Slashdot Mirror
Newsflash: Mac Users Love Apple, Hate Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "An article on wired.com talks about how Mac users helped Apple through the dark years of the 90s." It goes on to discuss how a psychologist was hired to figure out how to woo Mac users away from Apple, with some (to him) surprising results.
Score: -1, Redundant
People who buy a company's product during dark times keeps the company from going under! Tune in at 6pm.
It's is well known (although I cannot remember the technical name for the effect) that people are 'loyal' to their decisions. Even if they've made a bad choice, there is an internal attempt to justify it.
"Apple is like a strange drug that you just can't quite get enough of," the musician Barry Adamson told the Guardian newspaper. "They shouldn't call it Mac. They should call it crack!"
;)
Whoo! Oh, boy, my sides are aching! Oh, my ribs hurt! Oh, man!
Also...
Andrew Lackey, a visiting professor of business and economics journalism at Boston University, said Apple's monopoly in the Mac business allows it to get away with things companies in a competitive market can't...."With Apple you're a captive, and to some extent they abuse that privilege," Lackey said. "I would have thought Apple would be all folksy, like a Ben & Jerry's kind of company. But in my experience, PC companies are much more responsive."
BMW has a monopoly in the BMW market. GM has a monopoly in the GM market. And yet, they both sell cars and compete against each other. I guess that's why this guy is only a visiting professor of economics.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
... that they have an exclusive club? I have despised MS for years and have never owned an Apple product.
Which distribution? ;-)
There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community.
Please, god, no.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Or Nike? Or Coca-Cola? I use Linux, but I think the idea of wearing a Tux the Penguin t-shirt is kind of lame. Same for people who pay extra for clothes with the Nike logo on it. . .what you share to the core of your being is identification with a logo that is larger than you could ever hope to be, not some enlightened life philosophy.
From the article...
"[mac users are] more dedicated than users of any other computer, perhaps even Linux. Linux and Unix users are, in fact, switching to Macs in droves. "
Hmm, what could be the attraction?
"If you see somebody in an airport in London, or someplace down in Peru or something, and you see an Apple tag on their bag, or an Apple T-shirt, it's like the Deadheads ... you have an instant friend," ...
Isn't the same true for Linux ?
Yes. When you see another guy with a beard, or walking around barefoot, you know you have an instant friend. (Have mercy on me, moderators...)
I don't know. I use Linux every day at work, and it was my choice. But I am all tooaware of it's drawbacks, and have no qualms in listing them, if a decision has to be made with regards to the best platform for a certain purpose. I know a few other folks just like me, they use Linux every day, sometimes at home, too, but are not totally crazy about it.
I believe there is a certain number of realists among the Linux users. I think the percentage is higher than in the case of Mac users.
Sigged!
Oh my god! They're right. I've finally gotten away from using a proprietary operating system on non-proprietary hardware, and now I'm going to switch to using a proprietary operating system on proprietay hardware.
Linux is more like heroin. Crack is easy to use; with heroin, you have a bunch of dumbasses trying to use it that end up shooting cotton or infecting their arms. And then they wonder why other people like heroin so much.
...the real reason a story like this was posted was the Anti-MS FUD Campaign has run out of ammo. Apparently, MS didn't make the news yesterday so they had nothing to attack them with. Relax though, you'll find more Jerry Springer'esque drama as soon as MS makes any type of move.
"Commodore hired engineers, Apple hired marketers."
And you know, only one of them is still in business. Its not what you sell, its what people think they are buying.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Are you saying that a computer that "just works" and "is prettier" is somehow less worthy? Why are these criteria unimportant in your expert opinion?
It seems to me that a computer that "just works" and "is prettier" is far more valuable than one that doesn't "just work" and "is uglier."
Circa 1999 it was Linux user = hobbyist geek. Now Linux has been revealed as a savior to businesses of all stripes, but if you're an "early convert" you're still seen as a hobbyist geek, rather than a smart person who picked Linux early for the right reasons.
Something similar may be going on now with the Mac. It's been the cultists who have kept Apple and the Mac alive, but with the release of OS X and the influx of UNIX folks and perhaps a few Windows converts, the cultists are viewed with scorn as the faith-driven zealots rather than as rational adopters of what is really just a computer system.
The Mac has always offered something basic that Microsoft and most (but not all) PC vendors simply don't understand. The computer is built to work out of the box for the human being, not the other way around. You can argue all you want about how it limits your upgrade options, costs more, doesn't run as many apps, but there will always be a certain segment of the computer-using population that very strongly wants a computer that just works, with no fuss.
Now why should people who believe in that concept get labeled as oddballs? Maybe its the rest of the population that's odd, for settling on buggy, conflict-riddled, nonsecure by default, inelegant crap.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There are a good portion of us who are very technically aware, have used all of the major OSes extensively, and feel that Mac OS is much better than Windoze.
