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Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

Sure, except that these companies don't seem to realize that the average computer user today doesn't like having to figure things out.

If you just use your computer for email and a bit of web stuff every other day or so, and you've been using Windows XP, you don't want to move to a Mac. You'll find it frustrating because things aren't where you expect them to be and you don't get to have all the same programs on your computer. Likewise, if you're a long-time Mac user, it doesn't matter how good Windows 7 is -- you don't want to use it, because it's too different from what you know.

The majority of computer users now are not hobbyists or tinkerers, and these two companies' marketing strategies are so out of sync with their customer base that it would be hilarious if it wasn't sad.

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Don't forget, though, the size of the XP userbase. A mere fraction of a percent might be enough to make marketing effort pay off for Apple. They don't need to tap into the average person when tapping into outliers could do the trick.

I don't think there are that many viable outliers; this sounds like the "if just 1% of X people, and just 1% of those ..." argument that some young businesses use as their market research.

Let's consider some of the demographics and logic here. First, we're specifically talking about XP users. Vista has been available for quite a while, and despite all the bad press and the vehement hatred that the tech sector has for it -- a lot of users aren't all that bothered by it. It works OK.

So, if someone is still using XP, then it's probably safe to conclude that either they're apprehensive of change, or that they don't consider their computer to be something that they should spend much money on.

In both cases, Apple loses at converting them. Macs are more expensive, and the operating system is completely different from the user's perspective.

The only outliers that leaves us with is those folks that have more than one computer in their home, of which one or more of their systems is XP. In those cases, either they already have a Mac in their home -- and Apple isn't winning a conversion -- or they don't, and Apple is not really likely to get a conversion.

But all that's just theory and guessing. Fortunately, one of my two businesses currently is in tech services for individuals and businesses. Of the roughly probably 100 systems that we currently care for, just 9 of them are Macs. Of those, 7 are used by people who will give up their Macs when you pry them from their cold, dead fingers. (Which is fine by us, we like -- and support -- Macs too.) Of the remaining two, one is an older laptop with persistent hard drive and charging issues which almost drove the client to get a PC replacement.

The other one is a more interesting story related to what we're talking about here. The client was persuaded to get an Apple at the behest of a friend who really really likes Macs, and is one of those misguided evangelists that believes that everyone else should like them too.

The problem is, this client doesn't play with computers. He just wants to get work done. So, one of the first things he did with his Mac was get an early beta of Boot Camp -- and install Windows on it.

Apple since then has done this really neat trick where a bug in that version of Boot Camp prevents the user from upgraded to XP service pack 3, and you can't upgrade Boot Camp to fix the bug without buying Leopard.

Meanwhile, the user is frustrated as all hell because the machine is really quirky. He hates it. He just wants to get work done, not dick around with it all the time. To him, the Mac is always slower than his other PCs, it's always more troublesome, and it was more expensive.

As a result of that "conversion", Apple has just won an enemy for life. He'll never buy one again.

I used to do the whole "you're better off with a Mac" evangelism thing -- essentially doing Apple's marketing for them -- years ago. That got old pretty fast when all those people started coming back to me with complaints, and most of their complaints distilled down to, "it's not Windows!"

Now we recommend people just use what they're familiar with. They're much happier that way.

The marketing strategies from both Microsoft and Apple right now are completely irrelevant to their prospective customers.

On a similar note, let's not forget the amount of corporations that run Windows XP because it's the most ideal solution for their software. I don't know about most other corporations, but our company doesn't readily run out to buy every new version of anything, no, we're normally upgrading every other version.

On that note, we're probably going to be upgrading to windows 7 eventually, though not until a machine is out of warranty I wouldn't think.

"In both cases, Apple loses at converting them"

Yeah, once you have accepted a false dichotomy, you can conclude anything you want to. It's very unlikely that the entire set of XP users cleaves nicely into the two categories that just so happen to resonate with your own personal anecdotes.

Edit: I'm not ideologically aligned, here. I was only responding to your tacit assumption that Apple needed to target some sort of "average" user in order to get a return on their marketing investment.

shrug

I gave you a distillation of the actual opinions and decisions of a not-small number of users, all of whom I interact with on a regular basis. They represent a fairly even mixture of individual and large business clients.

You can take that anyway you want.

I'd love to sit here and continue arguing ideology with you (not really), but I've gotta go meet with some more of my personal anecdotes ...

...and fix their XP issues.

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