Jason Walsh, in an editorial for The Guardian, wonders if the kind of fawning devotion that Mac users have for their computers could persist if the Mac were to achieve more widespread use. For example, fans of the ill-fated Cube and Newton are fanatical, but is it really cool to love an iPod, now that everybody has one? It’s a timely question, with the spectre of a low cost mac on the horizon.
What a condescending opinion…
It assumes that Mac users go against the grain because of fanaticism rather than preferring to use what they regard as a superior alternative.
Mac users are enthusiastic because of the technology… not because we’re a part of some insider’s club. Geez!
Of course this is the case, fanaticism almost by definition is about enthusiasm for something outside of the mainstream. I mean when is the last time you met a fanatical wheel user or someone who has fawning devotion for integrated circuits over vacuum tubes.
Now it’s a differnt quesiton to ask if they will still appreciate the Mac products to the same degree. People do like to feel they are part of some exclusive clube, how else do you explain The Sharper Image and some of the preference for Mac can no doubt be explained in this way. However, alot is just appreciation for good technology that works and if it becomes really popular the fanatacism will just morph into a general expectation that all technology should be this good. The same way we expect all our radios to use ICs instead of vacuum tubes.
It’s cool to love an iPod if its a Gen1,2 or a Gen3 with a backlight that is white and not blue.
Now, it’s not cool if apple starts lowering QA standards to make more profit and becomes just another computer company producing crap products.
*hugs his PowerBook* I’ve had this Pismo for almost 5 years now, and its still pumping strong with upgraded RAM, CPU, and HD. It still has high end tech like built-in wifi and two FireWire400 ports.
He was stupid to release the Cube for more than $999 and too near sighted to see that the Newton OS could be refined for future devices like cell phones and portable music players.
Go into any Kmart in Australia and you can buy an iPod – so much for exclusivity.
Macs look great and perform OK. The trouble is that some Mac owners think they are getting the PC equivalent of a Ferrari or Lamborghini. They are really getting the equivalent a limited edition Toyota styled by Pininfarina.
I think that it is a good thing that macs are similar to a “limited edition Toyota styled by Pininfarina”. In fact I think this is one of the most attractive aspects of mac; they look beutiful and are reliable. Farraris and Lamborghinis are beutiful but not reliable at all.
There are fanatical mac zealot. There are Linux fanboys and MS devotees. The article reduces all mac users to dumb zealots and fails to see why people love their macs. The article totally fails to mention the security and stability of Mac OS X, its many advanced features and quality applications. It mentions iTunes in passing and ignores its huge success in the Windows world. I do not see any of the reason why people buy Macs in this article. As a veteran Mac guy, I have some contact with recent switchers. Their reasons for changing to mac have nothing to do with cult behavior or elitism. They wanted to get away from the spyware and worms. They loved iTunes on Windows and slowly realized that Mac OS X was the iTunes of the OS world. One guy was looking for a UNIX-based OS, tried Linux and BSD, and walked away with a powerbook.
I don’t care if a billion people use a Mac. Why wouldn’t they? I’ve been ridiculed for using Mac by a lot of people who openly sneer[ed] at it [without them ever having used one]. How could I not want more people to use one if that’s exactly what I’ve been saying more people should do?
It would be a catastrophy if Apple reduced the quality of the experience, but why would they defeat themselves by changing the very reason people buy the product in the first place? But more users does not [or at least not automatically] mean less of an experience. More users means more revenue, more clout, more credibility for the platform [for those people who look at market share], a lot more software for the platform and from Apple’s side, serious money to build new and better machines, great applications and a fantastic experience.
It is entirely contradictory to say “this is such a cool machine, system, application,…, you should try it too” and then bemoan the fact that more people actually buy it. I do not enjoy my Mac less because more people use an Apple. But I won’t deny that there are those people out there who want to keep the user base at the present level for that reason.
However, if only a [statistical] handful people buy a Mac, pretty soon there won’t be a Mac anymore. The platform thrives by its users. New people, new ideas, new enthusiasts.
I enjoy my Mac. It’s not a flawless, perfect machine but I’m having a boatload of fun using it. Don’t take my word for it though, try it out for yourself.