There are a large number of you out there who say that "Macs are crap" blindly, without having used one in quite a while or ever. I would say that those people should "atleast [sic] have the decency to KNOW what [they] are talking about".
Well it seems the Apple isn't a (as in single) subculture anymore.
Firstly there are the old time Mac users - they used a Mac found it easy to do what they wanted and just attached themselves to the system. Many have had Macs for years and will tell you how the Mac "changed their life". Often these users work in "arty" jobs (DTP, Graphic Designers, etc)
Then there are Windows switchers - they got fed up with the Wintel PC, some it was system crashes, some it's more religous reasons.
Linux switchers, often those who were working in Windows/Linux for various reasons. Lots have PowerBooks.
Then there are old NeXT users (not many of us actually!).
And others I'm too stupid to identify. I'm not sure that the Mac is a single culture anymore. I hope this is healthy for the platform.
Of course I have omitted those who "co-exist" and use Mac and something else.
If you are going to be blindly loyal, atleast have the decency to KNOW what you are talking about as opposed to 'it just works' and 'its prettier than PC'
.Mac thing. They're still getting what they paid for--a computer that just works, no questions asked.
That's exactly why I am loyal. I got a product that is useful to me as well as aesthetically pleasing. Who cares how or why it works as long as it does.
Coming from a PC background I can understand having to know how to partition or reformat; or move NICs to PCI slots without shared IRQs; or diagnose DLL and registry problems introduced by 3rd party software products. I did learn a lot, but that's a lot of lost productivity.
Some people like to use computers without having to be amateur computer scientists. That's why people love Macs. That's why people still buy them, despite the good rodgering some people think we got from them over the whole 10.2 and
cognitive dissonance is an extremely powerful component of the continuing strength of MS. Admitting that fear, uncertainty and doubt has led you to lock yourself and your company into an abusive relationship with a monopoly is not something that people want to do (if the latest licensing scheme doesn't qualify as abusive, I don't know what would). People would much rather declare that their "choice" of MS is sensible and will save them money.
Disclaimer: I used to be a Macaddict, but I switched to Linux in college "because I can code", and I never went back.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
We don't all toe the slashdot line. Some of us just want something that works well, doesn't waste our time, and lets us work effectively. OS X fits that bill wonderfully for me, and it plays well with my *nix servers.
I don't get paid based on the liberation of my software, I get paid to get things done. Fuck the KDE/Gnome amateur hour; give me OS X and software that works.
If people forgive youre mistakes it means you have succeeded in what every company wants. Brand-loyalty. Lucasarts had it for a long time. Sure they made a couple of stinkers, afterlife, but by and large most gamers where willing to trust them. Hell any lucasarts adventure I will buy without even reading the back of the box. This kind of loyalty is very important since it allows a company to make mistakes/try new things and not be immidialty killed of for it.
If at as a competitor you are wondering how the hell a company gets away with it ask youreself what you youreself have done to win youre customers loyalty. Perhaps it is the small things that allow you to get away with the big things. Surely I can not be only one who thinks that Apple charging for point upgrades makes MS constant upgrade or be obsolete cycle seem mild in comparison.
Any psychologist majors around who can explain this behaviour?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I started working at Apple in their datacenters doing Unix Admin and Disaster Recovery work. When I started MacOS X wasn't even in Public Beta, so the PowerMac sitting on my desk had MacOS 9.04 on it. Trying to do AIX & Solaris admin from that box was absolutely horrible! Within weeks I had a new Sun Ultra5 on my desk next to the Mac for the Unix work I needed to do, the Mac ran email, calendar/scheduling, and problem tracking system.
Once MacOS X hit Public Beta I was allowed to run it on my system there (actually encouraged to assist in finding bugs). That's the point that I can truly say I started liking the Mac. I hated the "Classic" MacOS and have been free from it since Jaguar was released (didn't install Classic when I reinstalled on my PowerBook).
I left Apple a year ago, but did buy a PowerBook while still working there. I now use my Mac for everything except the couple of PC only games I play.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Well, I think it's not fair to compare the update to Mac OS X 10.2 with a service pack for Windows XP, the smaller updates-- from 10.1.1 to 10.1.5 and some smaller security updates etc., were free. .mac -- I cancelled my my account there and switched to a free (still...) mail service, again; it's your own decision whether you think this service is worth the money it costs.
10.2 is in many ways a new operating system. The "update" from Windows 2000 to Windows XP wasn't free either.
For those who are happy with 10.1 there's no need to change, for me 10.1 works fine.
About
Being an apple-fan doesn't mean you have to agree to all decisions of the company...
The Macintosh do seem more attractive to users (used?) that are not tech-savvy, and not just because it looks nice. The GUI has a certain flexibility and learning it is very straightforward. However, everyone learns it in their own way, and Mac users have all different habits.
