Ok, can someone explain to me why some Mac users still have this obsession to keep trying to actively convince EVERYONE that they need to be using a Mac too?
I understand why it was necessary a few years ago, when Macs were close to the brink of extinction, but Apple is healthy now. There is no danger of it going under any time soon.
Have these people considered that Macs are not for everyone? Have they considered that some people like Windows more than they do the Mac OS? Or that Applications are the most important factor and the OS is totally irrelevant? (Do you spend more time in the finder or in your big expensive apps?)

Look, i’m not saying that we shouldn’t tout our machines or be silent about their capabilities. Just be sensible about it. Stop way short of pestering PC users. In essence, to a PC user, we are telling them that they are wrong about their computer preference. Nobody likes that. (Just try telling a die-hard Ford lover that Chevy’s are better!)

If you (we) want to help expand the user base, be available to answer new people’s questions about the platform. If Apple keeps making great products at good prices then believe me, people will come asking.
It’s imperitive to let THEM decide to ask those questions. Nobody likes a high pressure sales pitch.

-Dan

Photodan, you make an excellent point.  I used to be one of the people you describe.  I jumped at every opportnity to talk about Macs and defend or promote them.  I realized later that it doesn’t work, because the more you make a deal out of it the less they care about what you have to say.  If you just respectfully explain your preference when asked, it goes over a lot better.

To some people, Macs are a religious experience.  They must convert everyone.  I usually do not fit this group unless someone slams the mac.  A good example recently happened to me in a local computer store.  I was buying software and overheard a salesman explaining to a customer, who asked about the macs, that she did not want to buy a mac because “you can’t buy software for it, it is no very expandible, it is slow, you can’t do you work on it if you bring it home…...

I just had to join this conversation.  As an x-computer programmer and PC owner, I gently explained that you can just about anything on a Mac that you can do on a PC, except play some games and buy some cheaper software types.  I found out that she was a web page designer and graphics professional.  I was flabergasted that this salesman would take her out of a Mac.  I asked him if he had ever used a Mac for extended periods and he answered “no.

My wife and I sat down over lunch and went over the strengths and went over the strengths and weaknesses of both.  I recently got an email thanking us.  She bought a DP 533 and is now trying to get her boss to switch the computers at work.  I did not force the issue down her throat.  I just gave her the info she requested. 

Just like the overbearing Mac owner, PC owners/salesman can be pushy also and they also distort the facts.

Chuck Haislip

Apple isn’t doing as excellently as it could.  They fail in marketing to many school systems how good they are and for instance in Montgomery County Maryland, home of Celera, and numerous pharmaceutical and genomic companies you find the school system is migrating over to an all PC based system.  There is one CompUSA that still has a G4/733 for $2999.97 and no Quicksilver.  Apple’s most well known retailers near DC on the Maryland side are all but gone except for Bethesda Networking and Computing, and Macupgrades, but both of those are in Bethesda, with none in the I-95 corridor between DC and Baltimore.  And where most of the population of Montgomery County lives is not near Bethesda or Gaithersburg in anycase.  Neither do we want to have to go all the way to Tysons Corner because the commute makes it impossible except early on a Sunday morning.  Apple’s lackadaisical approach to gaining business partners is especially discouraging.  Small businesses are turned off by their prices for expandable Macs, and poor marketing of how good their software selection is.  Only the Mac faithful know the compatibility exists with the Mac that is better than the PC.  You can’t just focus on education and video production, you have to gain ground in the battle for networking computing.  Apple practically invented it, they should take advantage of their expertise and tout it.  On TV, in the Newspaper, in magazines.  Speaking of which, Computer Shopper totally ignored the iBook in their selection for the perfect educational notebook in their August issue.  If Apple can’t get in there for that article, what does that say about their education comeback approach?  Powerschool is all very nice.  But until I see them retake over my county for public schools I am going to evangelize Apple to try and help them.  Not to mention on most of these bulletin boards you have trolls who spread around misinformation about Macs making people think Macs aren’t as good as they really are.  We constantly have to stay afloat.  If we don’t, we sink again.  Not to mention Apple lost a fair bit of stock value recently.  Even in the face of having the only profit in the computer industry.

Does a peanut butter and jelly sandwich need jelly?