I think people love both their ipods and their macs. The difference is that you don’t need to go on the defensive about your iPod. I mean, people have always attacked others that did things different. They become insecure about their decisions. They chose a machine based upon what their friends chose “A pc and the more gigaleziehertz the better!”. If they then notice, that someone actually had a independent mind, and went for a mac.. Well, they go crazy 🙂 Shouting about one button mice, not having 6 gazilion hertz, not having any software, hardware coming from an evil apple monopoly. Obviously, mac users go into the defensive when they get shouted at. You quickly grow a pretty thick skin as a mac user. Then they call you a fanatic. It’s just plain silly.
An ipod on the other hand, is not something different. It is the standard. You shout at the people who chose something that isn’t an ipod. So there is no need to be defensive here.
Love my iPod, just wanted to say. Everyone buying one didn’t make it any harder to use, any heavier, bigger, decrease its capacity in any way, or make any of it’s interface less intuitive.
Erik
Not that I own a ferrari or lambo, but I don’t think they are unreliable. Infact if ferrari road cars are anything like the formula 1 cars then they would be “bullet proof”. Ferrari has won F1 championships of late based on a foundation of near perfect reliability. Compare that with the miserable performance/reliability of Toyota F1 cars!
*loving* tech is a waste of lifetime.
But you need to grow older to realize this… Some ppl never wake up.
*loving* a specific tech/product makes you think less about alternative tech/products.
so, *loving* any dead device is a waste IMHO.
“[…]is it really cool to love an iPod[…]”
Why the heck has to be “cool” ? One can love any piece of whatever for some reason. Sane people don’t “love” stuff just because “loving stuff” is “cool”. That one is called fashion, which is one of overgrown overhyped sicknesses of our era.
If someone uses a tool to get a job done, and the tool survives most other junks for a long time, one can really get to “love” even a piece of metal someone would consider junk.
If you want a portable music player, and the one you have does the job better (in manufacturing and playing quality, in size, in weight, in being userfriendly, whatever) than others you had before or after, then yes, someone really can get to hold to such piece of equipment (let it be an iPod or else).
But one has to remember one thing: a new love may someday be stronger than the old one
Life works that way 
You are so right, l3v1!
fanaticism almost by definition is about enthusiasm for something outside of the mainstream
I have posted the definition for fanaticism from dictionary.com.
fanaticism fa·nat·i·cism n Excessive, irrational zeal.
I am a fan of Apple for their products in general. The reason I was drawn to them was for the level of detail they engineered into their products. I have yet to use another portable music player whose interface feels more natural than the iPod (although I think they cost too much for me!). Their OS X system software feels less intrusive and nagging than my XP machine. It feels to me that Apple goes further than their competition to create a unified, solid, and quality oriented product before releasing to the masses.
Am I a fan of Apple products? In general yes, but it is not based on “excessive, irrational zeal,” but rather the experience I receive when using their products.
“Macs look great and perform OK. The trouble is that some Mac owners think they are getting the PC equivalent of a Ferrari or Lamborghini. They are really getting the equivalent a limited edition Toyota styled by Pininfarina.”
No, as Jobs said, we think we have a computer equivalent of a BMW.
Enough exclusive, enough accessible. 🙂
What a condescending opinion?
I agree and I don’t even own a mac.
Listen, you go into a bookstore and ask people how they like their now more stylized PC laptops and the responses are usually either good or lukewarm.
But I have made it an odd habit when I go to a coffee shop or bookstore to ask Mac users how they like their iBooks and Powerbooks and the response is always that they would never go back.
To say its all about being exclusive or elitist is just a lot of poo-poo’ing nonsense.
If you don’t get it or want it, cool nobody is forcing it on you. But slamming mac users as too-cool fashion fools is silly.
Well, I know a lot of mac users, including myself. Not a single one of us even minutely resembles the picture painted of the true “mac addict” in this article. Further, not a single one of us uses a mac because we think it “looks pretty”. Personally, I don’t think that any modern electronic device actually looks good…not imacs, not bang and olufsen stereo equipment…none of it.
We use macs because 1) the user interface design is more sensible than windows 2) hardware just works 3) no viruses 4) unix when you want it, a gui when you want it 4) effortless setup and maintenance
Personally, I’m an experienced linux/unix user and though I still have a linux server, I do all of my real computing on a mac. Why?
