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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.'"
In Korea only old people use Macs on the internet.
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.
And Gateway is their client. Suprise Suprise...
s _background.htm
http://www.metafacts.com/pages/corporate/metafact
CBS has long been the butt of jokes due to its geriatric-skewing demo. Looks like Apple now knows where they should concentrate their ad dollars.
Of course, with Justin Long leaving. I'm waiting for the commercials where they have Wilford Brimley saying "hi, I'm a Mac."
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Young people use P2P, play video games and use readily available pirated software and are generally have education expenses and loans to pay with start-of-the-career budget. As a result expensive system that emphasizes aesthetics, hardly has any games, up until recently had problems with various P2P and is limited in readily available pirated software (due to lower market share) does not appeal to such demographics.
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
During the 80s, Apple inundated the public schools with cheap computers in the hopes of getting us young, impressionable children use to the idea of using Apple PCs. It was a good idea but, sadly for them, most of our parents bought IBM compatible. For me the idea of a good Apple computer that I enjoy using is an old IIe that I played the Oregan Trail on in elementary school. Many of those teachers from the 80's, however, are still die-hard Mac fans. That's what they used in their work environment and they have often been hesitant toward changing even if they are now 20 years behind. Now, those teachers are 40+.
The baby boomers! The most self-absorbed generation of Americans who largely continue to live in denial about the fact that they are very close to being "senior citizens" instead of the "hip youth" they were back in the 60s and 70s!
...Real Men (TM) fabricate their own microprocessors and bootstrapping code.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
...young people prefer cheap little cars to Jaguar, BMW, and Mercedes. What do they know that people with money don't?
Sleep is for the Weak
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.
Old people just want their computers to work. No driver loading, virus scanning, malware removing... just plug the camera in and press a button to publish it on the web yadda yadda.
Shit, when I get home I just want my computer to work.
This
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.'"
Need I say more?
If price were the only issue I'm sure you'd see Linux based cheapo boxes in this demographic as well but I doubt they have any greater marketshare than other markets.
Apple's major selling point many years back at the start of the Windows Vs. Mac wars was user friendliness.
Windows was still relatively primitive and its major appeal was just to have a graphical shell on top of the then commonly-used MS-DOS. Mac OS was already graphical from the ground up, without the daunting command-line. Plus, Macs already came with the OS installed, so you didn't have to worry about first learning text commands and then installing the OS from a series of floppy disks.
That appeal still lives on with Macs as being user-friendly. The age range of 55 years and above is not as abundant with technoliteri (I LOVE that word!) as the younger ~25 year old group. Us younger people are, as the article says, budgeted. I myself wouldn't touch Gateway (bad experiences with them), but the point stands.
But to be honest, and not to be troll, I found Mac OS X to be relatively stupified in comparison to other OS's that I've used. OS X is pretty and all, but I prefer 'functional' over 'shiny' and I like to really dig into the inner workings of the OS that I use. OS X doesn't entirely appeal to my demographic for that reason, which is why it appeals to people who just want to use a computer and have it work without having to mess with it any more than they need to.
/* No Comment */
There is no fscking way I'm inflicting Windows on her. System administration aside, she knows nothing about the social engineering hazards out there -- email scams, phishing scams, the vast cornucopia of malware...
Linux is an option, but it would take me weeks to build and tweak a configuration to the point that I'm happy with it and feel it would serve her needs, and I don't have that kind of time (although Ubuntu out of the box is darned close). Further, she has little interest in exploring computing for its own sake.
So that leaves Mac/OS-X. And, frankly, of the three, I think she'd be happiest with that.
So I don't think it's economic factors at work. I think it's because seniors have highly-developed bullshit filters, refined over decades of experience, and have figured out that Macs Just Work.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I tried going to support our local Mac Users Group. (which I won't mention for obvious reasons). My friend and I (40 & 35, respectively) were the youngest people in the room. The second youngest was at least 55. Half were on legacy (pre os x) macs. I'd estimate something like 50 people were there. I was astounded. "where were all the younger mac geeks?" At first we thought that our age group & younger just doesn't get together in person, that perhaps it's all virtual these days.
We left after 15 minutes (whilst the group was planning a pool party.. shudder...) and grabbed a beer.
I call BS on this.. Looking from a personal perspective, I bought my first mac myself when I was 13... iBook 500 g3.. set me back $1800.
I'm currently the owner of a Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz MacBook Pro. I'm a 19 year old college student. My two 18 year old roomates have macbooks; one has a white one, one a black. My brother (16) has an iBook g4, as does his roomate, my cousin. One of my other cousins (14) has a black macbook.
Looking at sales figures, my school, which has educational purchase partnerships with dell and apple, is currently selling 50% dells and 50% apples to students (Waaay up from the 75/25 split it has been closer to for previous years).