Ok, that’s an extreme comment.  I think Apple still needs evangelists, just not in the same form as before.  We’re not on the brink of destruction as we were a few years ago, but the general population is STILL ignorant (Apple’s cryptic advertising doesn’t help) of the many great things about Mac’s.  You know, would it kill Apple for them to make a commercial that says here’s a PowerMac G4, show the easy opening case and how easy it is to add things, the durability of the cases, discuss iDisk and Mac.com mail accounts, iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, etc—ALL of which come with the Mac.  Yeah, the iTunes commercial was great because it was neat to watch, but WHERE’S THE BEEF?  Maybe they should get whoever did Wendy’s marketing to help out.  Sheesh.  I love ‘em and I understand their creative approach, but my parents see a commercial and say, nice looking computer.  But they don’t know that it runs a version of MS Office that is considered better than the PC version, that it can run Internet Explorer and people can check their hotmail accounts, that you get iTunes for FREE with the system, iMovie FOR FREE with the system, and iDVD 2 (with OS X 10.1) for FREE with the system, and all the kickin’ iTools that Apple has.  Seriously, a free email service for life that you won’t get spammed on if you keep the address off lists (unlike hotmail, yahoo, or any of the other “free” email accounts), free disk space, free website space, free space to post your pictures and movies ... if they just MENTIONED this stuff in their commercials, people would be like, Mac’s can do that?  Mac’s have over 10,000 applications?  Mac’s support the majority of today’s hardware and peripherals?  Mac’s can play games like Quake III and Tony Hawk?  The next generation Doom is coming out on the Mac at the same time the windows version is?  I can instant messsage my friends on a Mac?  I can write a Word document and send it to my Windows buddy and get it back, modified but not messed up on my Mac?

Do we need Apple envangelists?  YES.
WHY?  Because Apple doesn’t know how to do it themselves.  STILL.  After all this time.  Ads are nice visually, just add the f’ing beef.

Apple lover at heart.

I no longer try to convert heathens to the one true operating system, if they want to go down the road to perdition that is their business. Besides it will leave more room in heaven for me and the other Mac users.

However, when some WinTel infidel attacks the Mac I will defend it the way the Marines defended Khe San. I do not let them get away with their caca de toro, every time they mention price, software availability, compatibility, or whatever, I have a knowledgeable defense.

Never give up, never surrender, stand proud!

Hell yes, and I’ll tell you why. I work at a University where there was a conscious effort a few years ago to wipe the Macs off the campus. It was orchestrated by our Computing Services and quietly sanctioned by the administration. What they failed to realize is that Macs are far superior in the scientific, publishing, graphic design and music disciplines. They also didn’t realize that 30% of our campus was already using Macs and they weren’t about to give them up. And guess what, we won the battle to keep them. And now, our Computing Services even HELPS us with our Macs, provides academic site license software, and has even assigned a few employees to learn about and use the Mac platform so they can better SERVE us. We are not beholden to IT anymore!

So, be evangelistic if you feel the need. I certainly get enough flak from our PC bretheren about how superior Windows is. Yet they have spent the past two weeks cleaning up SirCam and RedWorm viruses from more than 150 servers across this campus and fixing machines that have been hacked into EVERY WEEK.

In the ten years I have worked here, we have yet to have a Mac hacked into and have only gotten one virus ever which NAV took care of immediately.

So, while they clean up and repair, we keep right on working. It’s called leading by example.

I agree that over-evangelising (?) probably puts most people off. I work with lots of engineers, most use windows, bu there is a group of us who are long time mac-heads. We avoid going on about it, but we have laptops which we use to get our work done quicker and better, we let people come to us to be impressed.

I also agree that Apple need to explain more in their marketing, the ads I’ve seen only seem to say, ‘stylish computer…’
It’s time Apple started saying things like:-
‘how much further do you want to go today?’
‘want to finish early today?’
‘Complete video editing - $XXXX, 10 minutes out of the box’
‘Let the computer do the work for you’
Basically to say what is different and better.

I pick and choose my moments. I try to calmly and rationally explain the advantages of the Mac when the right time comes up, or when someone asks me a question. Of course, when someone rags on me for owning a Mac, I respond “Yeah, I just use computers for a living, what would I know about it?” That usually stops the ragging.

