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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.
Does my software work on the Mac?
Speaking as a mac-convert within the past year, this point holds a lot of people back. Not will software run on the Mac, but will software I have previously purchased work on the Mac? If Apple had some service where they and the vendors had a PC for Mac trade-in program (and some do, like Adobe), it would get more people over the hump to switch.
While that's true, Apple needs to spend its money effectively - the number of Windows users is so vastly larger than the number of Linux users that Apple can't focus on individual Linux users.
However, the XServe is the first of a set of products aimed at the IT segment of the industry - you can bet that further down the road you'll see in-depth coverage of why people should move infrastructure from Linux, Solaris, and so on to Mac OS X.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
My office is in the middle of consolidating from one floor of our office building to one, necessitating a great deal of shifting about for almost everyone.
One of my co-workers was annoyed that she'd be without music while she was re-assembling her office, so I loaned her my iPod for a couple of hours with a pair of speakers that was lying around.
I was simply amazed at how ecstatic she was over this little device. She had no trouble figuring out how to use it.
She was so smitten that she is now planning to purchase an iBook, Microsoft Office, more RAM, 3 years worth of AppleCare (due to one of Apple's promotions, buying the AppleCare and MS Office at the Apple Store with the iBook is actually $11 less than without AppleCare) and, of course, the iPod.
She wouldn't hear of waiting for someone to finish a program to interface the iPod with a PC. She was already contemplating a new laptop, and she's very excited with the features of the iBook.
I was never sure that I truly believed the stories of people buying Macs just to use an iPod, but that's exactly what she's planning!
Losers? Perhaps you're just bitter because they didn't want you in the campaign! Kidding aside, pitching Macs by simply telling people that they're better (as you state in your post), just doesn't cut. You need to show *why* or *how* they are better.
The ads do a great job of elaborating on this. And I see they "real folks" as far more credible spokespersons than a bunch of celebrities.
Photoshop benchmarks have shown you are right but..........
Most other respectable bechmarks have shown that the margin of Mhz on a P4 vs performance on a G4 is MUCH smaller than the highly quote 2 to 1 ratio rabid Apple fans spout.
If all you do is Photoshop then yes the G4 is great but real world applications aren't all up to those performance numbers. Photoshop benchmarks are only showing specific operations and ignoring the rest. Anyone who has done any kind of benchmarking knows that there are strengths and weaknesses in every test. Marketing takes off with the highest figures and puts the spin on them.
OS X uses the CPU heavily because it isn't into the hardware yet on all the rendering. 10.2 is supposed to get the hardware more optimized and we will have to see how much improvement we will really see. I personally can't wait to see it.
Of course there are huge differences in speed and productivity. OS X is definitely got the advantage there over most. Maybe it is slower but it is still very nice to work with. If 10.2 comes through then it won't be slower and we really will have something to talk about.
It's hard to ignore facts but it nice to see that some people have fallen for the facts.
Mononoke writes:
;)
> Hint to Apple marketing: If you create an image of
> the typical Mac user as lonely geeky loser, no one
> will want a Mac!
They didn't strike me as lonely, geeky, or losers. They looked like real people. Which is a refreshing change from "dudes", cows, and supermodels.
> That Dell Dude is cooler than any of the Mac
> users in these ads.
Well, he certainly explains why Apple unseated Dell as market leader in the education field.
> Even that Gateway CEO and his cow are cooler.
Closing stores and worrying about chapter 11, but still cooler. Whereas Apple is opening stores, has 4 billion in the bank, and Steve Jobs' muse is a famous moth goddess instead of a cow.
> In one ad, the "chick"
Suddenly I see why you favor the "Dell Dude".
> notes that she didn't like her PC because it
> "wasn't attractive."
You know, I think she's right. Especially that blue screen of death thing. That's real ugly.
> Haven't Mac users been trying to get past the
> "You only bought it because it's pretty" stigma
> ever since the first iMac? I know I have.
Stigma? If someone says "You only bought it because it's pretty" to me, I say "Yeah, isn't it gorgeous. And look, it can do this, this, and this..." That's not a stigma, it's an opening for some serious advocacy. When your friends pick their jaws off the ground, you then help them pick out a Mac of their very own.
> Marketing 101, guys.
That's the marketing technique all the PC makers use. That's why, in the middle of a decimated desktop industry, Apple sold the hottest selling computer in Amazon's history (the new G4 iMac). That's why Apple had to give in to users clamoring for a machine that Apple intended only for the educational market. That's why Apple has four billion in the bank and is opening stores all over while Compaq no longer exists and Gateway is troubled.
Apple's marketing works, and works well. If it worked too much better, if Apple grew too fast, Apple would be in trouble. Growing a company too fast can endanger or kill the company. They have to keep their manufacturing up with what they sell and keep their growth healthy.