And, subjectively, I'm seeing more and more macs amongst my peers. Apple's sales figures recently support this. It wasn't long ago when apple was having a tough time selling a million macs in a year. They're now well over that (1.6 or so million) in a QUARTER.
appleguru.org
It seems to me that this would have a lot more to do with when people were coming of age with computers, so to speak, than with actual age. A lot of these people most likely grew up (computeratively speaking, not literally) in a time period when the big computer manufacturers were Apple, IBM (too expensive for most people in the day), Compaq, HP (dont get me started on old HPs), and possibly young Dell (im leaving out a lot of older models, I know. please forgive me/fill in the gaps). I remember when I was in middle school, most of the computers WERE Apple. By the time I got to High School, this was completely different, and a Mac was a rare thing to see. Also... not to be *too* stereotypical here, but I know a lot of older people (not elderly, just older), who still have old computers and outright refuse to upgrade, or accept the fact that there are newer, better models out there for less than a thousand bucks. I know of at least one friend whose parent have an old pre-OSX mac still, and adamantly maintain that it does everything they need it for, and dont need to upgrade.
My point is, I dont think it's fair to say that Apple's primary audience is actually older people. I would guess that a lot of these "Apple owners", which are not defined as "Apple buyers", arent actively seeking the next new upgrade, and *probably* dont represent the staple of income Apple should be trying to target with their next generation of devices.
When I was 18-25, I ate a lot of ramen and PBJ, drove the piece of shit truck I could afford, slept on a mattress on the floor of a group house, and had to go in with 3 other guys to get cable. I was poor and frankly didn't give a shit about most of that stuff. I knew there was better stuff out there, but it was more important to me to spend my money on fun stuff. These days I drive a reliable station wagon, eat healthy and I'm saving up for a house.
Newsflash: youngsters don't have a lot of money, and don't really care about long-term quality. They are more impulsive and spend money all over the place because their interests have not settled down yet. They're more likely to want a hot new computer/iPod/phone/jacket etc long before their current one wears out. That means buying often, which means buying cheap.
Not many youngsters own new cars either, but I'd hardly say that spells doom for the car companies. People grow up, and coincedentally when they can afford nicer stuff, they tend to become more interested in quality.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Walking around my college campus I would say that a good 60-70% of the students here (myself included) are using Macs. A lot of these kids have Macs at home and have been using them their entire lives, but a significant percentage (myself included once again) opted for a Mac when it came time to buy a laptop for college. I realize this might say more about the kind of students my particular school attracts than it does about Mac use and adoption nationwide, but it's got to mean something that most everyone I know is already sick to death of Windows at 19.
For youngsters, Apple seems to be a high-end "mall-brand", but often times no more expensive than other brands when you start to compare features and software bundles.Except that most "PC's" are available without lots of extras that youngsters don't want.
:)). Bottom line though is that a lot of us simply don't want all that stuff.
I'm sure than when you consider the onboard GPS, the heated cup holders, high-end surround sound, leather interior, etc, that a BMW stacks up rather well compared to a Kia of comparable features (if Kia made such things
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
They should open source Mac OS X, or at least let Dell sell it. That would fix everything.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
While its true that the 55+ demographic has a lot of disposable income, there's a reason the 18-25 demographic is the most coveted. Young people buy more junk and we're probably less immune to fads. Older people have generally lost interest in these things, or maybe they have the wisdom required to not get caught up in the marketing bullshit.
I'd wager a guess that 55+ demographic is the one that has the most people using old iMacs or some Dell box from 1997, because "its good enough for them" or "it still works great!" Its that 18-25 demographic that wants the latest and great.
Some of the Mac ads have felt like they are from some parallel anti-universe.
Like the one where the new Japanese digital camera chic could talk to the Mac but no tto the PC. Huh? Show me one digital camera available at the time of that commercial that did not work with a PC. Seriously...
Or how they make the PC into some business-only thing that isn't any fun. Come on, show me how to run HalfLife 2 on a Mac... OK, I've seen Quake 4 and WOW retail boxes for Macs at the store, but that shelf is a great deal smaller than the PC gaming shelf.
I'm not against Macs or anything, in fact I just got an iBook a couple months ago to find out what they're like. Yea, it's a couple years old, but that's what I'm willin got pay up for to do an evaluation of the platform. I'm not going to pay for a brand-new MacBook to evaluate the platform... What can I do with it? Well, there's all those iDVD, iPhoto, etc. apps that I haven't had reason to try. iTunes, well, I already had that for my PC. Same for Thunderbird and Firefox and OpenOffice. I got one of the later Myst games which runs well enough, and the PCB layout software I'd like to use is available for it as well. I played my free demo of WOW on the PC for 3 days and never logged back in, hopefully they aren't charging my credit card since I'm not actually playing the game, and so don't see much reason to get that. The DVD player works well enough, but I had to get some 3rd party hack utility to change resolutions to extermal monitors connected such as my 720P projector. I had to get powerstrip for Windows to do the same thing though, and Windows still messes up somehow, the projected image seems OK but it appears to be scaling the framebuffer to something larger than 720P and only showing the top-left 720P portion of that larger framebuffer, which sucks so the Mac is better for that. (Yes, I do have a box that I intend to install MythTV on if the kubuntu installer ever manages to complete without hanging, but it's not usable yet)
Anyway... I think some people who might consider a Mac are seeign some of these ads and not believing them. Yes, PCs ARE fun. Yes, cameras work with Windows. Why are you fibbing to me? I don't think people like hearing things they don't believe to be true like that. Besides, most younger people are coming into PCs looking for the new games. That leaves out Macs, Linux, Amigas, QNX, BSD, and a number of other alternatives to Windows. Of course most sales for that age bracket will go to Windows.
