Ambassadors of Mac
I met a very nice woman on the train the other day. She spotted me working on my Powerbook and she made an extra effort to speak to me about how I liked it.
“Excuse me,” she asked, “is that a Powerbook you are using?”
I wanted to reply, “Well yes, these are Bugle Boy jeans I’m wearing” but instead replied, “yes it is.” I quickly darted my eyes back to my screen as to dissuade any further conversation.
“I have been debating whether to get an iBook or a Powerbook” she added.
I realized that despite my best “don’t bother me” signals, this was going to be a conversation. But just as I finished giving her my Apple Matters business card, we arrived at her stop and she stepped down off the train, yelling, “Thank you Greg. Thank you!”
At first I wasn’t sure what she needed to thank me for as I wasn’t sure what I did. Maybe she was grateful I actually took my eyes off my screen and engaged in conversation (however brief) with her. Maybe she thought she would find her answer of iBook vs. Powerbook when she visited Apple Matters. (Note to Nice Woman: email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I will give you my opinion on what you should buy) Or maybe this woman caused me to stumble across something.
Apple users have previously been portrayed as rabid, faithful, fans whose only point of differentiation on the Star Trek Convention dork-o-meter is our iPods instead of phasers. This has led to the term, “Cult of Mac”. But we aren’t a cult because we are small in number. We are a cult because we are ever-faithful. We were faithful through the Cube and the Tie-dye iMac. And with the bad times we have had the good times, namely the iPod.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know…same ol’ babble about being a cult. Today I’m saying something different. We owe it to Steve Jobs, Woz, and everyone at One Infinite Loop to become ambassadors of the Mac brand. We aren’t part of Fight Club: I won’t look at your black eye, give you a subtle nod and tell everyone you fell down the stairs. It’s not enough to just buy the products, go to MacWorld and sport your iPod. You need to spread the word on why you choose Apple. When someone looks at your computer you need to tell them why you love it. When someone is looking at Macs at CompUSA, you must be the Apple specialist (God knows CompUSA doesn’t do it) and sell sell sell.
Owning a Mac comes responsibility and commitment. This nice woman did not talk to me because she wanted to have a Missed Connection posting on Craig’s List. She came to me because she saw me using a product in the real life—not a store display. And I like to think I contributed to her buying decision by being friendly. Her purchase will bring consumer confidence. And that will lead to strength for Apple in the future.
What will you do to make Apple stronger?
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What did I do ?
I mention the Mac as an option regularly to people who just haven’t even realised it is an option. Just today I mailed a bunch of links to a guy in work who wasn’t aware that OS-X was a flavour of UNIX.
I convinved a friend to spend his limited budget on a used eMac instead of a new Dell. He has no regrets. Apple ficed it for mothing when the IVAD cable got fried. I sourced the machine for him from eBay, collected, set up and delivered it, and taught him some basics. He’s had to call me maybe 3 times onlly despite being a complete computing novice. He remains virus free.
I loaned a G4 400 to a windows using friend. He enjoyed the tinkering required with windows and the expertices necessary to keep it running smoothly, but when he got bored with that and actually wanted to do some creative stuff, I said, “Look, take my spare mac for a month, see how you get on”. He kept it for almost a year and now has an 20” iMac G5.
He has also persuaded his father (or rather his father’s troublesome windows PC did), to get a mac mini for his holiday home. If it works out, he’ll probably get something bigger and better.
My G4 400 is now ensconsed in my parents’ spare bedroom. They’d refused the offer about 18 months ago, not really seeing the need for one. Seeing some of their friends being able to get photos of their grandchildren etc, my mother said that she regretted having refused it. I had already decided not to sell it and to keep it as a machine to loan to friends to try out, so my parents were in luck.
I’m just glad that they didn’t go out and buy a ‘bargain’ machine from a supermarket and that they’re free to learn the basics without windows getting in the way. This is partly for selfish reasons. I wouldn’t be able to support them on a windows machine. I use one daily in work, but someone else fixes it when it screws up.
