Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special | Hacker News Reader

Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

blog.wired.com

18 pointsrtw46 comments

I've been using Macs since the 68k days and I have been waiting for this to happen. Apple makes, in my opinion, wonderful products, but they'd always been so niche and have to act that way. That meant product introductions at fan events (Macworld), outrageous pricing, etc. We're seeing that change and it's great. Apple is pushing products out when they're ready, their products are more competitively priced, they're more open than they have been in the past, they're selling through normal channels rather than exclusive retailers like they did in the past. . .

It's great!

Owning a mac is still a cultural statement, like an Obama bumper sticker or worrying loudly about Global Warming in public. I even know poor humanities graduate students to pony up the extra $300 for a mac, because that's what they are supposed to own. Macs are common possessions of workers of DC non-profits, despite their meager salaries. It's a token that proclaims yourself to be part of the well-educated, hip, cool culture.

Owning a PC? That would be as much of a faux pas as owning a large vehicle, working a blue collar job, living in the suburbs, or voting republican. You certainly won't improve your chances of getting invited to the cool parties by doing that.

I do admire Apple for consciously making itself into a subcultural icon. Few brands are as successful as Apple. And as they have hooked themselves up to a subculture that is ascendant, it is a good strategic move.

Edit: It is possible that in the future that Apple will make the jump like Starbucks did to be a universal brand and not just a brand of the hip subculture. I consider Starbucks to be one of the greatest marketing successes of all time; at first a cool urban delicacy, later reaching the other half: the suburbs, the parents that may send their kids to the military but never to grad school, the PC owners, the small business owner (think "Joe the Plumber", not Steve Jobs), people who never worry about "materialism" or "consumerism", the Republicans. Sarah Palin and Bono, investment bankers and environmentalists have their favorite latte. Of course, the cool hip culture tends to lead the rest, so that's a good strategic place to start.

I don't see any signs that Apple has made this jump yet. I certainly don't think my blue collar dad even considered a Mac when he bought a laptop, even though I am certain that he would have had an easier time learning its user interface.

Some of those people, including poor people, pony up an extra $300 because they consider the value of the mac to be, say, $1000 higher. If you spend 1000 hours a year using a computer, and a mac is 50 cents an hour nicer to use, that's $500 per year.

Whatever you think of the mac experience, some people do find it significantly nicer, so for them it's worth buying.

Also, Macs don't necessarily always cost more.

I'm one anecdotal example of why Macs are sometimes worth the extra cash.

After being fed up with my old Toshiba laptop being crap, and their warranty department refusing to service (apparently bad fan bearings were "wear and tear" items), I splashed out for a top of the line MacBook Pro 2 years ago, and started experiencing problems soon after getting it - first the lid would refuse to close (the latch button got stuck), and then my HDD died. Anyhoo, long story short I sent it in twice, and in total got about 5 major parts replaced.

Rewind to 4 months ago, my machine was really on the fritz, VRAM was shot and would display random colors (textbook memory corruption). Below is everything that happened:

- Called Apple, waited <5 minutes for an agent.

- Gave the agent my info, and she immediately remarked that given my repair history I could qualify for a full replacement, and asked if I would like to proceed.

- Waited <5 minutes for tier 2 support.

- Tier 2 listened to my problem, got me to run some diagnostics to confirm my VRAM was shot, and after a few minutes authorized a full replacement, with a brand spanking new unibody MacBook Pro. I was handed off to a replacement rep via email and the shipping label was sent to me within an hour of hanging up.

- I have some projects in the pipe that I didn't want to put on ice for too long, so I called my rep after I shipped my old laptop off to explain, he sent the new one before even confirming with UPS that my old one was on the way back to Apple.

- That was Friday, it got here Tuesday - across a national border.

On this experience alone, and contrasted with the service I've received from Toshiba and Dell, Apple has basically cemented me as a repeat customer.

There are also plenty of people happy to be typing their essays in Microsoft Word for the Mac, rather than Microsoft Word for the PC.

I've used Word on both, and Word on Mac is better. It's not particularly good, but it's got a lot going for it - namely, a de-emphasis on over-the-top menus for sidebars - and it takes advantage of a lot of the neat Mac stuff that Windows can't do. It's still really ugly, especially compared to Pages, but it's better.

I've used Word on both, and while I like the UI better on the Mac, it lacks VBScript, which completely rules it out for many users, and is much slower than its Windows counterpart.

Pages has a great UI, but doesn't do enough. There are an insane number of features that Word has, that even a high school student would need, that are entirely absent from Pages (a robust referencing system, for example).

