

Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special - rtw
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/8-signs-that-ap.html

======
mdasen
I've been using Macs since the 68k days and I have been waiting for this to
happen. Apple makes, in my opinion, wonderful products, but they'd always been
so niche and have to act that way. That meant product introductions at fan
events (Macworld), outrageous pricing, etc. We're seeing that change and it's
great. Apple is pushing products out when they're ready, their products are
more competitively priced, they're more open than they have been in the past,
they're selling through normal channels rather than exclusive retailers like
they did in the past. . .

It's great!

------
Prrometheus
Owning a mac is still a cultural statement, like an Obama bumper sticker or
worrying loudly about Global Warming in public. I even know poor humanities
graduate students to pony up the extra $300 for a mac, because that's what
they are _supposed_ to own. Macs are common possessions of workers of DC non-
profits, despite their meager salaries. It's a token that proclaims yourself
to be part of the well-educated, hip, cool culture.

Owning a PC? That would be as much of a faux pas as owning a large vehicle,
working a blue collar job, living in the suburbs, or voting republican. You
certainly won't improve your chances of getting invited to the cool parties by
doing that.

I do admire Apple for consciously making itself into a subcultural icon. Few
brands are as successful as Apple. And as they have hooked themselves up to a
subculture that is ascendant, it is a good strategic move.

Edit: It is possible that in the future that Apple will make the jump like
Starbucks did to be a universal brand and not just a brand of the hip
subculture. I consider Starbucks to be one of the greatest marketing successes
of all time; at first a cool urban delicacy, later reaching the other half:
the suburbs, the parents that may send their kids to the military but never to
grad school, the PC owners, the small business owner (think "Joe the Plumber",
not Steve Jobs), people who never worry about "materialism" or "consumerism",
the Republicans. Sarah Palin and Bono, investment bankers and
environmentalists have their favorite latte. Of course, the cool hip culture
tends to lead the rest, so that's a good strategic place to start.

I don't see any signs that Apple has made this jump yet. I certainly don't
think my blue collar dad even considered a Mac when he bought a laptop, even
though I am certain that he would have had an easier time learning its user
interface.

~~~
qqq
Some of those people, including poor people, pony up an extra $300 because
they consider the value of the mac to be, say, $1000 higher. If you spend 1000
hours a year using a computer, and a mac is 50 cents an hour nicer to use,
that's $500 per year.

Whatever you think of the mac experience, some people do find it significantly
nicer, so for them it's worth buying.

Also, Macs don't necessarily always cost more.

~~~
Prrometheus
There are also plenty of people happy to be typing their essays in Microsoft
Word for the Mac, rather than Microsoft Word for the PC.

~~~
unalone
I've used Word on both, and Word on Mac is better. It's not particularly good,
but it's got a lot going for it - namely, a de-emphasis on over-the-top menus
for sidebars - and it takes advantage of a lot of the neat Mac stuff that
Windows can't do. It's still really ugly, especially compared to Pages, but
it's better.

~~~
potatolicious
I've used Word on both, and while I like the UI better on the Mac, it lacks
VBScript, which completely rules it out for many users, and is much slower
than its Windows counterpart.

Pages has a great UI, but doesn't do enough. There are an insane number of
features that Word has, that even a high school student would need, that are
entirely absent from Pages (a robust referencing system, for example).

What I would pay big money for is something that has the functionality of MS
Word Mac, without the bloat, and as speedy as Pages.

~~~
unalone
I'm sure it'll come along eventually. And absolutely, Word on Windows has some
good stuff too. My point was, the program on two different operating systems
is quite different, so it's not worth judging somebody based on their liking
Mac Word.

------
richcollins
I didn't buy my Macbook to "feel special". I bought it because Windows sucks.

~~~
maurycy
I wish I could buy ThinkPad with Mac OS X.

~~~
quellhorst
I wanted to do that too but ended up just getting a new macbook pro unibody.
My time is worth more than messing with a nonstandard install.

------
mattmaroon
A company can't give off that aura when their products sell 100s of millions.
Apple maintained it for longer than anyone else ever did though.

~~~
unalone
Did they ever really _have_ that aura? I mean, I'm a Mac fanboy. I've argued
with you about Apple a thousand bajillion times on this site. I watch the
keynote. But I never got into it because it was a cult thing. I got into it
because every blog I liked reading took some time to talk about loving Apple
(Shaun Blanc, John Gruber, John Welsh, even Paul Graham), and so I took some
time out to try the computers and I really loved them, and still do. When I
argue Windows with friends, it's usually because they make the argument that a
Mac is not inherently better than a PC, and I happen to disagree. There's
nothing pretentious about that, it's just an argument that happens.