Great comments for a sunny Friday! I expect to get asked more and more about Apple products once Tiger sets in. Thanks
Tim
As an Apple Solutions Consultant at CompUSA, I resent that comment about CompUSA not doing their job. Not really. Actually, getting them trained in Apple stuff is extremely hard, and I encourage you to help out the CompUSA staff as much as possible, and also your local Solutions Consultant. My job becomes much easier when customers are aware of what the Mac platform is. Half of my job is to make sure that the CompUSA people are aware of the capabilities of the platform, but many of the employees there are Mac haters, so I have to work twice as hard to get them to realize what they are missing in the platform, and many of them are completely close-minded when it comes to new ideas in computing, which is very sad. However, every new iPod convert I get brings one more potential user into my section, and helps me get the foot in the door with one more potential convert. If you would like to change/help the state of affairs, please, either sell the computers as a favor to me, or heck, get a job at your local CompUSA, and convert more users. On a side note, There is an opening for an Apple Solutions Consultant at the Las Vegas CompUSA. Let me know if you are interested.
Dustin
I’m glad I didn’t have to sign a loyalty oath when I bought my Mac!
I certainly don’t feel like I “owe Steve Jobs” anything. After all, I paid them my hard earned dollars, not the other way around. Is that what it means to be in the cult of Mac? What did I get myself into?
I don’t think I necessarily owe anything to Jobs above the considerable amount of money paid to Apple in return for products, but I do feel I owe it to friends and family to steer them toward what I think is a superior platform and better value for money.
I don’t think is is so much of a Cult thing.
It is a normal reaction to want to help people when you see them suffering. Friends of mine are seriously thinking of selling their recent “digital life” acquisitions on Ebay. All they want is to email, print or look at their digital pics and to easily cut some footage from their dv cam tapes and burn it to dvd. They have little time for computing and want to spend it productively.
They long for the return of the days of their analogue camera, where they’d just send in the film and get prints they could look at and show.
Their problem is a virus and adware ridden, unpatched Dell PC running Windows 98. The words they use are “I spend more time making it work than anything else” and “it is too complicated to get the results I want”.
I do a lot of evangelizing, but try to keep it from getting on their nerves.
A practical way to show them the advantages of Mac OS X for example was to edit and burn a video I made of their last B-Day party. They love showing it off to their friends.
They now have their eyes set on a PB, but can’t spend the money yet. Of course I’ve proposed a Mac mini or an iBook which would be a cheaper entry into the Apple world.
I’m wondering what else it needs to get them to finally ditch their PC. I guess it should just stop working. One thing is for certain, it requires extreme pain for a PC user to finally decide to switch.
Mac haters are, in my opinion, worse than Mac fanatics. Mac fanatics typically find out why they dislike Windows so much - they need fuel for their evangelical rants. Mac haters just hate the Mac because it’s not Windows. Hmm. Gosh, that makes tons of sense…
I’ve been using a Mac of one type or another since 1994, which was the year that I sold my 7 year-old Zenith supersport and bought a Duo, which I really loved.
Since that time I’ve been almost exclusively Mac—not because of the cult of personality that surrounds Steve Jobs and the machine itself, but because the machines that Apple makes and the OS that Apple writes is just better than the alternative.
Here is a conversion experiences share with you.
The first is the most recent. I have a friend who is a professional musician, and who has been a dedicated PC user from day one. Although he has bitched and moaned constantly about the frustrations he experiences with the windows system, he was afraid to make the switch. For the past two years or so I’ve been working on him by simply doing stuff with my powerbook in front of him, watching him take notice of what I was doing. A couple of months ago I bought a new 15” PB, loaded with RAM. I then took about 30 hours of tour video that my friend has, and turned that into a promotional DVD by using iMovie and iDVD. I gave him a copy of the DVD and told him that I did it with software that is included on all new macs—which amazed him.
About a month ago both of his wintel machines died. Taking the initiative I took him to the store, and literally forced him to buy a new iBook, pointing out that there was a return period on the machine if he absolutely hated it.
Before I let him use it I loaded it up with every piece of software that he would need, and did a bit of configuring of the OS preferences for him, as well as updating all the software that was loaded on the machine. That made his apple life much easier from the start.
It took him about a day to get used to the interface, and another couple of days to become truly accustomed to everything, and he has now confirmed that he has truly switched over. He can’t get over the ease of use viz. the OS, and he is constantly remarking on how well-integrated the software/hardware is.
So, score one convert for me.
“Mac haters are, in my opinion, worse than Mac fanatics.”
That probably has more to do with your sympathies than actual reality. I own and use both Macs and PCs and in MY experience, Mac fanatics are far less tolerable.
Hmm. Yeah, I gets a situational thing, Beeble. I have plenty of experience with non-Mac platforms, so… I like to think of myelf as an open-minded and level-headed Mac Fanatic, except when it comes to Apple products… Then that Fanatic part shows its meaning.
