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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.
Usually when people say somebody switched they think that person switched from using MS OS', not entirely true, I switched from Linux, so what Apple can offer many alternative OS' users to switch to overpriced patform
CNet. The ads appear to be called "RealPeople" ads. Probably because their now using a RealOS :-)
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Sure I added OS X to the OSes I use but I still use several systems and several OSes on those systems. Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, Irix and the various Windows are all great in different ways and I'd hate to better locked in to one OS or even one OS per architecture.
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.
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!
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.
-... ---
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.
Although the small increase in processing power may be far outweighed by the ease of use and stability of the Apple platform.
:).
:D
That "may be" is the big thing Apple are addressing. While there's no doubt there ARE things about macs that grab people (and being a fanatical user with 36 of the things myself I've been firmly grabbed!), there are also turnoffs. For people to be able to make decisions on what suits them best, whether it be linux/bsd/solaris/windows/macos/amiga/a tin can with a string/etc, they need to have the information. Just getting over the hurdle of "But it's a mac!" is the big thing. I find the best thing I can tell potential converts is "It's just a bloody computer!"... it has a cpu, ram, gui, I/O stuff... And let people see for themselves what they want. Taking a unbiased-seeming view kinda rubs off on people and opens their mind
After getting over silly little hatreds of what's just an inanimate electronic machine - some choose macs, some don't - and we're all happy
a grrl & her server
that's just not true - you definitely get more CPU power for your money if you build yourself a PC. I'm a big Apple fan, but I also have homebuilt PCs that can really make a dent in some big jobs while I carry on using my main Mac.
That was classic intercourse!
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..
are they first party software or third, and do they come with the computer or are they aftermarket, cause there are plenty of third party options for the mac in these areas as well.
I want 2D games back.
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.
I don't see that these ads show people who were too stupid to make their Windows computers work. I think these are people who want to get something done with their computers, hated the experience they got with Wintel, and are happier now that they've switched.
"I was smart enough to buy a Mac because it works better than what I had before. It looks and feels better, too."
The message seems to be:
Marketing 101, second week.
The most important feature of the DJ spot isn't that she thinks her Mac is pretty. It's that someone told her to buy Wintel, she did, and didn't like it. She then bought her own Mac, and she likes it a lot more. She went against the flow, jumped off the bandwagon, and bought a "niche" computer. As a result, she's happier. The marketing message is: Maybe you'd be happier like our friend Liza here if you did the same thing she did.
I much prefer advertising trying to influence me with real people saying they're getting more done with less headaches as opposed to advertising trying to influence me with a fictional glue addict whose catchphrase is "Dude!" Talk about "loser"...
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.
This is what you need to make your machines and new OS a killer. A native OS X X server. (heh, can you call parse that sentence?). Having to start XDarwin (I use the front end OroborOSX) to run my X apps is a pain, and destroys the desktop continuity. Create those crazy bindings so I can compile my X (not X) apps natively, and you will have a beautiful unix based machine with thousands of applications at your fingertips, retaining the good ol look and feel of your OS.
The middle mind speaks!
Gaming is the only thing on your list that would be difficult for anyone to argue.
No problems here. Nethack kicks ass on my iBook.
The middle mind speaks!
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.
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.
I don't think it's any more deceptive than any of the marketing proclaiming the stability of Windows over the years. They may have finally gotten it right, but they made assertions in the past that weren't backed up in reality.
As for OS X, my Titanium PowerBook G4 has functioned without needing a reboot for over five weeks at a time as a shuttle it to and from work, from my wireless network at home to my LAN at work. I put it to sleep with impunity -- something the people at my office using Dell laptops won't trust, because suspend always causes them troubles.
No, it's not infallible. I don't think any consumer operating system really is, because there's software out there that won't follow the rules. (For instance, the only thing that crashes my computer is having Diablo II as the foreground app when I put it to sleep. I've forgotton twice in the past couple of months.)
By the way, Google returns 80,200 hits on "Windows XP Crash".
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.
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
"the way it works is like the way your brain is supposed to work"
So that's why I keep seeing gray stripes everywhere.
I have no idea or a good reference to point at to say that this has worked before or not. But I believe it's the best way Apple can get the word out, since the Mac platform seems to be fighting an uphill battle with old myths and a "wierd image" pushing converts away... However, in future campaigns I'd like to see some important CEO's or education "officers" recommending the Mac, because it's simply the best tool for the job. Other than that I'm just really glad to see that Apple - being the only real Microsoft competitor - is so focused on getting some of Bill's cake!
Semper ubi sub ubi, "dude".
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.
Here are some interesting performance benchmarks (using lmbench) comparing Darwin (aka Mac OS X), NetBSD, and Linux. Can you guess who came in first place? ;-)
lmbench 2.0 summary
cpeterso
Or do bikini-clad women really leap out of your closet the moment you pop open a can of Miller beer?
Why else would you drink that shit?
Even worse, a search for "OSX Crash" would yield "I have used OSX for months and never had a crash".
You have not tried iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and iTunes. If you had, you would realize Mac OS X is a competely different animal from previous OS efforts from Apple, and would not be arguing about using Conflict Catcher to fix machines.
So, let me ask you: which applications on the PC let you download images from your digital camera, sort them into albums, publish to a web page and order hardcover books as effectively as iPhoto?
Which PC apps do DV capture, edit, and dump as seamlessly as iMovie (i.e. all within one working environment)?
Which PC DVD authoring apps make it simple for consumers to create beautiful, tasteful DVDs, with software integration as effective as that of iDVD and iMovie?
Which PC music player / playlist management / CD-ripping and burning app automatically synchronizes its own playlists with your personal hard disk-based MP3 player at FireWire speeds?
The iApps are elegant, powerful and bundled for free with the Mac. They have their own unique features which are not found on any other computer, at any price. Please tell me which PC apps are "just as good".
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."
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.
If Apple doesn't do this, they people won't magically become devoted Apple Cocoa developers. Rather, Apple will only create unnecessary porting headaches for their newest developers--UNIX developers. Those developers won't switch to Cocoa, they will simply continue using the same toolkits they have always been using (Gtk+, wxWindows, etc.), but with substandard and poorly maintained OSX-backends. That only hurts Apple.
I know it's tough medicine to swallow for Apple. But I really don't see any alternative. Hoping that the world will switch to Cocoa is a pipe dream--whether it is technically good or not, Cocoa is a niche product. Only a small, dedicated core of Mac developers will spend time on it.
752,000 in google.
I've used Windows 2000 for a year now. I've never had a kernel panic (no matter what I plug in) and I can't recall having any kind of lockup that couldn't be fixed with the Task Manager.
-- SIGFPE
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Please learn English.
The phrase "often isn't available" does not have the same meaning as the phrase "is never available"
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
perhaps you should just fork out some cash and buy Tenons Xtools X server for X
No, he shouldn't.
Tenon has all but abandoned Xtools. There hasn't been an update since last September, and the currently available version (1.0.4p1) is horribly unstable.
Xtools was useful for the 6-month window between the initial XF86 port to Darwin and the release of XFree 4.2 (which integrated the rootless quartz server into the main code tree). Since then, however, it's rotted. At this point, OroborosX is faster, better-featured, and much more stable.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.