So that explains Mac zealotry, since once you get used to using a Mac, going to Windows can be hard since it doesn't have the same usability features.
However, the same can be said about Windows - although it seems that it imposes its own way of doing things, it becomes natural once you are used to it. And when you try a mac, you complain that everything is missing. ^^
Mac OS X should be attractive to Windows users that wish to use some flavor of Unix but who doesn't want to give up a nice interface. But Apple loses in this crowd with the propietary hardware. I would have loved to build a machine with OS X, but I find the idea of buying overpriced hardware ridiculous (for the same price I can buy technically superior and esthetically equivalent components).
Of course for Linux enthusiasts, Apple is just another Microsoft. Don't forget that Steve Jobs once said "Microsoft succeeded in what we have tried to accomplish" (he also said that comparing Mac to PCs was ridiculous since PCs have already won - both quotes from the book "Apple Confidential").
The ENIAC Demo Competition
That would be the PowerMac 7200, wouldn't it?
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
If you are going to be blindly loyal, atleast have the decency to KNOW what you are talking about as opposed to 'it just works' and 'its prettier than PC'.
Actually, that is knowing what they are talking about. They know they want a computer that works and they know they want something that is aesthetically pleasing to them. The first one is the most important. Why is it that many PC users equate power of computer with complexity? Who cares if you can diagnose 1001 DLL conflicts and then set all your IRQ's properly while installing something in an ISA and AGP slot at the same time. The vast majority of consumers don't want to be bombarded with technical terms that make computer repair technicians cringe at the thought. They want a tool (and that is exactly what a computer is, a tool) to help them do their work. Would the average person want a swiss army knife that you had to configure each time you used a different tool? No, they want it to cut when they ask. Just like the average computer user wants it to print when they ask. And as to aesthetics, if you had to stare at the same thing every day for 8 hours, would you want something that looked like a moving van box with a putrid grey and perfectly square shape, or something with soft curves, and a variety of colors. Soothing appearances help productivity you know.
.sig: It's what's for dinner.
Not for one thing or an other but couldn't this more reflect on the women you date then on the Mac users? Just because it rained when I was in belgium does not mean it always rains in belgium.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What so many programmers don't realize is that to have a successful software company, marketing is the most important factor.
For every dollar you spend on engineering, you should spend at least 2 on marketing. I've heard up to 5 mentioned. It depends on the market, of course.
It's funny to think of all the clueless programmers who constantly whine about "stupid" marketing people on Slashdot, while they in fact owe their jobs to them!
I use a Mac because that's where the creative tools are. Way too many people think that Mac and Windows are the same because there are lots of Mac/PC applications, but they're not the same at all. Digidesign's Pro Tools runs on both Mac and Windows, but it's been running on the Mac for much longer and with more features, and all of the pro-level plug-ins are Mac-only. So, all of the #1 hits done with Pro Tools are also Mac-only. Similarly, Quark runs on Windows, but most of the plug-ins are Mac-only, and color management, advanced typography, a PostScript renderer, and PDF workflow are built-in to the Mac, so most of publishing runs on Macs. Many other mainstream creative applications are only a few versions old on Windows, and five or six versions more mature on the Mac.
It's just that the technology is so much better than any other platform when it comes to creative stuff of any kind (art, music, video, design). If you replace "Windows PC" in this article with "typewriter" and then read it again you'll see how it looks to a Mac user. No, we're not anxious to trade our multimedia audio/video/graphics workstations with great UI and amazing stability for IBM Selectrics. As a creative workstation, Windows makes a shitty typewriter. That's all there is to it. The rest is window dressing, with non-Mac users wondering what the buzz is about.
my dad bought a Mac Plus in -86 (as i recall it) as he was publishing a small immigrant newpaper (for Polish people living in Sweden), and wanted to do it using DTP instead of traditional methods (does anyone remember how magazines where done before DTP?), and at about that time i started playing Larry and using my rudimentary english to type "use rope on balcony".
ever since, i've stuck to the platform since it's the one i know, and due to the experiences i had using Windows & DOS computers.
one reason why some macintosh users get so attached to their computers (like i used to be, before i began working as an apple technician and became a cynical and hateful bastard) could be childhood traumas loading the mouse drivers in DOS, and being ridiculed by Windows us'ders (actual quote: -Mac isn't a real computer, it's a toy. You don't have to type anything!) enhanced the feeling of being the underdog (which Apple has been branding towards ever since).
so yes, although there might not be much difference in GUI nowdays, nor functionality, i believe it's the brand image of Apple that keeps, and attracts new, users.
having said that, i'm hereby stating my intentions on actually learning more about computers than just how to ResEdit my way to others' MacAdmin passwords, and get a cheapass laptop running Linux and wardrive gothenburg.
"whaddayamean i can't play with myself? it's a fucking playground, isn't it?"
