Apple Wants Your Input

Johnny Mnemonic writes "Apple is asking for feedback specifically from PC users about why you might be considering a Mac purchase, or if you recently purchased a Mac for the first time, why you made the switch. A good opportunity to sound off about your Apple peeves, but also a chance to let Apple know what you think they're doing right. The Mac OS X feedback page, originally from the Public Beta, is still up and accepting feedback, also."

Comments

one reason...

[minus_273]

MAC OSX..
simply the best Unix version for the desktop, the power of unix with the commercial support of windows without the excess baggage. That is one big reason.

Why not ask the real question...?

[xonker]

What about asking why people aren't considering Apple? Seems to me they're just soliciting favorable commentary.

If I was in Apple's marketing department I'd be asking "what would it take to get you to switch to Macs?" not "why are you thinking about buying a Mac?" or "Now that we have your money, what do you think?"

There are two main things stopping Apple from gaining greater market share: Price and Applications. They cost too damn much (for what you get) and don't have all the apps that Windows (or even Linux, these days) has.

I'd really like to see Apple get their act together and take about 30% of the desktop market instead of the pathetic share they have now. I'd be happy as a clam if Linux could steal just 20% of the market, give Apple 30% and let Microsoft keep the majority but keep them on their toes.

Re:Why not ask the real question...?

[TheAJofOZ]

If I was in Apple's marketing department I'd be asking "what would it take to get you to switch to Macs?" not "why are you thinking about buying a Mac?" or "Now that we have your money, what do you think?"

Because they already know all the reasons people give for not buying a Mac. You give two favourites yourself.

There are two main things stopping Apple from gaining greater market share: Price and Applications. They cost too damn much (for what you get) and don't have all the apps that Windows (or even Linux, these days) has.

Now lets look at it: First off, price. The bottom line iMac is actually very cheap and when you compare it to a packaged PC deal with 3 year warranty, you'll actually find the prices are roughly the same and the Mac has more features. For the average user speed is not an issue, that's why Celerons sell so well.

Next up, applications. There are more Windows applications out there, given. However, there are *far* more Mac OS X applications out there than there are Linux applications, despite your statement. This is mostly because most Linux applications happily run on OS X (and more and more are coming precompiled in a double-clickable installer). Secondly, most of the applications on Windows are absolute crap that you don't want to use. Think about it - how many applications do you have installed on your PC? How many do you use? What do you need to do that can't be done on the Mac? While there are some things that are better done on a Windows box, and some things that can't be done on a Mac at all, for most people all the apps you'll ever need are available for Mac.

The other thing to note is that Apple is asking people who are considering Mac what they think because they are potential customers, people who have ruled out Macintosh (or are so narrow minded that they won't even consider it) are a lost cause for Apple. Take the easy money first then slowly expand into the harder markets if you need to. Don't beat your head against a brick wall for no reason.

Re:Why not ask the real question...?

[TheAJofOZ]

I don't change my monitor that often so I don't want to buy one with each computer. The computer at Circuit City is a Compaq Presario 5000. As I admitted before, Macs are probably competitive in the mid-range. But if you want a CHEAP COMPUTER you would have to buy a used Mac to get to PC-like prices.

I've done my fair share of tech support so let me assure you - these cheap PCs are total and utter crap. If that's all you ever buy, you have no idea how much hell you're putting yourself through. There is no way you can call Macs expensive these days because they clearly are not. They are quality machines that come with a 3 year extended warranty and more features than the competition. If you don't want to use Macs because you prefer Windows that's fine - but don't blame it on price.

My habit is to buy the cheapest computer available and use it for a year and a half and then buy another cheap one.

At the point that your discarding your PC, the Mac is only half way through it's warranty. You choose to pay $500 every 1.5 years, I pay $1000 every 3 years with full warranty coverage. Home users would keep the Mac much longer than that (5 years minimum). At your rate the computer is costing you $333/yr, my rate is $333/yr and for the typical home user of a Mac it's $200. Now which is cheaper? Factor in the fact that the Mac users are getting a new monitor each time and that eventually you will need to buy a new one as well and the Mac is cheaper in both cases.

Oh and that eMachines computer you mentioned, has no firewire, no ethernet card and no video memory (on-board video). The iMac has firewire, a 10/100 ethernet card and a Rage128 Pro with 16MB video RAM. So not only is it a lower overall price (long-term), the iMac has significantly more features. Oh and used Macs have excellent resale value so you won't save huge amounts by buying second hand.

Take a chance

[PuddleBoy]

The one thing that Apple has done best (at least during some years) is to try out new designs, new ideas. They've shown a willingness to take risks. Whether it's the GUI, Human Interface Guidelines, the Newton, the iMac, or just little touches that make the computing experience a little bit friendlier. They showed us that there was a viable alternative. Sometimes they fail (eMate, CyberDog, eWorld). But in the process, they teach the whole industry a lesson.