1) a decently designed gui where things like drag and drop actually work (don’t bother to comment on this unless you really know how to use a mac…neither windows nor linux have anything close to the drag/drop capabilities of a mac).
2) My computing needs/interests are not stable….what’s of no interest to me this week will be of major import next week, and I don’t want to have to be rebuilding kernals and spending hours doing research and reading manuals everytime I want to try something new.
3) No viruses. I run a virus scanner regularly and have never found a single one.
4) The services menu, a great java implementation, attention to detail etc, etc, etc
5) I’m willing to do sysadmin if I’m paid to do it, but I’m not willing to do it at home to any greater extent than absolutely necessary.
For the hardware spec, the “new” headless iMac will not be that cheap… for 499$ you have to add a monitor (or mabe you allready own one). Look at the eMac 799$… with the same low spec (1.25G4, 128Mb, 40Gig, Radeon 9200)…
Don’t tell me that the 17inch monitor in the eMac cost 300$…. What are they going to remove from this headless iMac to make it to 499$??
I don’t think that people will fall in love with this new iMac… In the end, to make it work correctly, you will have to upgrade it real soon.
Apple also has to face the reality that in order to expand to other markets, it needs to attract more developers who are willing to port their software to the Mac. Autodesk is a good example of a company who would benefit the Mac platform greatly if it ported its products to run on OS X. Until the user-base expand, there is little incentive for many companies to support more platforms than just Windows.
I think that’s why the headless mac is a good idea. If GNU and BSD users buy this machine, they’re likely to port they’re favorite software to it. A lot of it is already ported, but can be refined.
-b
Macs will never dominate or become mainstream….
After reading it this article looks to be in the classic “Apple is about to die” genre, but an interesting new take. He seems to be arguing that more people buying Macs will mean that less people buy them (interesting logic) and so Apple will die.
The premise of this being that a Mac is purely a rebelious fashion statement and as more people use them they will become more mainstream and therefore lose their purpose, which is to label their users as non-mainstream. Personally I have a (very old) mac as my personal machine because get gets out of my way and lets me do the stuff I want to without having to fight it.
I agree that the point is moot. Even if a $500 Mac becomes a reality and they sell well, I can’t see them selling to over 25 percent of U.S. households. Would still be a good thing for Apple.
More interestingly, I think there would be much less interest in Linux on the desktop in the United States. Oversees would be a different story, but here, with licensing costs being so low, Linux would have to compete for people’s attention on quality more than price. For most home users, I really believe they would find a cheap Mac a better experience that a faster Linux based machine.
As far as Autodesk goes: it’s a name that would get attention, sure. But what an antiquated, DOS based way of drawing that AutoCAD is. After using VectorWorks on Mac I have no interest in using AutoCAD again. Thanks to OpenDWG, the files are totally interchangeable. That’s enough for me.
An old definition (not dictionary) of a fanatic goes something like this: A fanatic is someone who has forgotten what they were fighting for but have redoubled their effort.
I was a computer dealer when the first Macs hit the streets. We sold a variety of computers with different OS’s. The one consistant comment we heard from the Mac purchasers was, “I just love working on my computer.” That type of comment was rarely heard about the other systems we sold. And, yes, the Macs were about 30% of our CPU sales.
These purchasers were not saying this as some sort of fanatical statement of religion. It came about because the users, for the first time, spent more effort on the job and very little effort on maintaining the system. It was just easier to use.
At the same time companies were fighting the use of a GUI (translate as foreign computer from IBM). One very large company’s IT CEO even went so far as to say, “It doesn’t have a numeric keypad (false) and it uses that stupid mouse.”
It is my belief that the negative and derisive comments from the other computer users are what forced many Mac users to try to educate them (you may substitue the word ‘defend’) about the ease of use.
Are there Mac fanatics. Absolutely. There are also football fanatics (go home team) and then there are snobs. I do not find the bulk of computer users in the ‘fanatic’ category. But when they rear their ignorant heads and roar the noice is very disgusting. Grow up fanatics and become more literate than your narrow niches.
Thank you for letting me get off some steam.
