Your Technology Sucks
aaron.vegh.ca
aaron.vegh.ca
When I was in college I used to build computers for friends and family to make some money on the side (ala michael dell) and offered free tech support along with those computers. Well it wasn't always free, my grandmother always insisted on paying something so I charged her a dozen cookies that she would mail to me in college and I would share them with my friends.
Anyway, I quickly learned that the free support was killing me, and I didn't have much time to support this stuff in college, so I started recommending that people buy dell computers, because back then, they had the best customer support and there products were pretty good.
It didn't take long before Dell shipped their customer support folks over seas and people started coming back to me for support. By that time I was out of school, and I didn't mind helping out my friends and family. Soon enough I got married and had a couple of kids.
Once that happened I stopped having all this wonderful free time I used to have in my youth, and as the guy in the blog post mentions, I had better things to do with my time, and I ended up buying my first mac, after a couple of my friends talked about how much they loved developing on it.
When I first got my mac, I was surprised how great it was for developing software. I mostly develop with open source software, so having the shell there with all the wonderful goodness made it great to get up and running quickly. This compared to all the hacks and work arounds you needed to do on windows (cygwin anyone?).
After using the mac for a little while and then having to go support the friends and family with windows, was really hard, because stuff that just worked on a mac, was a PITA on windows. I started recommending mac's to my relatives and a wonderful thing happened. My aunt who used to call me once a week stopped calling me. I hadn't noticed that she didn't call for a while until I saw her at a family event and I asked how she liked her new computer. She was so happy, she said it took a little bit of getting used to, but she should have done it years ago. The crazy printer and scanner that she always had problems with in the past, just worked when she plugged it in, no configurations, no printer drivers nothing to install, it just worked. In the past few years I think she has only called me once, and that was because she wanted to know what model macbook she should by her daughter for college.
The other great thing about apple, is that there is an apple store at the local mall, and my relatives can go in there and get their questions answered in person, and take classes. Best of all the phone support for apple is bar none, if you haven't used it before, which some people haven't because the apple products are pretty reliable, then you are missing out. There is rarely a long wait on hold, and the phone call is really clear and quiet, they aren't sending you to a big call center where everyone is in the same warehouse using cheap voip phones. If they are, they are using great headsets with noise reducing microphones :)
I have a couple of friends that have switched as well, and one of them is a big time windows fan and gamer, and said he would never switch because mac's aren't good enough to play video games. He has a machine he built just for games, and it is true that mac's don't have all the same games, but he says that the games that they do have on Mac run better on the mac, and he thinks it is because the underlying OS is much better on a mac so the games are more stable.
My brother in law, who for some reason always hated apple, has recently bought an iPad and replaced his huge android phone with an iPhone. He said he always avoided the apple products because he didn't want to be called a fan boy, but when he actually sat down and used one, he was surprised how good they were compared to what he had been using. He just needed to give it a chance.
Some people complain about the price difference, and now a days the price isn't as big a difference as the past. But, I use the following argument when people bring up the price difference. Kia's and BMW's, are both cars, the BMW is more expensive, but it has more features, and is more fun to drive. You don't need the BMW but if you can afford it, you won't be disappointed you bought one. If the world bought everything according to price, then everyone would be driving Kia's. Life it short, spend your time on earth enjoying the products you own.
So for me, the apple products just work, and they are a major time saver, both with my software development and for dealing with support. If these same products were made by different companies I would still buy them, it has nothing to do with the fact that they are made by apple.
What Apple is really killer at is cultivating this kind of brand loyalty. The fact that Apple fans couch their reasoning as 'Apple products are just the best' does not indicate that they are the best, it just indicates that said fans are completely convinced.
Which is not to say that they are wrong - any more than the guy who smokes Camels instead of Lucky Strikes is wrong. Familiarity contributes a lot to your comfort and efficiency with a tool, and it's important to be happy with what you have.
Many of the things you like about Apple products are bound to be true. There's nothing wrong with buying Apple products, they are just fine. But it is just wrong to say that there is something wrong with people who choose the non-Apple alternative (like that they are just cheapskates, or poor, or nerds who don't value their time). These things aren't true.
It's just that most brands do not have the same hard core of extremely pushy, inflexible evangelism on display here. I don't question that Apple products are just fine. I question the idea that there are no viable alternatives, and that you are what you buy.