Macintosh: The Computer for the Best of Us?
Buying a car can be a trying experience. If you have no idea what you’re after the salesmen will positively inundate you with questionable information about why you should spend the next six years of your life paying for a option laden luxury SUV. The situation is ameliorated slightly if you know which vehicle you want to purchase before the dealership looms into view. Imagine you’ve chosen to buy a 2006 Land Whale. You’ll still be approached by the salesman but once he understands you know what you’re after the pitch changes, no longer will the salesman be actively trying to convince you to buy a car, rather he will now spend all his energies reassuring you that your decision is the most logical choice. The conversation usually runs along these lines:
“Can I hel..”
“I want the Land Whale, with the V-28 engine”
“Oh, nice car. What do you like about it?”
“The trunk, I heard it is huge and covered in vinyl?”
‘Yew doggies, you bet it is! Why you could stuff ten bags of mulch in there and rinse the crud out with a hose! Easiest to clean trunk in the industry! Zero inch lift-over to boot”
“Excellent. And does the trunk have a safety so it can be opened from the inside?”
“Of course. Federal law and all”
‘Shoot me straight, is this featured easily disabled?
“Never been asked that.”
“Uh, I work with a lot of red liquids. I hate to have my car looking dirty. You have a red model on the lot?”
“Of course.”
“Great. Can the V-28 really out run a highway patrol cruiser?”
“Hey, let’s get that paperwork started…”
Which is seemingly analogous to the way Macs are being presented lately. Take a look at Apple’s Tiger page, you’ll se a lot of info on Tiger being based on UNIX. You’ll note the words spent highlighting the benefits of widgets and you can’t help but notice that Apple is fairly proud of Spotlight. Which is understandable, after all if Apple wasn’t saying great things about Tiger one would be forced to think that the marketing department was spending far too much time ogling a golf course. Still one can’t help but wonder if Apple has quietly abandoned the notion that the Mac is a computer for the rest of us and began marketing the thing primarily for the elite computer user who has already convinced themselves to buy a Mac.
Take the UNIX foundation of OS X. One supposes it does increase stability and foster a multi-user environment but does the average household with one or two machines even care? A better question might be: Does the average computer user even know what UNIX is? The answer is absolutely not only does the average computer user not know what UNIX is they also don’t care. In the end the UNIX underpinnings of OS X undoubtedly appeals to the elite, computer savvy among us (read: people who care overmuch about computers) but it doesn’t hold much allure to the guy who simply wants to edit home movies.
Casual reading of the aforementioned page will produce many more examples of Apple appealing to the very serious computer user. Apple spends several words touting the benefits of smart folders, Automator, Quartz Windowing, the H.264 video codec, Core Image, Core Audio etc. All of these have one thing in common no one except paste eating geeks and computer professionals care. Picture a sixty-year old computer purchaser in Oswego Wisconsin. The guy wants a computer he can surf the web on, buy some music, and maybe whip up a really bad song in GarageBand. Do you think he cares that the Mac comes with an operating system that features the H.264 video codec? Most would agree that discussions of various video codecs are a little too esoteric for our confused Wisconsinite.
Spotlight is the one thing that Apple gets right on the Tiger page. While Spotlight may be simply redundant in many cases (if the information is that crucial to you, you likely bookmarked the page with the info) it is also extremely compelling eye candy. In fact it is easily argued that for the 90% of computer users who really don’t care about computers Spotlight is the only thing on the entire page that holds any appeal at all.
The best example of Apple’s ploy for the elite is evidenced by the existence of iMovie HD. While High Definition televisions are growing in popularity as their price decreases the cost of a High Definition digital video camera is still hovering at around two thousand dollars. If you’ve laid out two grand for a camcorder chances are iMovie will not be your movie editor of choice. Unless, of course, you are in rarified company when it comes to financial matters and don’t wish to be burdened learning the intricacies of Final Cut. In short, you’re one of the elite.
In the end Apple seems to be selling to the already convinced. If you fully comprehend the advantages of smart folders or the abilities of Automator then you’re either intent on buying a Mac or just waiting for one more thing to push you to the Mac side from the techy embrace of Linux (even Linux folks occasionally enjoy the GUI of OS X). Unfortunately for Apple these people are few in number and happen to be better informed than 95% of computer users out there. Of course it wasn’t always this way. In days of yore Apple positioned the Mac as a computer that everyone could use straight out of the box. The Mac, we were told, was the computer for the rest of us. With the release of the Mac Mini it is time for that message to be renewed, after all arrogance repels as many users as it attracts and over technical arrogance? That even repels me.