I like macs ’cause they’re pretty. My mac not only matches my shoes but also my entertainment center. And the cool thing… with my mac plugged into my silver plasma screen that talks to me sometimes, when I occasion to read some Shakespeare (completely rare, leatherbound, expensive as hell copy, of course) in my shiny black leather reading chair in my study, I can set the desktop to rotate through paintings of Picasso, while all the sleek-looking icons (blown up to full size, especially on the dock), maintain the image of the digital lifestyle that Jobs talks about sometimes. Not only is my digital lifestyle stylish and at the same time dripping with culture, but chicks dig it. Oh the mac. Just looking at it is like wiping your ass with silk.
I just don’t get why people want to spend more money for less performance. The cost of a powerMac is rediculous. I’m not even sure i could spend that much on a PC if i wanted to.
And you still can’t get the best cards ATI and Nvidia have to offer on the Mac platform.
Apple is in a position of forcing people to buy something they wouldn’t normally want (overpriced hardware) so that they can get the software they want. So Apple spends a few extra bucks and makes the underperforming computer look cool to make the ticket price easier to swallow.
Another reason why a Monitor-less Mac can be sold cheaper than the eMac is the reduced shipping costs all the way around, which MUST be recouped in the selling price.
At less than half the weight of the eMac, it probably costs less to ship the machine from the Far East, not to mention to the warehouses around the country from the Docks in CA when they arrive…
So besides the $100 or so cost of the tube and electronics, and maybe $15 in plastics and metal…
We have at least a $35 savings in shipping costs.
Also, prices of RAM and Processors have dropped.
Apple is simply enjoying the benefit of having their fixed costs go down, and getting a little more profit in the units.
Considering how much servicing eMacs get in my experience. Apple isn’t making so much money on these units.
Hopefully the newer iMacs will be cheaper to service, and require LESS service than the eMacs do.
I think they take a lot more bangs, at a higher force due to their weight, while being shipped around.
Both the nVidia 6800 Ultra and the ATI X800XT are available for the Mac.
The 6800 Ultra DDL available for the G5 “is the first card available to support the DVI standard dual link digital signal specification from the two DVI ports it features.” It appears the this card is not available for Windows users yet.
Please do some research before posting.
Culture. Tulsa, OK. I get it.
I just don’t get why people want to spend more money for less performance. The cost of a powerMac is rediculous. I’m not even sure i could spend that much on a PC if i wanted to.
I do not think I would ever buy a PowerMac either, but if this new Mac does exist and I can buy one with a SuperDrive with at least 1 GB RAM and an 80 GB HDD I will put in my order. I won’t even be bothered if it comes with a 1.25 Ghz processor and the same graphics processor as my 933 Mhz iBook G4 I bought in November 2003.
Macs are priced like Mercedes’ and deliver that performance. Unfortunately, like Mercedes’ they are purchased by the narrow segment of the population that can appreciate and afford them.
Macs can never be the mainstream without losing their cachet. Steve Jobs will have to put out models for the masses (hopefully without emulating Mercedes’ disappointing SUV reliability) and convince the world that he can supply the world’s demands for the machines. Again, while Mac makes all its machines, that is not feasible.
first off, i love my ipod, because it is so well designed it a) satisfied expectations i didnt know i had, and b) being plesently suprised is not a common thing in a north american product. it does its job so well it has become a part of my everyday life. thats something almost unheard of in north american products. if the best you ever get is “it does the job”, then that becomes the bar you compare everything to, and you cant understand why someone would set the bar higher over something as useless as design. if you actually work for awhile with a well designed product, you simply cant imagine going back to something crude, or at best utilitarian. this is where the “fanaticism” of mac guys comes from.
as for the whole headless mac thing, i think its a dumb idea simply from a historical sense. every time apple attempts to expand the mac market, the company starts to crash and burn. every time they focus on what they do well, they flourish. apple does not make low quality things well, and a low cost product is pretty much synonymous with low quality (although theres exceptions to every rule, and the opposit is definately not true). hopefully this will work, the barrier to entry for most people isnt the price, its lack of experience. im perfectly willing to pay top dollar for something thats top quality, but if i hadnt used a mac before all i would see is a bunch of flashy effects and something that looks completely different to what i am used to. as long as they keep this model as a definate “entry level” machine, it could definately work. but if we start getting machines to mirror the quality (and price) of pcs, apple will lose what makes them such a great company.
anyways, all this comming from an armchair market analyst ;-)hopefully im wrong and apple will take off again, and we will see more variety again in the way of operating systems.