...it turns out that Microsoft users also hate Microsoft. There was a slight difference between the degree of hatred between Microsoft users for Microsoft and Apple users for Microsoft but it was not found to be statistically significant, after removing Microsoft employees and shareholders from the Microsoft users sample.
Windows NT had true multitasking, none of that memory allocation to each app crap, and was overall more stable (despite what Mac freaks say). Apple's OS was still basically a modified Andy Hertzfeld Switcher program. Hook into GetNextEvent and steal control and pass it to another program. Polling -- yack.
But this past summer I bought an iMac. What a beaut. Unix underneath it all, stable, runs well, a joy to use. Now I still have ah, two XP machines, one 2000 server, one Linux router/firewall, a laptop with XP, and one Linux workstation in the house (between my wife and I), and the iMac is in the living room on the coffee table, but my next laptop purchase will be a Mac, that's for sure.
Anyway, the claim that all Mac users stuck with Apple through bad times isn't true in my case. If they don't make a better product, I won't buy it. Right now, except for the dead-end processor chip they are currently stuck with, it's just a better product... (and if they don't put a G4 in the iBook this January, I won't be buying a crippled G3 iBook nor an over-priced G4 Powerbook.)
Frankly you don't pick the main trend - those who were Windows fans and got burned. They are much more visceral in their hatred toward M$ than anyone else. Because they feel betrayed. And that's what I feel in every cell of my brain. I started with a Windows 1.0beta. Till the advent of Windows95, I was critical of many M$ moves, but still I believed that they were doing something in the right way. Back then, OS/2 was far away from being considered as a real system and IBM did a lot to become the Evil Empire of those times. However, when Windows95 came out, I sincerly felt that someone sold me snakeoil in 100% purity. Many of my old programs went broke. Several third party programs I used couldn't simply work. While I tried hard to adapt to the new SDKs and environment, I couldn't because it was all a mess and a pure waste of money. That mess ended only with the advent of Windows95 OSR2, but the loss was irrecoverable. For some time I tried to reach the "secrets" of Windows NT4, only to discover that there are companies that are well able to create crap in tens of disks and name it "Developer's tools". However that was not the last drop. The last drop came in 1998 with the "fresh, new Windows98". I was hacked three times, one of them trashed completely my HDD in less than a minute. In a moment, years of hard work went into oblivion. A little later, I discovered that even M$ was hacking my own computer by sending interesting IP packets right to Redmond's HQ. A month later I was fully switching to Linux and sending M$ into the deepest bottom of Hell. I never regretted that.
I know a few people who passed nearly this same M$ Paradise. Some have switched to Linux/BSD. Others remained in Windows. But no one has ever stopped reading the whole slang dictionary over Redmond. And other OS fans can ever repeat the HATRED about Microsoft we and similar people have.
One thing about you Apple fans. Well, you are naive, sometimes look a little bit childish. You may think that we are too straight-head, naive and childish also. But there is one thing I shall say to you. People, you were ABSOLUTELY RIGHT to stick to Apple. You can't imagine how the Hell goes hot in Windows. Keep the faith people. Apple forever!
What is under the hood of most things is actually not very important, and in general this issue does not occupy the thoughts of busy people over much. Further, not caring about things that do not matter makes one neither a zealot nor ignorant, and should actually be a measure of maturity.
In a few more years the computer technology industry will become a consumer electronics industry. People will not care how the applicance works, so long as it fetchs email, browses the web, and archives Buffy episodes. It will make no more sense then to ask what is under the hood of (what is now called) a personal computer than it does to ask what kind of compressor is running in your refrigerator. Unless you are the equivalent of a refrigerator repair person. But repair people do not run the world, do not determine the future of technology, and do not have any special place in the pantheon of labor. They are like crows, waiting for something to fail so they can profit. They contribute little to the advancement of technology. This is the future fate of tech-glorifying nerds who today think someone is stupid if they don't buy a PC over a Mac based on specifications of the component parts.
A better use of your time would be to find a solution to spam, or invent a fail-safe operating system for information applicances, or devise sensible ways to limit child access to porn, or some other interesting challenge that, indeed, makes no big deal of what is under the hood. If you are not up to the task then you can either go back to school or leave the rest of us alone while we focus our adult attention on things that matter.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
I remember those dark days. Sporting goods manufacturer AMF bought Harley-Davidson in the early 1980s and set about "saving money". The bikes produced at that time were crap. It got so bad that the employees or Harley-Davidson bought the company back from AMF. Harley-Davidson was within a heartbeat of dying.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I swear, I'm so pissed off at Apple right now that if somebody wants to do an "I switched back" commercial I'll star in it. Last year I ordered a TiBook for Christmas, but didn't get it until February. This year, some on-line friends bought me an engraved 20Gb iPod as a thank-you present, but it arrived with a flakey hard drive so I had to send it back. According to the Apple "Support"(sic) web site, they verified the fault 4 days later and ordered a replacement, but here it is 30 days later and I still don't have my freaking iPod.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Yikes. The wired writer, and most of the posters here are looking at this enirely wrong. Wired is looking at the user's attachement to Apple. The ./s are looking at the user's attachement to a technology. Both miss the point.
