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PC Users Switch to Apple
JHromadka writes "Apple has setup a special website with real users explaining why they switched from the PC to the Mac. There's a full compliment of commercials, Mac OS X reviews, the works. Now we know why they didn't renew that agreement with Microsoft. :)" I like the commercials, they're funny, though probably not so much intentionally. Apparently the commercials begin airing this week.
Quite honestly, I love Linux. I use it as a destop and a server on several PCs.
Laptops are another story...
I've owned 3 PC laptops in the last 5 years, and never had Linux working 100% on any of them.
Power management has never worked 100% properly for me. Even though I can get hardware video acceleration, switching to a tty, then back, breaks XFree and freezes my machine. etc... Basically the Open Source community can't keep up with the proprietary innovations going into new laptops.
Enter OSX. Now I know I can get a cutting edge Laptop, who's hardware is 100% supported by a UNIX based OS, at a reasonable price. I don't remember an opportuinity like this existing before.
I'm trading my (almost) new PC laptop for an (almost) new iBook this week.
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but for things that actually matter to me like kernel compiles, mp3 encoding, or gaming
Under OS X kernel compiles are a non-issue unless you're hacking around inside the Darwin kernel. MP3 encoding is pretty quick. I believe the MP3 encoding routine used by iTunes is Altivec optimized so it encodes as fast as it suck the music off the cd. Gaming is the only thing on your list that would be difficult for anyone to argue..
Anyway, saying to people that you were smart enough to buy a Mac is probably not the best approach. Putting "real people" like this on TV, talking about their experience, is something I wish Apple did a long time ago! I think campaigns like this will get a lot of people's attention, and at least make them consider a Mac next time they buy a computer.
The TV ads on the site are aimed at the edges of the WinTel user base, not at it's core. While I'm not happy about that at a 'gut' level, I think it does make sense. At first I wanted to see a suburban/small town shmoe dressed in Wallmart fashion with a stock car racing cap because that's the core of mass market home purchasing. Instead it's a bunch of people (like me) who wear black (other than to funerals) and roughly half of them are writers. But it dawned on me that they are at the edge between the Mac/Windows world, and just ended up on the wrong side for whatever reason. The are the next 5% who can most easily be brought over. It does require a bit of technical sophistication to switch over (e.g. you might need to know what an ethernet crossover cable is to move your old files over if you don't have access to a network). Thus, there's a big hump to get over for a big part of the market. Once wireless networking is stock, this might become easier. Imagine that part of the out-of-the-box wizard asks you if you want to move files over from the PC that it found (wirelessly) in the same room. They're going after SOHO users because there's a lot less 'inertia' to deal with - "You need a new computer every 2 to 5 years, make it a Mac this time. It's easy. Give it a try." They don't mention it in the ads, but MSOffice is a big part of why this will work for a lot people. "You word process, you prepare presentations, you e-mail and web surf. A Mac works better for these things." For Wall Street a few percent shift would be a big thing and would strengthen the perception of Apple, so it seems like the place to start is with the fence sitters.
the term "linux crash" brings up about 445,000 hits. Your point?
I hate when people fall back on Google hit statistics. They are absolutely useless! Google is an unthinking search engine that will return any document with the terms you ask for, regardless of their context. You're bound to get all kinds of documents included in your results that have no place in your argument whatsoever. For example, you might get the weblog of a guy who says "My friend was in a car crash." and later says "I tried out OSX."
Please don't use Google this way. It does nothing to prove your point.
Whenever I have a relative or non-geek friend who wants to have a computer, for pretty much any reason other than gaming, I always encourage them to buy Macs, for the very selfish reason that I don't want to spend my free time as their personal tech support hot-line. The few times in the past that I had helped a people buy a Windows PC's, they ended up needing constant assistance and complaining of baffling glitches. With those who bought Macs, all I did was spend a couple hours showing them the basics, and told them to "guess" whenever they are unsure of how to do something. In spite of being total newbies, and not very tech-inclined, they get by fine without my help after that, and often derrive enough pleasure from working with their Macs to want to learn more, and become experts.
As for myself, I'm with you. I like having lots of systems running lots of OS's. These ads are not targetting me, either.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Simply stated, if Apple were to offer up X windows as a GUI option and developers could count on it being on every mac, we'd see a bunch of shallow ports of X windows apps, which would pollute the platform with UI that in many cases is even worse than that on MS Windows.
By keeping X windows as a separate thing you have to find and install, the pressure remains on the developers to make a native Mac app if they want to be on the volume-leading UNIX.
-jcr
BTW, don't even start with me about calling it "X Windows".
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."