it's purely literal, but it's
almost poetic.

~~~
tel
It's not purely literal, Frank Chimeri generalizes the experience to whenever
something is naturally astonishing but somehow now impossible to notice.

The "tiny horse" effect!

------
piramida
Technically, it is not a pony but a falabella horse which is a miniature horse
originating from Latin America. I know that it is somewhat irrelevant :) But
many people have them as pets.

------
sbaqai
Great article. The author coins the term "tiny pony" to describe the tendency
of becoming acclimated to certain exceptional things. ie: There's a pony in
the apple store and no one seems to care. Because its always there..

Maybe its because we're so focused on ourselves? I still have a regular brick-
type cell phone. So its a lot of fun for me to play with an iPhone or iPad
whenever I'm at the store, or when my friends let me play with theirs. I
always get an urge to buy one - it could totally make my life better
(especially mobile internet).

But if I buy it, I know the magic will go away. It's particular exceptional-
ness will become an expectation, and even a frustration when it doesn't work
correctly. And after a certain period, I'd likely refer to it as just another
brick-type object, compared with whatever relatively exceptional technology is
out then.

~~~
Qz
I got an HTC Incredible which is about on par with an iPhone (in between the
3g and the 4g), and it still seems like magic when I use it.

~~~
bruceboughton
I think this speaks more to your attitude than to the model and brand of
phone.

~~~
Qz
Wasn't trying to say anything about model and brand -- if I had an iPhone
instead I would probably say the same thing. My point was that getting the
thing doesn't necessarily take away the 'magic'.

------
roryokane
When I read this post, I thought the whole thing was a just a weird metaphor.
I saw the picture at the top, but since there was no explanation in the
article of why the pony was in the store, I thought the author had simply
photoshopped the pony in. It was only after seeing all these comments taking
the claim so seriously that I realized the guy really had seen a pony in the
Apple Store.

------
lionhearted
Related:

"Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy" -

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk>

~~~
mattmaroon
Classic bit. Also see [http://comedians.jokes.com/patton-oswalt/videos/dvd---
exclus...](http://comedians.jokes.com/patton-oswalt/videos/dvd---exclusive-
patton-oswalt---the-year-2009/)

------
DavidSJ
_But there are no children in the Apple Store, for the same reason you would
not see a child in a jewelry store: things are small and fragile and expensive
and shiny._

In my experience, there are usually quite a number of children in Apple
Stores.

~~~
FraaJad
Our local apple store even has kid accessible iMacs for them to play with. And
there are always kids during "normal" hours.

------
timf
When the tiny pony is a negative thing, many call it Creeping Normalcy [1].
Sounds like the same phenonmenon to me: adjustments that come slowly enough do
not get appreciated. Louis CK has a funny bit about it [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk>

------
joshbert
I loved the article. Like someone said above, it's like reading a mini-drama.

What really made it for me is how I can relate to it. I'm constantly taken
back and think things like 'So many people are trying to take the world into
new directions, myself included, and some are successful. The rest of the
world gets the end results and we get accustomed to them so incredibly fast.
Often times ignoring all the work done or the brilliance of the piece itself.'

Like, for example, I can literally work on my idea for a business, listen to
virtually any record that has ever existed that I want to listen, watch any
movie that I could possibly want to watch and thousands of other activities
all in a single day and without leaving my house.

I could witness the huge developments that other people are making all around
the globe and watch some of the most brilliant minds the world has, often the
developers themselves, give feedback on said events. And yes, I'm talking
about HN.

All in all, it's a great age to live. I'm only 20 and not particularly
wealthy, but boy has the trip thus far been incredible.

------
faramarz
Great narrative! The picture wouldn't have been the same without it.

This is probably explained by the _Change blindness_ phenomenon.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness>

~~~
blahedo
THANK you for mentioning that there was a picture there. The page made so much
more sense after I loaded it.

------
verisimilitude
The picture on this post likely depicts a seeing eye horse:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse>

Here's the advantage: both dogs and horses require years to train in this
capacity. However, horses then live much longer than dogs, maximizing the
value of the training time invested in them.

Plus, they're extremely cute.

------
nhebb
_A black president, whose father is from Kenya and mother is from Kansas,
being elected President of the United States is a tiny pony.

When does the magic of a situation fade?_

I guess that guy hasn't seen any poll numbers lately. It's still pretty cool
that we elected a black president, but the magic faded a while ago.

------
moondowner
I like how the author of the post explains his emotions and conclusions, it's
like reading a mini drama :)

------
Andrew_Quentin
_Off-Topic: Most stories about... cute animal pictures._

 _On-Topic: ...anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

Perhaps it is only me, but that things are amazing certainly does not gratify
my intellectual curiosity. That things are amazing is a given.

------
WalterBright
I grew up with airplanes being old hat. But still prickles run down my spine
when I look at that old photo of the Wright Flyer's first flight. What an
incredible achievement that was, and how long man had dreamed about flying!

------
albertzeyer
It reminds me on a passage in Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by D.Adams. He
basically says that people unconsciously ignore / blind out strange not-
explainable things.

He also had a funny term for that but I forgot it...

~~~
edanm
Are you talking about "Somebody else's problem"? From the books: "An SEP
[somebody else's problem] is something we can't see, or don't see, or our
brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's
problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look
at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your
only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."

Apparently, this term is now actually used in Psychology to describe actual
phenomena, according to Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_elses_problem>

~~~
albertzeyer
Ah thanks for linking it, that is what I meant. :)

Btw., your link was broken. Here is the correct one:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

~~~
yuvipanda
Both links are wrong.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

~~~
edanm
OK this is getting ridiculous, we all posted the same link and they're all
broken. Maybe it's a problem with HN?

Here's another attempt, I want to see what happens:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Elses_Problem>

EDIT: OK, the problem is HN removes the apostrophe (') from the word "Else's".
Not sure why.

------
ladon86
In all this talk I think you guys might be missing the most remarkable thing
of all.

There was a _horse_ in the _Apple store_.

------
josefresco
A whole thread about a mini horse and not one mention of Rob & Big? I miss Big
Black.

------
marstall
Also, in the hospital.

------
jeberle
Had he been paying attention, he would have noticed there's also a man in a
kilt.

~~~
philwelch
That's probably a "Utilikilt": <http://www.utilikilts.com/>

They're not that unusual--I've met at least two people who have one.

------
mkramlich
What I don't--- OMG PONIES!

In all seriousness, it may be a trained assistance pet for the blind.

------
alttab
Displaced "viral marketing?"