The TV advertising is only part of what Apple does. They have a print advertising campaign that is highly focused depending on a magazine's target audience that lets them do more selling of products to a specific audience. The TV ads tend to be more branding style ads.
> No more "I was too dumb to run a PC, so I bought
> a Mac" ads, please!
You would be surprised by the amount of ordinary people in business that find the simplest task in a GUI to be daunting. They are not dumb people, they are simply busy people with a job to do that do not have time to take classes in mousing or file management. Any computer that makes those tasks simpler for them, saves them time, and thus is very valuable to them. That makes ease of use a very big selling point for the Mac for a lot of people.
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected a charred Apple sapling ("Mosura" 1996).
On December 14, 2001, Mothra returned to see its fruit ("Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki").
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
If they're going for anecdotal evidence, there had to be some better choices.
Out of 8 commercials only IT and creative arts are represented. Shouldn't their target audience be a bit bigger? Give me some truck driver telling me how he dropped his iBook out of his truck and it still worked (happened to me with a 520. 7' drop to asphalt.) Give me some middle-manager that's having a much easier time hooking his TiBook to projectors and giving Powerpoint demos than he ever had with the old tank of a 'laptop' he used to carry. Those are real people.
Sorry, I'm a 'tough crowd', I suppose.
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I'm sure these people will be surprised to hear they aren't "real people."
Maybe Apple's interested in going after the set of Windows users who are deeply unhappy with their computers and can't understand why things can't be simpler and just work better.
I agree that harder analytical stories would be nice to see in addition to this stuff. As a matter of fact, I can read a few right now at http://www.apple.com/switch/stories/ if I like.
Seems to me that these ads cater to what Apple considers its strengths: ease of use, style, design, empowerment through simplicity, etc. They're a bit whimsical and quirky, which != "tough"; maybe that's why they aren't doing anything for you.
Primarily, the ads get across something that people might perceive to be true anecdotally, but haven't heard directly from Apple in a while: There is a simpler way to do the basic stuff you might want a computer to do. Buy a Macintosh and check it out. These people did, and they're happier.
I am sure that there are lots of people out there who are sick of Windows crashing and hate dealing with confusing (and sometimes non-functional!) preinstalled software which makes it difficult to print a few pictures of the baby or write a paper or read something interesting on the Internet.
Apple is trying to target these "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" people who are generally pretty bright but don't feel like they should have to learn how the computer approaches problems in varied instances just so they can do a few things that the computer was advertised as being able to do.
How is that a flawed marketing strategy?
Actually, I still haven't seen _one_ _single_ benchmark result where the G4 even comes close to an x86 for non-altivec code.
Altivec is perfect for some applications, but it's out of the question if you need double precision, of if you want all your code to be portable.
I think our project highlights the problem with Altivec. In theory we could invest a couple of thousand hours to implement altivec stuff, but in practice it isn't worth it for a platform with 5-10% market penetration.
It just doesn't matter how good Altivec is - from a commercial point of view it is much smarter to spend that money on adding SSE instructions for the other 90% of the market...
2. It doesn't crash
Are you just a tad too well acquainted with the notorious "blue screen of death"? Bid it a fond farewell. With Mac OS X, you'll become accustomed instead to industry-leading stability. In this elegant new operating system, memory is fully protected and applications can't conflict with the OS or one another. And, oh yes, Mac OS X is built on the industrial strength of UNIX. Most Fortune 500 companies, governments and universities rely on UNIX for their mission-critical applications. And now, so can you.
Marketing hyperbole is one thing, but seeing as a Google search on "osx crash" returns over eight thousand hits, it seems that Apple has crossed the line from hyperbole to deception.
Badly done, Mister Jobs.
Well, for me, the answer is "yes," although I only have anecdotes to support my opinion.
Just today, a co-worker called me to her office. She couldn't change her default printer in Windows. Rather, she repeatedly changed the default, but the program she wanted to print from didn't recognize the change.
I'm a Mac guy -- I figured something was wrong, so I walked her through the procedure one more time. It still didn't work. Maybe we have to restart the program? Nope, still defaulted to the wrong printer.
We eventually had to change the printer in "Print Setup" before the program would "default" to the printer she wanted.
On a Mac, you'd change your default printer and all of the program would automatically print using that printer. No restarting programs, no restarting the computer, no trying to figure out some obtuse reasoning to accomplish a very, very simple task.
Does the Mac work better? I think so.
When I learned that 1) NEXTSTEP was the basis for Apple's new OS and 2) new Pro towers were forthcoming, I decided to go Mac (from PC), and did in Jan '99 w/ a G3 400. I've since upgraded to a dual G4 800 PowerMac for just shy of a year now, running OS X exclusively. I have had two kernel panics. (One stemming from plugging in an unsupported USB device.) When I had the other kernel panic, I was horrified. I powered the machine off and started recalling the memory upgrade I performed a few months earlier--wondering if it could be the culprit. I checked the LED clock at my side to see if there had been a brownout. I felt the FireWire connection to my external 160GB drive to make sure it had not come-aloos and somehow caused the problem...