With a behmoth like M$ around, we can use more friendly ideas.

Something for everyone

[viega]

I fell in love because of the UNIX environment that can also run Office natively, meaning that I don't have to use Windows ever again.

Two years ago, I never would have considered a Mac, nor would anyone I know, except for artists. Now, my wife, my mother and about 85% of my technical friends are Mac users.

OS X really has something for everyone. My mother loves iTunes... it's so incredibly easy to use. My wife and I like the support for DVD burning. I've recently tried some PC products to do this, and they just aren't mature enough, whereas the Mac solution is simply brilliant.

Ease of use and a real UNIX architecture really make it worthwhile. The cost of hardware is a minus, but I feel it was worth the extra money.

Why we're switching - what I sent Apple

[alexhmit01]

I haven't owned an Apple product since my Apple //c got retired. I switched to PCs because of usability. During the Mac vs. IBM compatible days, Mac users talked up usability, IBM compatible users agreed that Macs were more usable, we called them idiot machines. During DOS and DOS/Win3.1, the greater configurability of the PC made us feel like were were more in control.

I am 23 years old, a Windows NT 4.0 MCSE, run a small startup software and network services shop, and I am looking at the Macs more and more every day. When my fiancee, a senior music major, wanted a computer to be able to email, web browse, compose music on, and make MP3s of her class listening assignments (instead of sitting in the library), we found her the iBook. She decided to get the CD-RW/DVD model because she wanted to be able to make CDs of these songs so she could listen to the music assignments anywhere. She absolutely loves the machine, and the iPod I bought her for Channukah.

My office network consists of Linux servers for our database servers, (PostgreSQL 7.1), OpenBSD for the web servers, NT 4 for the internal network servers, and Windows 2000 for the desktops. After pricing out replacement desktop computers for our Compaq iPaqs, we realized how competitively priced the iMac is (with the configuration we'd get, its cheaper than the Compaq w/ monitor, a little more expensive than we'd pay without replacing our current Compaq monitors). After wrestling with dual monitor issues on Win2K, the plug and go of OS X is appealing.

The reason we will probably switch to OS X (on the desktop) this summer, TCO.

I need a full time sysadmin for our Unix machines, it is outgrowing our ability to have programmers admin the boxes. We are starting to get close to needing a full-time NT guy to administer the network. We are a small company, and both is beyond our means. We want to replace the NT network infrastructure, and switch to Linux network servers. To best make this happen, we want to migrate the desktops from Win2K Pro to Mac OS X, which we believe will reduce our network costs. We have several Windows machines, and they will likely remain for special purpose usage (web developers that need to view sites in Windows + IE, Quickbooks, other specialty applications), but everyone's primary machine will likely move from a Compaq Win2K machine to an Apple machine. Developers will get Powermacs for dual monitor support, everyone else will get iMacs.

The only thing delaying this switch (beyond startup costs of buying all these machines) is coming up with a solution to replace Exchange. We need to determine a centralized accounts repository, email, calendaring, tasks, etc., system before the migration. Afterwards, we look foward to ending this dual environment of many Unix machines and a Windows network.

Thanks for the great work. I've been following Apple with interest since the NeXTSTEP acquisition, and OS X is terrific. I feel better after a good friend that is a major Unix geek (stopped using Linux in 1997 to switch to FreeBSD, administered Solaris machines, Dec Alpha Digital UNIX machines before the Compaq buyout, etc.) recommended it as the best Unix out there.

Alex Hochberger
Feratech, Inc.

Re:Reasons I haven't considered Apple yet

[Frymaster]

1 - Confusing interface
windows puts the shutdown command under a menu called "start". unix leaves the "n" out of umount and has recursive as -r for rm but -R for cp. who's confusing here?

2 - One Button Mouse
you can buy other mice if your a button fetishist. remember tho' that the mouse's primary job is to apply focus. everything else is just feature creep

3 - Customization and configuration is hard to grasp
like what? if you can't figure out netinfo...

4 - Expensive Hardware
you pay more money for slick. it's true. if you think a $5 bottle of wine tastes as good as a $20 bottle of wine then maybe you should stick with yr win xp rig too...

5 - Apple is unpredictable
uh, we like to call that "innovation".

6 - Proprietary platform
sure is. apple makes "widgets". self-contained systems designed to work out of the box. my mom likes it.

7 - OS X is kinda slow
i assume you're still running the public beta. 10.1.2 is snappier than kde on the same machine

8 - I don't like Steve Jobs (I gotta be honest).
fair enough. i don't like bill gates and i don't like rms. lotsa people don't like theo de raat. should i switch to sparc solaris?

9 - We've heard about Apple treatening many Open Source projects (ie. Themes.org OSX theme)
and yet they opened up the entire core of their os. gosh they're so anti-open source.

i don't think this is a list of reasons why you shouldn't buy an "apple" (there actually hasn't been a computer by that name since 1983) but the reasons why you shouldn't by a computer.