Look at it this way. Dos and Unix were (are) command line driven. The text paradigm underlies everything. Macs were never text driven, always visual. You can divide the population very roughly into three instinctive communication/learning styles. Visual, text and aural. These styles correlate to many other personality types, cognitive styles, etc. Computers were invented by the text crew. The aural people have their phones. But for visual communicators, there is simply no alternative to the MAC. Sure there are enough similarities across all modern GUIs that there is some room for substitution. But the text derived systems betray their origins at ever turn.
That is why a comparison between the loyalty of Apple users and Dell users is ludicrous. Think if only one company made mice for left handers. Good or bad, that company would own the market. Comparing the loyalty of its customers to those of one of the right handed only mouse companies would profoundly miss the point. Same here. The user's devotion to Apple is beside the point. The Mac is much bigger than Apple.
This is, of course not to diss the command line derived approach. I use the CLI all the time for Linux, and suprisingly often in XP. But almost never in OSX. You can, but it never feels right.
Linux/PPC geeks hate Apple b/c it keeps in secret details of its hardware from Linux/PPC developers.
And all linux geeks hate BSD ... b/c BSD is dead (don't you know that?).
Less is more !
Oh come on! No one has said ANYTHING about the awesome Amiga yet?! It was the BEST OS ever. Back in the day the Amigas could emulate both Macs and DOS .. Neither competition had anything to fight it with. But no one knew what an Amiga was.. And if they did, they just said "Oh, look at the cool game selection." ..... Bah!
It's another semantic name game here.
If Apple had given 10.2 a bigger number, like 10.5, less people would complain.
If Apple had waited 10 more months to release it, less people would have complained.
If Apple had given a 10.1->10.2 *upgrade* path, less people would complain.
*However*
10.5 is just another number. People would have accused Apple of manipulating version numbers to make their product look 'bigger'.
If Apple had waited longer, people would complain that Apple wasn't releasing fast enough. We have journaling (10.2.2) now. Apple doesn't seem to wait on it's products very much.
Apple released 10.1 as a free upgrade CD(available at Fry's, CompUSA, or Apple Stores) or available for $19.99 online. Logic? They charge $20 for a point release, they charge $129 for a full release, and Apple doesn't otherwise do upgrades.
Microsoft, in comparison, released Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME every two years and charged you for it. This is different how? Because Microsoft didn't relelase a Windows 96 for $20, it's okay? Because Microsoft didn't call them Windows 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3? You do know the code name for Windows 2000 was Windows NT 5.0 right?
GPL Deconstructed
Despite the unflinching moral declarations of the FSF, most users of so-called "Free Software" care about the gratis a heck of a lot more than the libre...
... hell, why not just say most people care much more about gratis than they do libre. To care about libre takes a lot more intelligence than to care about gratis. Everyone has to eat. Lots of stupid people want to buy all that pop culture crap and play Vice City. They're not going to make time to think about why software should be free (libre). God, our own crappy language has a hard time expressing these concepts!
Don't try to relegate this type of thinking to only users of so-called "Free Software." I think that most computer users
In the real world, every Linux-user I know has or wants to have a Mac--and they're not putting PPC Linux on them, they're leaving OSX as-is, save for adding a few utilities.
So what? Your world is not the real world. It's viewed through your own subjective, rose-colored lenses. In other words, your anecdotal evidence isn't meaningful.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The idea is that a sort of tension or "pressure" builds up -- the cognitive dissonance -- until at some point you have a moment of head-slapping realization and revise your beliefs to match up with what you're seeing or doing.
I can see where it bears on brand loyalty in the face of adversity, but the term isn't an attempt to explain how the loyalty got there to start with.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I think there is a pretty simple explanation for the current state of things, where Apple has a small marketshare and is loved by their users, while Microsoft is dominating software but is despised: focus.
Apple has always focused on doing things for the customer, even if it means screwing the developers and the existing user base. Apple has sort of a family-style "tough love" philosophy - almost parental. It will say things like "The dock is better for you. Just take it." Even though people may or may not like it, Apple has your best interest at heart, and so it will jam things down the users' (and developers') throats, if need be.
Microsoft, on the other hand, focuses on the developers. They want to make Windows the best development platform in the world. Microsoft figured out early on that people only buy computers for software, and that people are not going to write their own software. By luring developers to their APIs, MS achieved market dominance. The users in this case are more of an afterthought - they are sort of a problem left to each independant developer.
Some examples:
When Apple introduces something new, Jobs comes out and talks about how insanely great this will be for users. When MS introduces something, BillG will talk about how the API makes it easy for devs.