What I would pay big money for is something that has the functionality of MS Word Mac, without the bloat, and as speedy as Pages.

I'm sure it'll come along eventually. And absolutely, Word on Windows has some good stuff too. My point was, the program on two different operating systems is quite different, so it's not worth judging somebody based on their liking Mac Word.

Please get over yourself. Lots of people have lots of reasons for owning whatever computer they choose. Thanks for the comical generalization though.

That's all very "maybe" though you might be correct. The test will come when the uberHip Jobs steps down and some accountant takes his place. I really dislike OSX and the only good thing about it is its Unix roots. Well...why pay a premium for Unix which should be cheaper than Windows?

Why...? Well, it is just branding, as far as I can see. It's not 300 dollars, either. It's sometimes 600 dollars for a PC vs. 1299 for an equivilent Mac. To me, that's stupid. If you don't like Windows, well, this will add $0.00 onto your price:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

I didn't buy my Macbook to "feel special". I bought it because Windows sucks.

I wish I could buy ThinkPad with Mac OS X.

http://www.subbrilliant.com/blog/?p=168

I wanted to do that too but ended up just getting a new macbook pro unibody. My time is worth more than messing with a nonstandard install.

Luckily now there is Ubuntu Linux to the rescue.

A company can't give off that aura when their products sell 100s of millions. Apple maintained it for longer than anyone else ever did though.

Did they ever really have that aura? I mean, I'm a Mac fanboy. I've argued with you about Apple a thousand bajillion times on this site. I watch the keynote. But I never got into it because it was a cult thing. I got into it because every blog I liked reading took some time to talk about loving Apple (Shaun Blanc, John Gruber, John Welsh, even Paul Graham), and so I took some time out to try the computers and I really loved them, and still do. When I argue Windows with friends, it's usually because they make the argument that a Mac is not inherently better than a PC, and I happen to disagree. There's nothing pretentious about that, it's just an argument that happens.

Somewhere along the line it got decided that there's a fashion statement being made with Macs. I don't really see that. I think a certain type of person that's obsessed with aesthetic does like Apple, because it's clean, but was there ever a feeling that using Apple products made a person special? Because I've never noticed that, and yet it's brought up and constantly mocked. I don't get it.

Their brand clearly inspires a lot of cultlike devotion. Charismatic leader, followers who overlook their own flaws and magnify those of everyone else, feelings of persecution (fading since Microsoft's antitrust suit ended).

OSX users often look down on Windows users, as if they just don't know better. They say things like "OSX is inherently better than Windows" without specifying what it's better at or pausing to consider that there are many reasons to choose an OS, and by a very large number of metrics (compatible programs, compatible hardware, price, variety, ease of finding someone who can help you with problems, etc.) Windows crushes OSX. In fact, by almost any easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better.

Apple's been the hip underdog, ironically largely because of spending billions of marketing bucks to style themselves that way, and I think Steve Jobs's tyranny over the tech-related media.

I'm not saying any of that about you personally, but things like Digg turning into an extension of Apple's PR don't happen to any other brands at all, not even ones like Toyota or Lenovo that consistently make top quality products. The fervor indicates there's a lot more to the fanboyism than just "Apple makes good products." They've struck a chord. Their marketing over the past 5 years may be the best in the entire history of capitalism.

The problem is that Apple users includes everyone who owns an iPod or iPhone, most of whom don't use any other Apple products. You can't keep the underdog luster on the company as a whole when you achieve ubiquity, but they still do with their computers.

In fact, by almost any easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better.

Unless you go by customer satisfaction, wherein Apple trounces competition in both hardware and software.

I get what you're talking about. I just think that cultism stems less from a blind devotion to the "specialness" of the computers, and more from a general appreciation of them. I think OS X is better than Windows, and I've tried a few times to specify why, but mostly it's a combination of a lot of little things that are all very good, rather than any particular feature which crushes Windows. (I don't use Dashboard or Spaces, for instance, haven't turned on Time Machine for a while, and I'm not a big Unix person, so the big crowed-out features aren't it. But I still am absolutely certain that the OS is better quantifiably.)

The problem is that it's not easy to explain. There's a logic behind it, but it's a difficult one that depends on a bunch of little factors rather than one big one. That gets interpreted as cultism and fanboyism, but there's more to it than that. And I don't think that "special" ever had anything to do with it. Apple doesn't sell "special."

How do you quantify customer satisfaction? It's murky at best. Not only that, it's an unfair comparison since you're comparing one OEM against a range of OEMs. There's no doubt that there are a lot of garbage Windows PCs built. That doesn't say anything about the OS other than that they license it out liberally.