I want some simple things

[Jay Carlson]

First, a good way to map Ctrl next to A, like God intended it. (Until today, I didn't know about this completely undocumented bit of black magic.)

Next, remove the goddamn video resolution lock on the consumer hardware. I've got an iMac here stuck sending 1024x768@75 video out the VGA port. The video hardware can do much better, but there's no way of saying "turn off the builtin display". iBooks are similarly crippled; PC laptops aren't.

Think very hard about adding a second trackpad button on the laptops. I can easily replace the USB mouse on a desktop box to get a second button, but there's no way to upgrade the trackpad without a bandsaw. Support for context menus in OS X is soooo nice; why make it harder for laptop users to take advantage of it on the go? (Yes, I know you can use modifier keys to get the same effect, but it's not the same.)

Make a really fast web browser. This Celeron 450 seems much faster than the iMac 450 for browsing; similarly with 800MHz machines at work.

Give me the source to Mail.app, so I can add support for certificates. It's not like your competition is going to steal anything useful out of that excellent, Cocoa-centric app.

Pay Valve Software to port the Half-Life engine to OS X. Geez, if the Mac doesn't run Counter-Strike, how are we going to AWP all the Windows weenies?

A modern Mac, for one hour

[maggard]

I'm not gonna try and tell Apple how to sell their products: They've got the best-selling computer a couple years in a row, 4 billion US in the bank and appear to be the only computer manufacturer riding out these times well.

However I can make one suggestion to folks commenting on what it would take to get them to buy a Mac: Use one. Don't go on about how you disliked MacOS 7.6.1 on an LC II back whenever.

Try a modern Mac,
running MacOS X,
for one hour.

See how fast you can come up to speed on it. That it has all of the Unix lovin' ya dig with the ease of a great GUI right there for the using. How it ships with a set of developer tools, documentation, the works (mmm - Cocoa). The full range of standard applications available. That it is perfectly married to the hardware it runs on.

One hour. Try it. Don't read reviews, listen to gripe-sheets, how old-school Macolytes miss some features, the pissing & moaning that Apple paid for a specific codec and didn't give it away, whatever.

See for yourself what it is like.

Take a look at the hardware and price it out against any other top tier manufacturer with quality components, a three year warranty, full support. See if MHz really is the true and only measure of a computer's performance. Ask yourself if you could fall in love with an OS, would you be cheating on another?

That's all. Give it a fair shake and then decide if it's right for you or not. But at least drive it around the block, kick the tires, check out under the hood. Trust me, the brochures don't do it justice.

Linux apps on OS X

[mikemcc]

I'm a couple of weeks into an experiment. Over the holidays I indulged a consumerist impulse and bought a Titanium Laptop. After the second credit card statement arrived, I decided I'd damned well better get some use out of a machine that I paid roughly $3,000 for. So for the past 2+ weeks I've left the Linux machine off and have used the TiBook as my sole home machine.

For the most part, I have no complaint. Many long time OS 9 users are vocally unhappy about the Aqua GUI. I'm a longtime WindowMaker user, so I'm on conceptually familiar ground. I like being able to SSH into my laptop from work and continue the project I was working on. I like the fact that fetchmail and sendmail come pre-installed on my laptop. I really, really like the OmniWeb browser (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/). I like watching (the Pro only) QuickTime movie trailers from quicktime.apple.com when it's 1:30 AM and I really ought to be in bed. I'm very impressed with iTunes and iPhoto. I assume at this point that if I owned a digital movie camera that I would be impressed with iMovie, as well.

I do, however, have two noticeable complaints:

1) I've spent the weekend trying to compile PHP 4.1.2 on this damned machine, and I'm getting tired of reading potentially helpful posts on various mailing lists which all end in the same error message:
"/usr/bin/libtool: internal link edit command failed"

If anyone has encountered this error message while compiling PHP 4.1.2 and resolved matters to their liking, I would be delighted to hear what you did.

2) I bought Civilization III for Mac OS X. I have a 677mz G4 processor with 512 MB of RAM, and the damned game is so slow its almost unplayable. That's simply unacceptable. I can't remember the last time that I cursed so much at a game. It doesn't matter if companies port their software to Mac OS X, if the port is practically unusable.

One final thought, unrelated to the previous statements:

I don't give a damn about the price. I don't use Linux because it's Beer-Free. I've happily paid for every version of the OS that I've used over the past five years; I understand how a Market Economy works. If you tell me that you didn't buy a Macintosh because it didn't do something that you needed, or because it did something you found unacceptable, I'll gladly accept that. But if you tell me you didn't buy a Mac because you were too cheap, rest assured that you won't get invited to any of my parties. I'd rather have no scotch than cheap scotch ;-)

Best regards,

Mike McC