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Comments
“Why should they buy a mac? Do you want to be so elitist that the platform doesn’t survive?”
I want to be elitist enough that we can keep all the garbage off of the mac platform that has destroyed the Windows platform (viruses, spyware, malware- also cheap hardware)). Steve Jobs once compared Apple to a BMW (they both have about the same market share). And he said “What’s wrong with a Bmw?” There is nothing wrong with being a high-end high quality product. If you want to get the mac platform to the masses then you will have to lower hardware quality to compete with the $329 dells. Then let’s see how reliable your mac is in 3 or 4 years. Also if we get too much market share then the programmers writing spyware, viruses, etc…. will have a little more incentive to target the mac. The biggest reason the people I recommended a mac to agreed to spend extra to get one was so they could use the computer and the internet and not worry about constant pop ups and spyware running. They didn’t want to deal with constantly updating virus definitions and constantly running Adaware to delete programs.
As long as Apple can maintain the market share it has now and “survive” what real benefit is there to dramatically increasing market share?
The comparison between Mac and BMW isn’t really a one-to-one mapping… a BMW uses the same fuel as a Ford, drives on the same roads, and if you can drive a Ford, you can drive a BMW. The analogy would work if we got “The Mac Experience” by loading up Windows and if we could get our stuff done on Windows-based software (which, all the same, didn’t *feel* like Windows-based software because—hey!—it was running on a Mac box).
A better analogy might be to compare the Mac to a helicopter. They both get you there, but one is faster, smoother and more stylish. And costs more. And has… what was the market share again?
It’s pretty humorous to me that Microsoft lists so many things that XP does “out of the box” that it really doesn’t… For instance, my last Dell wouldn’t even play a DVD after my 30 day trial software period, much less burn one. And what software exactly am I supposed to be creating music with? A quick check of the software packed with any average XP machine will turn up Sound Recorder, that’s about it. Granted, OS X doesn’t come packed with iLife either - it’s a luxury that those of us who’ve bought new Macs get, but we get it across the board - no new Mac sold today doesn’t have it installed.
I like the comparison to the helicopter, certainly a more accurate analogy. And truth be told, now that I’m flying my ‘copter, I’d just as soon the skies weren’t cluttered with too many other folks flying around anyway. Let the casual surfers and email bunch buy Dells, someone somewhere will always be making something different and, for some peoples purposes, better. If it’s Apple - hey great - if not, most of us will simply move on to that platform.
It’s pretty humorous to me that Microsoft lists so many things that XP does “out of the box” that it really doesn’t… For instance, my last Dell wouldn’t even play a DVD after my 30 day trial software period, much less burn one. And what software exactly am I supposed to be creating music with?
XP plays DVD out of the box with Windows Media Player. It’s not great but it works if you have nothing else.
But does MS really claim you can CREATE music out of the box? I’d be interested in the exact wording and where you heard that. I’ve never heard them make that claim but it would certainly be a dubious claim if they did. I checked MS’s home page and couldn’t find any thing about creating music on the basic installed OS.
Chris:
Apple’s marketing to the people that you call “elite” makes sense to me. If you dig deep into the numbers of PC’s shipped, I am pretty sure that you will find a whole lot of corporate purchases there. Those machines may be used by regular people, but they are chosen by “elites” (who I prefer to call professionals) whose jobs are predicated on making good choices for the entire corporation.
Until very recently, it was a safe choice for IT departments to migrate to pure Windows environments from servers down to desktops, all protected by agressively maintained firewalls. With some of IE’s “extensions” a number of browser based, Active X enabled applications were developed that helped leverage (and lock in) that combination.
In the past couple of years, this software monoculture has moved away from a mix of Compaq’s, Gateways, and HP’s (whoever happens to have the best deal at the time of the annual hardware refresh of 1/3 - 1/5th of the installed computers) to more and more shops including Dells from end to end.
IMHO - Apple now offers a compelling alternative to this model, especially for new companies or new divisions of old companies. In order to reach this market, however, you have to inform and educate the IT departments about the significant technical advances that Apple has made.