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Why So Many Mac Fanatics?
daeley writes "NewsFactor has published an article, Cult of the Mac - Why So Many Mac Fanatics? -- looking for answers to '...what is it about the Mac that commands such loyalty? An even better question might be, what is Apple doing right?'"
When a key is pressed on an Apple keyboard, chemicals are released which make the user more open to suggestion.
Subliminal messages hidden throughout the GUI assert that Mac OS is superior.
What I've never understood is why people can get so emotionally attached to companies that make CPUs or graphics cards 5% faster than the ones they made the year before. Or to the companies that make first person shooters that push 5% more pixels through that hardware.
Enthusiasm about a company that tries to make computers qualitatively better -- that I don't have trouble understanding.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
For some reason, when the Yellow Dog machine gets an IP from the base station, it doesn't automatically "know" what the DNS servers are. This information is provided to the base station, and thus it's wireless clients know about the DNS servers as well. For some reason it doesn't work, and I can talk to numeric IPs but not named hosts.
Of course, when I did this under OS X, it worked on the first try, and has worked reliably for months. I never had to use to edit text files, read man pages, or get yelled at in IRC because I didn't know what "Pump" for DHCP was.
The funny thing is, not only does it not work the way it should, but that you are presumed to be stupid for not knowing why!
I've also never had to reboot my computer into command line mode because my "Xfree86 config file" went wrong.
I just want to USE my computer, not waste hours reading Usenet and trying command after command in order to make something work that should be taken care of automatically. That's why I like Macs.
2. The OS and the machines are aestheticaly pleasing. PCs tend to look dull. Macs change. They remain exciting, or at least different.
3. More focus on programming "correctness." Apple periodically reinvents the OS interface to match current needs. Old functions are dropped when using the newer APIs. Choices are limited, or directed, depending on how you want to look at it. Programs end up being simpler and have fewer bugs as a result.
4. Apple has always marketed and spoken to the individual, not the company. (This is huge.)
5. Steve Jobs, brain-controlling presentation zombie.
And Mac OS X's UNIX base is just fucking cool. This is what's finally pulling me over. I picked up an old iBook for cheap to try it out, and I'm just floored. This OS is schweet!
This time my employer will purchase a laptop for me -- I just have to choose which one. Since the low end Toshibas no longer come with the point-stick (*sigh*) I'm considering alternatives. Suffice it to say I am torn between an IBM A-series or an Apple Titanium.
I'm leaning toward the Titanium. And, it's funny, but I feel like I'm returning to a first love... I started with an Apple ][+ in 1979 (I was 12) and eventually had a Apple //e, Apple //c, and, later, a Mac Plus. In the meantime I was using UNIX and DOS. I always hated DOS. Then OS/2 -- it was Ok, but...well...stiff. Then I had the opportunity, as a salesman for Businessland/ComputerCraft, to experience the NeXT -- it was slick and satisfying but unaccessible 'cause of price. But I had to bow to Windows, since I had to support my clients who used a WinTel desktop to access our UNIX accounting package. Eventually I started writing business apps in VB, Access, Paradox...that was an unhappy period. Happily, I found Linux and felt better ('cause I like server-side programming).
Mac OS X is NeXT but backward Mac compatible and at a reasonable price. That's my take. Playing with the Titanium at Fry's has been enjoyable -- sometimes frustrating, honestly -- and the underlying UNIX is accessible and tempting. Hey - it beats Win4Lin for using Internet Explorer for client-side testing (and I like Win4Lin and won't run Linux without it).
So I guess I'm getting sucked into the Mac Cult. Blame it on early conditioning...
My weirdo co-worker is also going get the Titanium but will scrap OS X and install PPC Linux. Honestly, I have no idea why.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I think that marketing is the one thing that's allowed Apple to keep their head above water in recent years. Have you been inside an Apple store? The internal design is open, they have machines set up and running (gasp!) actual software, just like you could do at home, and they have a bunch of attentive, friendly salespeople who know what the hell they're talking about roaming the store to answer questions, etc.
Sure, it might not appeal to a hard-core, alpha geek who prefers to build their own boxes from parts they buy at a dark, warehouse-sized discount store, but to your average consumer it's like a breath of fresh air. Also, their print ads (at least since the B&W G3s came out) have been consistently well done.
At this point, anyone other than Microsoft, IBM, and Dell who can stay in the PC game without whoring themselves out to the beige-cubicle-box market deserves some serious respect. Most Wintel manufacturers practically can't give away new PCs to home users, while Apple has actually managed to coax new customers over to their side of the fence, and keep them consistently upgrading every couple of years.