At Apple, we would routinely make API changes that would break every single major application (like PhotoShop and PageMaker). Our attitude was "screw them, the devs just have to keep up, the new way is better." At Microsoft, we still have code that makes sure WordPerfect 3.5 for DOS still runs in a command window in NT.
I have worked over five years apiece for the research labs at both Apple Computer and Microsoft, so I have some insight here.
Oh, and Apple didn't revamp their licensing schemas, forcing the majority of corporate clients to pay significantly more (and probably requiring additional hardware costs) just so that they could be assured of a stable revenue stream because people weren't upgrading because there was no good reason to and lots of reasons not to.
And the "I don't want to buy new hardware" argument is really a call to Linux and BSD. They're designed to continue functioning on your older boxes, unlike MS which keeps upping the requirements to keep their hardware "partners" in business, forcing you to buy new Wintel boxes.
Business decisions made by... former CEO Amelio! I read this as saying: "Even someone who makes as many bad business decisions as myself couldn't sink that ship with so many loyal users manning the pumps." One wonders how these people manage to find employment at the CEO level after comments like that.
I think you wrote an excellent article which explained your point quite well. I consider you 100% wrong but that shouldn't diminish a high quality post which does deserve to be modded up.
/. before and after OS9. Instead we now see OSX being treated with the respect that /. gives to OSes they do take seriously like: Linux, MSFT, Solaris. People vigerously argue about the pluses and minuses; particularly value over quality. There is genuine interest in the platform even from its non users.
/. is a Unixphile forum (that is many are not Unix users but most admire Unix). By making the switch to a Unix based platform Apple gained respect. In addition they have created a Unix variant which is centered around the mainstream desktop and not the server which is genuinely unique in today's market. Since most /. ers are desktop users and Unixphiles the unique desktop Unix is obviously going to be treated positively.
I'd offer a simple piece of counter proof, the treatment of Apple before OSX came out. Prior to OSX the overwhelming attitude of the slashdot crowd towards Apple was disinterested hostility. Apple system were simply not taken seriously at all; treated as more of crippled computing appliances than computers. Almost no one advocated the advantages of OS9 over Windows, Linux, BSD...
Were your argument true, that is that the behavior is based on price and lack of market share there should have been no difference between the behavior on
That is a huge change in attitude. I think the more likely explination is this:
This guy is not too happy with OS X frankly he is kinda pissed
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
Likewise, Microsoft's latest update for Windows XP is free.
They're basically comparing the latest m$ UPDATE with the latest OS X UPGRADE. It's like comparing apple and oranges.
While many people barked loudly at the price tag on jaguar, it was truly an operating system upgrade Not only speed and reliability were dramatically improved, but many new applications and pieces of functionality were added.
Saying that the latest bug fix service pack for windows xp is free should be compared to the fact that every sub-dot release of OS X have also been free, such as 10.2.1 and 10.2.2.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
I've got nothing against Amiga. But I do take umbrage with people who claim Amiga invented things they didn't.
Amiga - The Al Gore of Microcomputers.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I met a model on an airplane once and she started telling me that she won't date guys that ride motorcycles. I told her that I had one and I asked her why not.
"Is it one of those Harleys?" she asked.
No, I replied, its a '91 Kawasaki.
"Well, maybe than I wouldn't have a problem. Most guys with Harleys spend so much on their motorcycles there's nothing left. The guys that have money left rely on their motorcycle to prop up their image, if you know what I mean."
So you'll look cool, but a lot of people think you're either broke or impotent...
You know... reading this article made me laugh. It made me realize a logical contradiction that I myself and guilty of. Whenever Apple puts out a "new" product (e.g. the iPod or iMac) they are "innovators". Whenever Microsoft puts out a "new" product (e.g. XP MediaCenter Edition for MediaCenter PCs or the X-Box) they're the "evil empire" and obviously trying to crush all competition in that sector.
The funny thing is that no one accused Apple of trying to kill Creative with their iPod or trying to corner the home movie market with their DVD burning capabilities.
I know why Microsoft is treated the way they are... the recent article on the abismal losses in most of their business areas shows that they are using their monopolisitic powers in other sectors (office and OS) to buoy their newer sectors (entertainment) and thereby rent-seeking. I just think its funny as hell that Microsoft just can't get a break. I guess in the end it serves them right. :-)
Wow, you think Apple could grab 20% of the PC platform by releasing OS X86?
Right now they have (generously) 4%, on margins *like* 25% on their hardware. However, that 25% is based off of $2k average price for their machines, meaning $500 per Mac.
Selling a OS X86 for $130 would garner them, possibly, 50% margin (lets be generous), or $75. So they *have* to sell 7 copies of OS X86 to make up the difference, and gain an improvement.
That means they need to sell to, instead of 4%, 28%
Of course they could have higher margins, meaning less necessary sales... but higher margins necessarily means charging more for the product, right?