I discovered an easy convert. My brother was fed up with the pollution on his PC and wanted to know what to do, so I tentatively suggest an Mac mini, expecting the routine scoff. But no, he was very interested.
He has now bought a Mac mini and is getting over the learning hump, but I know that as soon as he hears his friends complaining about their PCs, he will be very happy - and become an ambassador.
I asked him tho, why he was so open to the Mac. Three reasons:
1) His daughter has an iPod
2) More significantly, he had been a teacher until the mid-90’s so had much experience with Apple computers and so knew how good they are.
3) MS Office for the Mac
So you too might find many ex-Apple users are merely hibernating and just waiting for a nudge.
“Mac haters are, in my opinion, worse than Mac fanatics.”
“That probably has more to do with your sympathies than actual reality. I own and use both Macs and PCs and in MY experience, Mac fanatics are far less tolerable.”
I think what you’re talking about is mac fans versus PC users, in which case I’d agree. What ‘Waa’ was talking about was the Mac hater. Mac haters generally do what they do from a position of ignorance and possibly fear. The average PC user just doesn’t care enough to be a pain in the neck.
The guys in work know I’m a Mac fanboy. One is a Linux geek, so we have a friendly attack on the other one’s choice, but each has good reasons and it’s not serious, there’s a certain respect there. One was going to buy a cheap windows laptop, so I just told him to think about spending a tiny bit more on an iBook as he’d save a bundle on the software he’d need anyway. I asked him to at least take a look at them before he made a decision and then at least if he went with the windows machine, it was an informed choice. He’s waiting for machines bundled with Tiger to hit the shelves.
Another one really doesn’t get that I can possibly have made an informed choice. He doesn’t understand that maybe it’s a choice that would be better for him as well. He just thinks I chose Apple to be different.
Another calls me a ‘separatist!’ (my retort is ‘conformist!’).
Very few actually ask why I use a Mac, and I tend not to say much unless I get asked. I might just say “You should take look at Macs’, and if they want to know more, I’ll give them a few links.
People are regularly surprised to find out that the OS is UNIX under the skin, and are generally much more interested after knowing just that one fact.
Another one really doesn’t get that I can possibly have made an informed choice.
I think that describes the average Mac fan’s opinion about Windows users, wouldn’t you say? I’ve personally been told I’m a) ignorant, b) refuse to change (also hard-headed), and c) am a Microsoft shill (even though, strangely, I like both systems about the same, with a slight preference for XP).
Honestly, though, I don’t think “fanatic” is the right word. I think “partisan” is more accurate. The attitude of Mac enthusiasts reminds me more of political partisans than anything else. And I mean almost to a tee. The parallels are astonishing when you really look at it. Got to any political blog and replace the word “liberal/Democrat” with “Mac” and replace the word “Republican/conservative” with “Microsoft” and you’ve got yourself an average Mac fansite. And Mac Daily News is the Rush Limbaugh show for Mac users, only slightly less objective.
I might just say “You should take look at Macs’, and if they want to know more, I’ll give them a few links.
More than one Windows user (myself included) has heard “You should get at a Mac” in response to some technical question about Windows. Trust me, the response is both unhelpful and annoying. Just FYI.
Yup, I guess we have all had these conversations. Using my PB in public always generates curious stares. In a Chinese restaurant once I even almost sold mine to the waitress! And another time a guy next to me on a flight asked me the simple question: Why a mac?
Is it even possible to put into words? In one or two sentences? Saying “it’s easy to use / intuitive” sounds like if you’re a pc idiot. Saying it has great software makes them think, well there’s great pc software too, why go through the trouble of learning a different system. And aren’t they much more expensive? Sigh.
Apple has many hurdles to overcome if it wants to win more converts. Here in Austria, although iPods are being sold in all the major electronic stores now, it is practically insider information to know you can buy a mac. I do what I can, but it’s not easy being an ambassador.
Chris et al
You want to really get people’s attention? This works best with a laptop!
Open a document in Preview - eg a book (I’m reading Robinson Crusoe at the moment) - and from the View menu, rotate the page view left or right, resize and zoom to fit.
Then rotate your laptop accordingly, get comfortable, and start reading.
If you do this in public - you’ll never get anything read.
PS Yes - you can do this on a Wintel using Acrobat but it’s not as elegant.