Oh...I just picked up an iBook 700. I have no practical need for this, as I am behind a machine all day at work (developer) and my G4 is there when I get home. I simply wanted to be able to bring OS X with me. On a whim, I can make use of it. It's that good. It is truly a shame what so many people are missing.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
With M$ holding so much of the market right now, any competition they can get is good for their image, and for their antitrust lawsuit defense. For that reason, I doubt anybody at M$ really sees Apple as a big threat, or is worried by these commercials.
Now, if Apple somehow managed to get up to 20% marketshare, then there might be a problem.
Myself, I switched back in March of 2000, and I haven't looked back since.
These ads are great. If it gets a few extra percent of the market, then they did their job.
My favorite part of the ads? The fact that they're trying to win over PC users without using direct insults.
10. It's beautiful
While I wouldn't use the term beautiful, as far as I can see, style is the number one reason for getting a Mac. The problem is, in a few years, these things are going to be like bell bottom jeans.
Style the number one reason?? OS X is so staggeringly more robust than any of Microsoft's OS offerings that isn't even funny. Rock solid UNIX foundation, incredible performance (BSD-core outperforms Linux, Solaris), best application development platform bar-none provided free, world-class desktop applications (Photoshop, MS Office, Dreamweaver, Maya, etc.), world class server applications (Oracle being ported currently), and one company trying the OS and hardware together.
Yea - and it looks nice too.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
The ads do a great job of elaborating on this. And I see they "real folks" as far more credible spokespersons than a bunch of celebrities.
Francis Ford Coppola was once quoted as saying, "Somewhere out there there's a six year old girl with a camcorder who's changing the future of film."
When they intro'd the new iMac, Apple showed a video at the keynote address. (QuickTime version available here.) It's an amazing little piece with tons of production value.
In it, they featured interviews with Seal, Annie Lebovitz, and, yes, Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola talks about how the iMac and the digital media tools give regular people the kind of creative power that was once reserved only for big, famous filmmakers like himself. At the end of the video, he says, "I look at something like this [the new iMac] and I think, oh, I want three million of them. So I can put them with, you know, three million young people."
The fact that Apple never turned that into a commercial spot in wide release is just a crime. It's a really moving piece.
People who read charts like that should stay away from Macs. You're missing the point entirely. What the chart fails to mention is which one runs Photoshop and Excel. Which one requires the fewest steps to encode a CD to MP3. Which one has a flat panel display you can just nudge up out of your way. Which one is fastest from pulling it out of the box to editing your home videos. Which one has the best color synchronization. Really, do you really think that the people in the Apple ads care about local communication latencies in microseconds, or memory latencies in nanoseconds. If you care about this stuff, please run Linux, and stop bringing up irrelevant facts to argue against the Mac's most important merit: useability. Above all else - speed, price, variety of software titles etc., which system makes your life easier, as opposed to which is better as an end unto itself.
You must be too young to remember the "Pepsi Challenge" commercials of the 80's.
You see, if you just drink small sips of each pop in a double-blind taste test, the sweeter taste of Pepsi (Coke has a more bitter bite to it) leads the vast majority of people to say they like Pepsi's taste better. (2 out of 3, according the the marketroids who ran the test.)
With this knowledge in hand, Pepsi held taste tests of this sort in Supermarkets all over the country, and ran TV ads showing "real people" (including many lifetime Coke drinkers) express their astonishment at having chosen Pepsi.
The campaign was so wildly successful that it lead to a panic-inspired decision by the Coca-Cola company... when the patent on the formula for the original Coke ended they abandoned their well-known flavor and introduced "New Coke", a formula that tasted almost exactly like Pepsi. We all know what a disaster that turned out to be. Pepsi drinkers did not really feel any particular desire to switch to the new Coke, and Coke drinkers just wanted "the old Coke" back (and eventually got it, as "Coca-Cola Classic"). See, the thing is, people who drink a lot of Cola on a regular basis don't like the heavy, sticky sweetness of Pepsi. They like the crisp bitterness of Coke. So even when Pepsi more customers, Coke customers consume more product, which is why Coke has mostly remained the #1 seller (by a narrow margin) all these years.
Still, nobody can argue that the Pepsi Challenge ads were anything short of a triumph. In an industry where most people just drink whatever is loaded in their local bar's tap, and everybody else sticks with their favorite brand like a religion, the vast majoirty of Cola ads are for brand image alone. The ads don't sell cola, they keep stock values up. The Pepsi Challenge campaign, by putting "regular people" on TV stands alone as the only cola TV ads that actually got a few people to switch brands.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.