That's a British site, isn't it? Terms like "high street" and "granny" are not used much in American English. Was the study done in England or the U.S.? It wouldn't surprise me if Apple's penetration among the young is much less in the U.K. and Europe. It's always been something of an American phenomenon.
For my 65+ year old inlaws, it only took me about an hour to setup the various proprietary codecs and plugins (thanks Adobe, Apple and Microsoft!) as well as decss so they could surf the web and play DVD's. OS X is great in its own way, but Ubuntu on a $499 Lenovo laptop makes for a sweet "simple" system for computer-phobes.
STFU about slashdot bias.
While maybe most of those young hipster types aren't able to afford Apple computers, they are definitely buying scores of IPods. This feeds a brand loyalty and interest in Apple as a whole and then can lead towards them eventually purchasing Apple hardware.
The reality is when you do an apples to apples comparison (pun unintended), Apple's are not expensive. Go out and buy a dual woodcrest workstation from random PC vendor and see what kind of price they are charging you. What makes Apple seem expensive is that the average person will compare that against a desktop PC with half the power and think it's a valid comparison.
Generally speaking Apple systems are more of a long term investment and so it costs more. Overall you're probably getting better quality for your dollar, but if you only have a few dollars, that doesn't matter much. While the other PC vendors are fighting for every little cent on sub $400 PC's, Apple is selling $2500 PC's and making enormous margins.
I'd rather be in Apple's position than Gateway's.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I just bought an iMac for my 4 1/2 year old. Now it all balances out, right?
Mac users upgrade within the Mac family, Windows users within the Windows family.
I suspect you'll find that if the Mac demographic skews older and more affluent now, it is because Mac users skewed older and more affluent then.
That the Intel Macs can dual boot windows is also a significant factor.
Not in the least. Vitalization is for the young. No one in the boomer generation is looking forward to the agony and expense of maintaining two operating systems, software libraries and skill sets.
Microsoft with its Vista madness and other idiocies seems to be determined to self-destruct.
Microsoft isn't marketing Vista to the Geek and the concerns about Vista that obsess the Geek have gone virtually unnoticed everywhere else.
Microso$t just can't win around these parts. Can you imagine the hue and cry of MONOPOLY MONOPOLY if MS required hardware and driver certification in order for the product to run under Windows. 'Poor little so and so can't bring his new joystick to market because he can't afford the $25,000 cost of the "Microsoft Hardware Certification" - Isn't MS evil??!' and so forth.
fuck being young (and broke and ignorant.)
I feel that everything in my life has prepared me to enjoy life and to live well (the best revenge.)
And if some snot-nosed little git can't stand the pace, tough.
The characterization of 'granny' applies to everybody who kid has had a kid. I knew woman who was a granny at 32 (one oops after another.)
She wasn't old but the WAS stupid and so was her daughter, (and they were both very fertile.)
Eat my dust...
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In Soviet Russia, Macs use old people on the internet.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I like being able to change the internals of my computer without buying a whole new machine, and that's something that Mac just doesn't offer.
Oh bullshit, Satanic Puppy. See those cute little rectangular slot-like things on the side of my MacBook? They're USB2 ports. See the one right next to it that looks like an elongated capital D? That's a FireWire port. See how you can plug all kinds of goodies into them? Like this 320GB hard drive here? Or this card reader?
And when it comes to doing stuff like adding more RAM or a bigger, badder Hard Drive, did you know that if you do it yourself, you don't void the warranty? Apple is getting smarter about geeks who like to tinker. They sell "DIY Kits" for things like RAM and HD upgrades now. The MacBook maxes out at 2GB of RAM, though. Then again most computers do nowadays, except the ultra-leet MacPro. 16 GB/2 TB is the max there if I remember correctly.
Hell, if you want a Mac you can tinker with endlessly, the MacPro is the ultimate dream machine for that. Twin Core 2 Duo Xeons, baby. 4 cores. Right now that's the Bull Goose Badass Mac. And it's 100% open, and you won't have to call Apple and ask "mother may I" if you change more than three things on it. Don't like the video card? Change it.
As far as this MacBook goes, $1,300 is pretty modest coin for a lightweight, widescreen Core 2 Duo notebook with 1GB RAM standard. That's how much it cost. And I got a $200 student discount. Three words: eat my cyberdust.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You are a computer geek.
Your mom asks you what computer to buy.
You *know* you will be on the hook for free tech support.
What computer you recommend depends on your personality.
Suicidal : Linux, custom install
Masochistic : Windows
Sadistic : Windows
Realistic : Mac
My mom (late 60's) has been on Macs for years, and is now at the point that she installs firmware updates before breakfast, and nags her neighbors to secure their WAPs. But then, she's my mom, so you'd expect that of her. The only problem that's defeated her lately is getting and old XP craptop (needed to do accounting for her church) to connect to the wireless network, but I couldn't get it working either!
"World Domination - a fun, family activity"