Or they could have lower margins, due to costs I cannot account for, in which case... 20% or 30% of the market isn't sufficient.
It probably means bundling 'free' iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, and iPhoto would have to stop, or at least start charging, to make more money. $30 per product would mean OS X86 would cost $250... which makes it much less attractive.
GPL Deconstructed
I am a sys admin for a small company where I have to administer a couple of Novell servers, a Debian webserver, a Debian mail server, an NT Navision (POS but stable as hell) box and a bunch of non computer savy users. In order to make my job easier I got myself a Dell Inspiron laptop with XP Pro and it has worked just fine, supports all the proprietry apps and hasn't crashed once and is pretty fast. But windows, even XP, is just plainly so incredibly badly designed. I posted this before, but I'll say it again: Why oh why does Microsoft have to make network setup such a confusing mess? Why does Microsoft have to make the ability to look at mail headers hidden in view->options in a little hard to view box? There are many, many things like this that I am confronted with every day. So often in fact that I would get used to it if it wasn't for that I still have my old 333MHz G3 Powerbook chugging away with OSX on it at home.
The system preferences, all of them, are in one single place, in a thing on the dock called... system preferences. The buttons, window titles bars and other widgets are clear, big and don't fuck with millions of non consistent rollovers that work in some software in one way and in another in another way. One click of the terminal icon and I've got got a true shell at my fingertips, just like the two debian boxes at work. This is why people love it. Lots of people have their problems with the UI but very few of those claim that Windows is more consistent or easier to use.
I'm saving up now and will be getting my new G4Powerbook in January.
I have a dream application athat I've wanted to try writing for about two years now, and the tools, Project and Interface Builder, are there and don't cost any more. If the application is ever made it will probably only find a small audience, and only in the Mac world, since it's being written in ObjC, but I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it because I want to be able to make a useful tool and have fun doing it. On Windows, I can't do this.
Non-Microsoft users not only had the "trial by fire" of chosing an alternate route, but they have to justify some of the dissonance they have regarding format incompatibilities - they may not be able to play a game, or watch a video, or see a web site, that their MS-using friends and family can. If a critical mass of the market were on the same platform as them, however, there would be less of that interplatform disconnect for them.
Apple's market is the pretty, upscale market: people who want to project an image of creativity and non-geekdom, and who are willing to pay a little extra. It helps that Apple is pretty good technically and tends to select fairly new standards into their machines (although their claims of having invented it all are pretty annoying).
I'm suprised at the number of people who think this is a redundant story. Sure, it's obvious that Mac users like Macs. What is not obvious, and is quite interesting, is that the reasons for liking Macs is clearly not because price / performance / compatibilty reasons - which are probably the most important things from the viewpoint of pure computing.
Mac users border on facisim in their insistence that Macs are the One Way to Go - anything else is just *wrong*. Sure, there are people like that in all OS camps (Linux sure has its share), but Mac users seem particularly susceptible. I find it ironic, that for all the hype about creativity, what you get from Apple is:
Any look and feel - as long as it's our one,
Any hardware you like - as long as it's our HW.
If Apple was about "freedom", they wouldn't have a monopoloy on the hardware that can run their OS.
Apple Computer, Inc. is a business. Furthermore, Apple Computer, Inc. is a typical business. They hire employees, develop and sell products, and satisfy their shareholders.
Apple Computer, Inc. is not dissimilar to Microsoft Corporation. They both control their markets very tightly, will kill off companies that stand in their way, and even risk angering their loyal customers in an attempt to achieve "the big picture".
Apple Computer, Inc. wields lawyers when they think their brand is threatened, to a positively ridiculous level at times. e.g. The Graphical User Interface, The Aqua Theme, Apple Communications, etc. Even Microsoft Corporation doesn't sue as liberally as Apple Computer, Inc. does.
The signficant difference that I see, however, is that Apple Computer, Inc. has stuck to the same marketing theme for more than two decades: Apple Computer, Inc. is for the free thinkers, the rebels, the nonconformists, the people who need to be different. Microsoft Corporation has not.
Apple Computer, Inc's original Macintosh commercial may have been inspired by George Orwell's 1984, but it is from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that they learned that it takes 64,000 repetitions to make one truth.
Forever suck?
Mac OS has not *always* been inferior.
Until Windows 95, you really had no choice except a Mac to do desktop graphics and printing.
Macs had high color
Macs had multiple monitors
Macs had TrueType and PostScript
Macs had color management
So it took until 1995 for a PC to catch up for that (you use Photoshop in Classic Mode, so there's your history for you). So if it was the year 1994 and you had to do graphics, there was no alternative except a Mac... Oh, sure, you could use Windows NT 3.51, actually, but... people didn't.
So until 1995, realistically, Adobe had to survive on Macs and Windows NT. You couldn't have your Photoshop on your Windows 2000 computer without Adobe thriving on the Mac. So say thank you to all the Mac users who kept Adobe alive long enough for Windows to catch up enough for a Windows port to be possible.
