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Apples Are For Grannies?
RoboJock writes "So much for Justin Long — the young, hip 'n' trendy face of the Apple Mac (as seen in the 'Mac vs. PC' ads) is even further removed from the average Mac owner than everyone suspected... By three or four decades. According to research discussed at Silicon.com, 'nearly half of Mac owners are 55 and older — that's almost double the share for average home-PC users.' It seems the young guns don't have the extra cash to stump up for smooth shiny aesthetics." From the article: "For the digital youth, high-street box shifter Gateway is the brand of choice, taking the number-one slot among PC buyers aged between 18 and 25. Dan Ness, principal at MetaFacts, said in a statement: 'Apple can claim long-time loyalists but its future among the young technoliterati is an interesting dynamic.'"
55 and up? You think that ads targeted toward "Young, hip people" are more effective toward actual young hip people, or older people who are desperately craving to be young and hip?
Couple that with the fact that that demographic has a hell of a lot of disposable cash, and Apple looks fricking brilliant.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
My mother is in her 60s and my dad in his 70s and they can handle it a LOT better than their old XP machine. I actually like XP and I run both OSX and XP, but the ease-of-use factor with OSX and the $500 mini price tag (especially since they could keep their old monitor, printer, etc.) made it worth getting. Now they aren't only into it, but my dad has gotten himself a Macbook Pro too! They used to hate their computer when it was XP because they had no idea what they were doing. They still don't really have much of an idea, but this time they can actually get things done.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
What does "high-street box shifter" mean?
More on topic, it doesn't seem to me like Apple has much to worry about here, if the problem is not anything intrinsic to Macs, but rather the price. As the 18-25 year olds graduate from college, get jobs, and get promoted, the difference in price between a Mac and a cheap PC becomes less and less significant.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
From TFA, it appears that the halo effect (sales of Macs because of iPod fans) is supported by this survey. So, to get this straight, we are postulating huge numbers of geriatric iPod users too? Methinks that the survey, at least as presented in TFA, is even less useful than your average market research survey.
Virtually serving coffee
Dunno why this is surprising...
My mom got her first Apple computer 24 years ago. When her current Compaq PC finally dies I know she will replace it with a Mac; she only switched over to the dark side because it looks like Macs were going the way of the dinosaur.
Also remember: Macs are ancient. If you started using one the year they came out and you were 30 that year, you would be 53 now.
One reason is the Macintosh's dramatically declined role in education. At some point Apple got tired of eating computer loans and made them a lot harder to get, so students bought less of them. Around the same era, maybe a little earlier, Apple slipped in performance and Microsoft introduced educational pricing that made their operating system and office suite practically free, so the Apples aren't used much in classrooms either. Another good reason is that today there is very little important Mac-only software. Most of it is in the form of multimedia applications which have direct equivalents or even superior replacements on the PC.
In addition, of course, there is the pricing, which is only now achieving anything like parity with the PC. For the most part it has achieved it, which is a huge accomplishment for Apple, having been so much more expensive than the PC for so long. However, Apple computers are still more expensive and difficult to upgrade in most cases, and like Linux or the other non-Windows OS of your choice, driver support is still a sticky issue. There's lots more hardware supported on Windows than on OSX.
Finally, for people in the age range we're talking about, the lack of support for games is a killer. Of course, today you can use boot camp... But if you're just going to boot windows anyway, why not buy a PC clone?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"