I think the secret is actually just that Apple manages to make their new designs look and feel truly new, rather than just cramming twice the clock speed and RAM into the same, boring machine. When you buy a new Mac, every part, from the case, to the OS, to the mouse, is at least slightly improved, in appearance if not in functionality, than it was on the last one.
Don't let yourself get confused about the respective roles of marketing and sales. Marketing is all about listening to what your customers are asking for, predicting trends, and shaping your product to meet their needs. The sales guys are the ones responsible for pushing the finished product to customers. Apple's level of polish and "consumer touch" in their products, stores, and ads shows that they definately understand how to market their products. If they've failed significantly, it's in the area of sales, where you pretty much have to give up on any sense of quality or design if it means you can ship a few more boxes.
Most PC manufacturers go that route; hence the total lack of attention paid to the physical design of their product. Whether you buy a Wintel from Compaq, Gateway, HP, eMachine, Dell, or some mom-and-pop clone builder, you're going to get more or less the same machine, with a nearly identical case, monitor, peripherials, software, etc.
Of course, Microsoft should get some of the blame for this; it's hard to make your product truly distinctive when you are absolutely required to make it support the newest versions of Windows and Office, no questions asked. The kind of risks that Apple takes periodically (moving to PowerPC chips, ditching the floppy drive, and totally re-writing their OS) would give any Wintel company's entire board of directors heart attacks.
macs only appear to be a success because they sell products to the *same* people.
You're simply wrong. According to Apple, of all the people who bought iMacs, 40% of them had never owned a computer of any kind before.
Sure, it's Apple saying that, so consider the source. But despite the apparent prevailing attitude on Slashdot, big companies are not in the habit of out-and-out lying in their marketing materials. There's obviously a grain of truth to the statement.
How can someone possibly think that a 7XX MHz G3 running with slow SDRAM, and a slow IDE harddrive is soo much faster than a 14XX MHz Athlon running DDRAM, and a faster IDE harddrive or a faster scuzzy drive.
My iMac is faster than any other computer I use. Why? Because it spends less time waiting on me.
When I use a PC, I spend more time than I want to futzing around. For instance, when I plug my iBook into the LAN at work, I pull down one menu item and all my network settings change. When I go to the coffee shop and use their 802.11 service, I pull down that menu again and poof! When I go home, poof!
Even in Windows 2000, location management is rudimentary at best, and in most aspects simply absent. With my Mac, I don't have to futz around with that stuff.
Within a certain set of boundaries, it's not about clock speeds, or bus speeds, or hard drive speeds, or any of that shit. It's about the computer not getting in the way when I want to do something.
Have you ever tried to edit source code in Windows (NT, 2000)? God forbid you ever try to select something on a long line! I spend a lot of time trying to get applications to allow me to select just what I want instead of what it wants.
A classic example of the Microsoft way of doing things. Who sat in a staff meeting and said, "You know what's hard? Selecting text. We should try to make selecting text easier.
"See, if the user drags the cursor over part of a word, he obviously meant to select the whole word, so we should select the whole word for him. And if he selects a word at the end of a sentence, he obviously wanted the terminal punctuation and space too, so we should select those for him."
"Hey, boss, I've got some thoughts on how we can simplify that collection of six interrelated modal dialog boxes for managing network settings."
"Not now, Johnson. We're making real progress on the text-selection problem! Guys, I smell bonuses!"
How dare you say? OK, I was annoyed by the Windows GUI but let's face it, the Mac OS was still running what was basically 1985 Andy Hertzfeld "Switcher" technology. While there were OS hacks to permit apps to be kind to CPU cycles (co-operative multitasking) and allocating memory from the system space instead of requiring fixed memory size per app, it was still just kludge upon kludge.
But now I'm heading back. OS X is what I've been wanting for years. The stability and usefulness of UNIX with the user interface that only Apple can do right. I've got my order in for a new iMac to get my toes wet again and if I love it as much as I expect to, I'll be dishing out for a dual G4 in the not too distant future for my main powerbox (It's currently a 2GHZ Intel box running XP Pro).
I've used them all, so when I get to the point where I will say again that Macs are the best computers out there, it will be an informed opinion!
(Note to Apple, please bump my iMac order up in the queue... :-)
Look, it isn't possible to explain this. Many metaphors have been tried, but here's another:
The Budweiser people who don't understand why some people like to drink Abbott ale never will, because in their minds,
The homebrew people are a bit more flexible. They might like Abbott Ale, or they might not, but if they don't like it, it's either because they don't like it on its merits or they would rather change the recipe.
(I should also point out that Be OS is like Old Peculier poured from an elevated oak cask.)