What else... Mac OS released without any truly innovative ideas? At the time a mouse, a windowing system, and a desktop metaphor was pretty innovative. Photoshop, released in 1990, couldn't have existed on the PC since Windows 3.0 wasn't available until 1990! The first graphical Mac was unleashed in 1984... of course Windows 1.0 was available the very next year in 1985...
So what else does that show us? Word 1.0 for DOS was available 1983, Word 1.0 for Mac was available in 1985, and it wasn't until 1993 that Word 6.0 (for Windows) was released. Word for DOS had or Word for Mac had only been available up to that point.
Then there's Quicktime...
Okay, so all that is OLD hat. Microsoft (eventually) will catch up, history is showing us.
So what did Apple do new with OS X that is innovative, you ask?
How about security? Of course security is a nasty beast to define, because it is only visible through the lack of exploits. No exploits, no news. Do I think OS X is more secure than Windows XP? Yes. Why? Partially because the core OS is open source, partially because the core OS is heavily related to BSD, and partially because the core OS has been in use since 1989 with the release of the first NeXT workstations. Windows, while similarly old, is not similarly aged, with IE exploits, IIS exploits, ActiveX exploits, and other exploits. OS X gets around IE exploits by not integrating IE, though there is an HTML library available. It gets around IIS exploits by relying on tried and true OSS servers such as Apache, BSD-telnetd, BSD-sshd, and BSD-ftpd. It gets around ActiveX exploits by relying on a scripting technology, AppleScript, that has been used successfully since 1993 to automate prepress, print, publishing, and graphics businesses. Oh, and they don't integrate AppleScript into the html rendering engine, though there is a third party AppleScript plugin available. Yes, there have been AppleScript viruses, just like there are VisualBasic viruses...
But Apple doesn't suffer nearly as badly because Mail doesn't auto execute AppleScript viruses which aren't embedded into the HTML that s rendered by the preview pane.
Alright, so this is sorta cheap, innovation by not being as *bad* as Microsoft.
There's legitimate innovation as well.
OS X 10.0 had it's compositing engine. Vector based, PDF based, output independent. It's certainly not perfect, but it's a continuation of NeXT's PostScript based DisplayPS. Windows already has something called GDI+ and WMF, but I do not believe they are currently used.
OS X 10.0 introduced iDVD, to match the earlier release of iTunes and iMovie, allowing the sufficiently well of Mac owner the capabillity to make DVDs within 20 minutes, though burning them probably took an hour or so.
OS X 10.2 upped the stakes with *hardware* accelerated display technology. Big deal, you say? It's 3d hardware accelerated. Microsoft is hoping to catch up next year with Longhorn.
OS X 10.2 also added new networking technology that doesn't yet exist on Windows, though UPnP is close. Rendevous, otherwise known as ZeroConf, is a peer to peer network discovery protocol.
OS X 10.2 added bluetooth support, which Windows XP adds later this year.
OS X 10.2 added full tablet and handwriting recognition, which doesn't appear until . Also, you will probably need a new PC, where OS X only requires a tablet, such as a Wacom tablet, instead of a new computer.
Anyway, it's really only your loss, not mine, if Apple OS X doesn't somehow suit your needs, and likewise your gain if Windows XP can suit yours (but not mine)
GPL Deconstructed
Ever since the advent of OS X, I can see the reason why. The "switchers" are not really switching away from Unix, they are just switching to another form of it.
The GUI forces you to use click-to-focus and an auto-raise window behaviour even if you've not used machines with that behaviour for all of your 17 years in the computing industry. I'm told that even MS Windows allows you to change that behaviour, if you want.
I tried to use auto focus once. I just found it so horrible, I couldn't just move my mouse anywhere without thinking. it the kind of feature that you use, then realise why Linux will never be good for the desktop. I think that you will find very very few users who acctualy prefer it, given they had not gotten used to either.
And that single menu thing sucks too. For example, right now I am using Mozilla on a second monitor attached to my Powerbook. If I want to access the menu for mozilla, I have to move the mouse over to the other screen to do so. How brain dead is that? If I had 20 monitors attached to it (if it could handle that, which I don't think any Apple can), then it would be impossible - not a bright policy for the future.
I see your point. But they did this for usability reasons, of course, they obviously didn't take into a count people using the secondary monitor as the main one, maybe a few options would be better (which monitor the bar will apear on), but I don't think they need to consider the future, I doubt people will be hooking up 20 monitores to their computer. Less if anything.
Then there's the fact that they made Aqua incompatible with X windows, when there are plenty of window managers out there which work just fine, thank you. Why didn't they use one like that?
Because they're not tying to make a linux or unix distro? They want to make their own OS, they just happen to use unix under the hood. Plus the X window managers were probably lacking a few things that they wanted.