Ok, Apple is doing well.
Its consumer electronics hit the iPod is the hot gift for Christmas and the stock is doing well.
So in my simple opinion, it is the perfect time to expand the market share for Macs in general.
There is something I notice about people who own Macs. They love them. An odd habit (not the only I have btw) is that when I see a person in a cafe or restaurant with a iBook or Powerbook I always ask, “How do you like your Mac?”
I have yet to have one person put down the Mac experience or even come off as middle of the road in their response.
Always, the response is pure love of this machine.
So what could Apple do to expand its marketshare?
The price break for its most loved machines the Powerbooks are still a bit steep for the majority of the world.
Appeals to Think Different in a consumer world frightened by the idea of unproven tech or not being behind the standard will not work.
Appeals to be a Switcher emphasizes the pain of moving platforms and is doomed to increase share by large margins.
But where in the iPod have they succeeded? They appealed to the consumer on the basis of the cool factor for an iPod. And its worked.
People say this approach would not work for a computer but I must disagree and I look back to history for a basis to this claim.
The Macs were as bland and nasty looking as a PC but the performance diff distinct between the first generation of Pentiums and the Power PC chips Apple lost market share. One of the biggest complaints lately is that the Apples are not as fast as the Intel based PCs but fast never got Apple major market share.
So what Mac based successes have they had recently?
Think about the marketing push during the intro of the first iMacs.
Simple commercials showing off the pure cool factor of these candy looking boxes. Might not have been for everyone but enough people thought they were cool enough to make for a success.
Did the first Apple laptops or Powerbooks makes such a splash because they were so innvative in terms of technology?
I don’t think so.
They had slick marketing campaign focused on a top notch cool factor computer. They had stars talking about what was on their Powerbook.
The product was just hot cool. And the marketing focused on that.
So back to the question. How does Apple expand its market share?
Two things:
1. Cut prices enough to get good trade press. Computer pundits love to bust on the Macs in terms of cost to value. Don’t eliminate the profit entirely of course but cut the prices just enough to get some good press.
2. Launch a huge marketing campaign focused on just the pure coolness of the Mac line. Slick commercials with no tech jargon showing how much people love their Macs.
Lots of handsome cool people with their Macs in different situations. The only thing that is said in the commercial is maybe a line or two from these cool people on how much they love their Macs. Then you have the big banner that they are now so many dollars cheaper.
With the stock up and the confidence high in the Apple company, now is the best time in the world to focus on expanding share in their computers.
If everyone has the Mac, it ain’t cool no more. But Stevie ain’t gonna bring out something everyone is gonna have.
Only rich brothers have iPod. And only rich brothers will have deskPod or whatever Stevie gonna call it.
Stevie ain’t gonna let us rich brothers down.
gotta run for the bus, but some quick points
powerbooks have been dominant in movies for years now.
early macs looked like crap, but they looked lightyears better then the competition.
yes, apple hardware designers rock. but its not just them, its a combination of design being the focus in both software and hardware that makes the “mac experience”
i dont think ive ever seen an apple commercial with tech jargon
and last but not least, the low cost entry model *has* to remain an entry model, with the express purpose of getting people to upgrade to a real machine once they see its worth the money. apple makes its money off its hardware, and the margins are much higher in the higher-end models.
Since when are cost and performance the only things that matter?
People don’t buy macs for either cost or performance. They buy macs to run the mac os.
Get it through your thick head that mac os is DIFFERENT than windows. Some people appreciate the difference enough to spend the extra money. PERIOD.
Not everyone needs the fastest box in the world. Not everyone even cares. I’m happier running mac os x on a 450MHZ g4 than I could ever be running the 4 processor pentium piece of crap on my desk at work.
Why is it that every time I empty the trash on my 4 processor pentium POS running XP, the entire gui freezes until the trash is empty?
Never seen anything like that happen on my 450MHZ g4.
Is my G4 lightning fast? Hell no, but it’s fast enough to do professional programming on. It doesn’t annoy me the way windows does.
It’s not about money, it’s not about aesthetics, it’s about ease of use and sensible UI design. That IS justified by the cost.