You'd also be comparing one OEM that makes much more expensive PCs than most of its competitors. It's like comparing Accura vs. Ford.

And if you did quantify it, which is impossible to do meaningfully, wouldn't that take into account the fact that cult members would feel much more satisfied even if all other things were equal? That's what being in a cult is about. I would bet the average Scientologist feels much more satisfaction about their religion than the average Catholic. That doesn't mean it's better.

Excellent. Right now then, we're at the point in history we'd be at if things had gone to plan for SGI with the Indy, a Unix workstation as a desktop computer for the masses. Which is, umm, 15 years ago...

Wasn't the Indy $15,000? Even accounting for Moore's Law it would have been hard for SGI to go mainstream.

Contemporary fully-loaded Macs were comparable.

I don't know about that, but even so, making the cheapest SGI comparable to the most expensive Mac wasn't a recipe for mainstream success.

Well my dad bought a color Macintosh II for $9,000 so I'd say the prices were moderately comparable. It's crazy to think how expensive computers were back in the day. And $9,000 in 1980's currency is probably like buying a $18,000 computer today. With that much money, you could buy nine 1U fully decked 8-core machines today.

I think you could get them for less than that by 1994, like $5,000. But then Jim Clark gave up trying to turn SGI into a mass-market company and went to go start some software company.

I think NeXT is a more apt comparison.

Explain.

The irony of that is that NeXT served as the basis for Mac OS X.

The point is valid, the "signs" to back it up are tenuous and the attempts at humour lame.

While I don't disagree with the author's premise the article probably isn't worth your time reading.

Here's a question that isn't addressed: does being special matter? I thought the point of capitalism and competition was how good products were, not how special you felt using them.

How special you feel using a product is part of what makes it good. Where "special" can mean a lot of things. Don Norman covers this very well in Emotional Design.

The first Mac I actually owned was an SE. Since then I've owned five more Macs. I bought top-of-the-line Macs when people were telling me that Apple was about to go out of business. I developed a lot of software for the Mac.

I'm all about developing for .NET now; Apple is toxic to developers.

Care to elaborate?

Where to begin? * the almost total lack of development of Interface Builder * ouch Java * iPhone application approval yumminess * Hi Konfabulator! * Hi Watson!

And you believe the answer is MS?

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2001/jw-0124-iw-mss...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_laws...

There are countless other examples including the original versions of JScript and the burden that is IE6. This is not meant to be a defense of Apple. I was simply interested in why you believed that MS is somehow less "toxic" than Apple.

I'm sorry to disagree with you, but despite all of the emotional baggage that surrounds platform choice, I do think Microsoft is kinder to developers.

I remember the Stac case, but it was 18-odd years ago. It's more relevant to me now that, for instance, it is effectively illegal to write a book concerning developing for the iPhone.

After all, you'd never see Steve Jobs running up and down a stage shouting "developers developers developers" like a monkey on crystal meth, would you.

Microsoft is friendlier to developers, but the development environment in windows is not so friendly. The one major reason that I own a MacBook is due to the BSD development environment, I'd have to run vmware or colinux on a windows machine to get the equivalent feel. And no, cygwin just doesn't cut it.

Unix is better than Windows because doing Unix development is easier on Unix than on Windows?

I like OS X, but this is not a very well-constructed argument.

Well I like to use certain command line tools for finding stuff or moving files around, which tend to happen more often as a developer. I've gotten pretty good at scripting with the new powershell in windows, but still somewhat annoying compared to what is available in most unix environments.

Apple has gotten a lot better since the days they pulled crap like abandoning APIs as soon as anyone started developing on them. Remember OpenDoc? And if you think IB is stagnant, remember MPW?

Ah, MPW. An environment that even made CodeWarrior look good.

Honestly, who cares? Why are so many inane articles submitted to HN?

I'm not saying this is why this was submitted, but some people do it because you can't lose karma with submissions, and because articles that'll spark controversy will attract people who upvote the article much more quickly.

(original submitter here)

I care. I care about end-user personal computing trends.

They a) amuse me and b) affect my income. That's why I submitted, to see discussion on a topic I am interested in.

Quoting from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."

I see downmods on above comment without explanation. On a whim, this prompted me to say a little more:

The more OSX crosses into mainstream consumer territory, the better. I only run Linux myself, but having been a long time developer and troubleshooter for Windows, I am seriously psyched about seeing the OSX market grow and grow. Getting over the stigmas of "coolness" and elitism is a good step in a positive direction. Whether you like it or not, these stigmas are out there (I doubt people frequenting this website were lured into Macs for this particular aspect of them).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com