Somewhere along the line it got decided that there's a fashion statement being
made with Macs. I don't really see that. I think a certain type of person
that's obsessed with aesthetic does _like_ Apple, because it's clean, but was
there ever a feeling that using Apple products made a person special? Because
I've never noticed that, and yet it's brought up and constantly mocked. I
don't get it.

~~~
mattmaroon
Their brand clearly inspires a lot of cultlike devotion. Charismatic leader,
followers who overlook their own flaws and magnify those of everyone else,
feelings of persecution (fading since Microsoft's antitrust suit ended).

OSX users often look down on Windows users, as if they just don't know better.
They say things like "OSX is inherently better than Windows" without
specifying what it's better at or pausing to consider that there are many
reasons to choose an OS, and by a very large number of metrics (compatible
programs, compatible hardware, price, variety, ease of finding someone who can
help you with problems, etc.) Windows crushes OSX. In fact, by almost any
easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better.

Apple's been the hip underdog, ironically largely because of spending billions
of marketing bucks to style themselves that way, and I think Steve Jobs's
tyranny over the tech-related media.

I'm not saying any of that about you personally, but things like Digg turning
into an extension of Apple's PR don't happen to any other brands at all, not
even ones like Toyota or Lenovo that consistently make top quality products.
The fervor indicates there's a lot more to the fanboyism than just "Apple
makes good products." They've struck a chord. Their marketing over the past 5
years may be the best in the entire history of capitalism.

The problem is that Apple users includes everyone who owns an iPod or iPhone,
most of whom don't use any other Apple products. You can't keep the underdog
luster on the company as a whole when you achieve ubiquity, but they still do
with their computers.

~~~
unalone
_In fact, by almost any easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better._

Unless you go by customer satisfaction, wherein Apple trounces competition in
both hardware and software.

I get what you're talking about. I just think that cultism stems less from a
blind devotion to the "specialness" of the computers, and more from a general
appreciation of them. I think OS X is better than Windows, and I've tried a
few times to specify why, but mostly it's a combination of a lot of little
things that are all very good, rather than any particular feature which
crushes Windows. (I don't use Dashboard or Spaces, for instance, haven't
turned on Time Machine for a while, and I'm not a big Unix person, so the big
crowed-out features aren't it. But I still am absolutely certain that the OS
is better quantifiably.)

The problem is that it's _not_ easy to explain. There's a logic behind it, but
it's a difficult one that depends on a bunch of little factors rather than one
big one. That gets interpreted as cultism and fanboyism, but there's more to
it than that. And I don't think that "special" ever had anything to do with
it. Apple doesn't sell "special."

~~~
mattmaroon
How do you quantify customer satisfaction? It's murky at best. Not only that,
it's an unfair comparison since you're comparing one OEM against a range of
OEMs. There's no doubt that there are a lot of garbage Windows PCs built. That
doesn't say anything about the OS other than that they license it out
liberally.

You'd also be comparing one OEM that makes much more expensive PCs than most
of its competitors. It's like comparing Accura vs. Ford.

And if you did quantify it, which is impossible to do meaningfully, wouldn't
that take into account the fact that cult members would feel much more
satisfied even if all other things were equal? That's what being in a cult is
about. I would bet the average Scientologist feels much more satisfaction
about their religion than the average Catholic. That doesn't mean it's better.

------
gaius
Excellent. Right now then, we're at the point in history we'd be at if things
had gone to plan for SGI with the Indy, a Unix workstation as a desktop
computer for the masses. Which is, umm, 15 years ago...

~~~
wmf
Wasn't the Indy $15,000? Even accounting for Moore's Law it would have been
hard for SGI to go mainstream.

~~~
gaius
Contemporary fully-loaded Macs were comparable.

~~~
wmf
I don't know about that, but even so, making the cheapest SGI comparable to
the most expensive Mac wasn't a recipe for mainstream success.

~~~
catch23
Well my dad bought a color Macintosh II for $9,000 so I'd say the prices were
moderately comparable. It's crazy to think how expensive computers were back
in the day. And $9,000 in 1980's currency is probably like buying a $18,000
computer today. With that much money, you could buy nine 1U fully decked
8-core machines today.

------
sh1mmer
The point is valid, the "signs" to back it up are tenuous and the attempts at
humour lame.

While I don't disagree with the author's premise the article probably isn't
worth your time reading.

~~~
unalone
Here's a question that _isn't_ addressed: does being special _matter_? I
thought the point of capitalism and competition was how good products were,
not how special you felt using them.

~~~
GHFigs
How special you feel using a product is part of what makes it good. Where
"special" can mean a lot of things. Don Norman covers this very well in
_Emotional Design_.

------
cosmo7
The first Mac I actually owned was an SE. Since then I've owned five more
Macs. I bought top-of-the-line Macs when people were telling me that Apple was
about to go out of business. I developed a lot of software for the Mac.

I'm all about developing for .NET now; Apple is toxic to developers.

~~~
gaius
Apple has gotten a lot better since the days they pulled crap like abandoning
APIs as soon as anyone started developing on them. Remember OpenDoc? And if
you think IB is stagnant, remember MPW?

~~~
cosmo7
Ah, MPW. An environment that even made CodeWarrior look good.

------
anthonyrubin
Honestly, who cares? Why are so many inane articles submitted to HN?

~~~
rtw
(original submitter here)

I care. I care about end-user personal computing trends.

They a) amuse me and b) affect my income. That's why I submitted, to see
discussion on a topic I am interested in.

Quoting from <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site."

~~~
rtw
I see downmods on above comment without explanation. On a whim, this prompted
me to say a little more:

The more OSX crosses into mainstream consumer territory, the better. I only
run Linux myself, but having been a long time developer and troubleshooter for
Windows, I am seriously psyched about seeing the OSX market grow and grow.
Getting over the stigmas of "coolness" and elitism is a good step in a
positive direction. Whether you like it or not, these stigmas are out there (I
doubt people frequenting this website were lured into Macs for this particular
aspect of them).