But I guess if you are one of those people for whom anything that gets the job done is good enough, rather than one of us who wants the steps we go through to get the job done to be as clean, logical and obvious as possible, then you’ll hang on to the price/performance argument.
“clean, logical and obvious as possible”
Another way of saying maximum handholding. Not all users need that…
It’s not “handholding” — it’s getting out of the way. The test of any tool’s effectiveness is how transparent it is. That is, whether you have to think about how to make the tool work or get to think about the task at hand. It’s like driving a car from point A to point B — I shouldn’t have to figure out how to make the car work, I should only have to figure out what route to take to get to Point B. OS X lets me do that.
I’m considering a Rio Karma to run on a Win box, the assumption that *everyone* has an iPod would be very manic-depressive. The iPod is a pretty good unit, it sounds good too, but it won’t play my Vorbis files, and that’s a showstopper for me.
equating “clear, logical and obvious as possible” to handholding is so incredibly STUPID that it’s not even worth arguing. Only a complete moron would consider those things equivalent.
“clean, logical and obvious as possible”
Another way of saying maximum handholding. Not all users need that…
For some reason, a Microsoft Wizard just came to mind.
I don’t get this I keep being told and read that mac’s are great you can run OSX on a g3 350mhz as long as you have enough ram. Then once the idea of a headless mac with a G4 1.25 GHZ machine is rumored. Then all the mac people start going “Oh thats going to need to be upgraded really soon, thats not enough power, thats a slow processor to use to run OSX.” So which is it. Is it a bad processor to run OSX on or not you can’t have it both ways.
Donny_S – I don’t own an iPod either. I have a Rio Karma and really really enjoy it. The interface is solid and easy to use. I use it mostly for MP3s but enjoy the FLAC portion once in a while. It’s nice having several codec options available.
Not everybody wants an iPod, though it may be the current standard. I’ve messed around with one for a bit, but found the Karma more in line for my uses. And it was $100 cheaper than the equivalent iPod. (20 gigabyte)
As far as the article, I wouldn’t classify all mac users as extremists, but there are an awful lot in the community. To each their own.
“Apple also has to face the reality that in order to expand to other markets, it needs to attract more developers who are willing to port their software to the Mac. Autodesk is a good example of a company who would benefit the Mac platform greatly if it ported its products to run on OS X. Until the user-base expand, there is little incentive for many companies to support more platforms than just Windows.”
Get real. A CAD application isn’t going to make or break adoption of the Mac platfom. Apple can create better software than any of these “developers” if need be. I can’t wait for their Photoshop killer. With FinalCut Pro they’ve pretty much already delivered a knockout punch to Adobe Premiere.
Wintel PCs are becoming more of a burden than a tool. When people finally realize that there is a better way to compute (Mac) than what they are used to (constantly having to rebuild their systems due to virii, spyware, etc.) they will see the light. It’s already beginning to happen.
“Ok, Apple is doing well.
Its consumer electronics hit the iPod is the hot gift for Christmas and the stock is doing well.
So in my simple opinion, it is the perfect time to expand the market share for Macs in general.”
Well, this assumes that the iPods are a build up scheme to use the cash for blowing it up on the Macs.
The fact is that the iPods have proven that Apple can go mainstream. And share holders at Apple are woindering why must everything be sacrificed in the Mac altar? The thought is that Apple should eaither make the Mac mainstream or pull out of it althoghether. Apple mission is to make money, not to immortalize a mac dream. iPods are a huge profit opportunity for Apple that the mac desktop has never provided in years, which it is to say to break into main culture with a product.
From the bussiness point of view we do not have iPods for Macs sake, but the other way around. In other words, the Macs shouls not determine the iPods trajectory, but rather the iPods(a sucessful product which eclipses Mac desktops) should determine the future of the macs. In fact, the push is so strong in Cuppertino that right now, Apple is even looking into splitting the company into the Mac and the iPod divisions, problem is that Macs keep lagging, and all the Mac heads in HQ think that the iPods are a cash injection for the Macs, and not everyone thinks that the success of gthe iPod should be wasted in an unpopular desktop.
I think Apple either makes through changes on their Macs and make them mainstream, or they should drop them althougether and concentrate on iPod and other media personal technologies.
Cheers.