Oh, and when someone tells me about a great new ‘feature’ on the ‘innovative’ Wintel platform, it’s usually something I’ve used on Unix since college (which is longer ago than I care to admit). Often I’ll say something like “Really? Welcome to 1986.”

Admittedly, this does not help my popularity with that particular person for the next few minutes, but others get a laugh, and it does bring home the point.

I believe you have this backward dan.
Try walking around for a week with an apple shirt on, and then walk around for a week with a pc-clone shirt.
You will catch so much grief for wearing the apple shirt and no one will even notice the dell shirt.
If there is a fanatic, it is the windows users.
A fanatic is someone who follows for no logical reason blinded usually by the group, only seeing what he/she wants and what he/she is told by the group or leader.
Apple is a minority of professional users constantly yelling at apple about how to improve, while being attacked by uninformed windows users, even in our own forums. While windows users are mostly made up of game players and persons who have no practical knowledge of other platforms.
Even though most professionals of engineering and science agree that windows is clearly not better than Solaris, Unix, or apple.

Win2k 32bit 2-4 processors 102,000 errors codes
MacOSx 64bit 32 processors I’m not sure last error log I saw was around 3000.

You could write a novel on how much better Linux, os x, Novell, Solaris, bsd Unix and a couple other platforms I’ve worked on are better than any windows os. But windows users continue in these forums, in public, and in other Unix forums to rant about the only OS they understand, or want to understand.
I think you misunderstand being a fanatic with having a defensive posture. The open source community and once strong netscape community did not attack MS, MS attacked them. And while most of the world are lemmings and are fully happy to be told what is best and live with it, you will not find this present in the spirit of Mac or open source users.
I do game development on the side and am writing a game only for OS X and bsd Unix because it’s a much better platform than winxp, but all I get day after day is “ Man that game is realy cool why don’t you write it for windows, there’s more money and it’s the standard?” , and to them I say simply “ Um that would be like painting the Mona Lisa on a rock.”

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: prillion on 2001-08-10 16:08 ]</font>

On 2001-08-10 11:23, Anonymous wrote:

‘want to finish early today?’

That would be a great marketing slogan for Apple!

We should be polite to the PC heads (or at least try, as I often have difficulty). regarding evangelising the Mac.

I’ve been a Mac user since 1985 (Blah, Blah, I know.) but after hearing the moronic quips about the shortcomings of macs for 16 years I really wan’t to strangle the bast….s!

BTW, I know Windows and I’m not buying anybodies crap!

Apple and the Macintosh may be doing better in the area’s of respect and profitability, but the enemy is still out there!

That enemy is Apathy and Ignorance, and we must carry our fight against it to the ends of the earth! Preach on Brothers and Sisters, get in there faces, and get it all over them, that they ARE part of the problem.

Windows is an inherently FLAWED product, Buying it, using it, and accepting it only perpetuates the problem.

But enough from me for now, I must get back to making a productive, and comfortable living. On a Mac!

On 2001-08-10 12:59, Anonymous wrote:

On 2001-08-10 11:23, Anonymous wrote:

‘want to finish early today?’

That would be a great marketing slogan for Apple!

We should be polite to the PC heads (or at least try, as I often have difficulty). regarding evangelising the Mac.

That post was me, I only thought I was logged in.

Sorry,

Brad

“The Power to be your best” was my favorite slogan.  And how true it is. I still have one of those T-shirts and a couple Quicktime movies of those commercials. 

Yes, we definitely need to evangelize.  I have a friend who recently purchased a minimally configured WIMP (Windoze Intel Microsoft PC) so that she could run “the software she needed for school”.  Of course, this means MS Office.  My Mac is “really cute, but not powerful enough”.  Perhaps I should also mention that I spent a good couple of hours with her on the phone helping her install a DOS-based program.  She really has no clue about her operating system of choice, but it “must be better.”

My dad is also going to pick up a laptop, WIMP, of course.  He says he “needs something for work”.  Again, he will only be using Office.  I also end up troubleshooting his PCs on a regular basis as he really has no idea what he’s doing.  My Mac gets abused with some pretty nasty scientific software, and I’ve never had any problems.  Go figure.

The average consumer does not consider buying a Mac when he or she needs a computer.  Their perceptions are that the software does not exist, that there are platform compatibility problems, and that Macs are just toys.  Good evangelism has absolutely nothing to do with being pushy or over-zealous.  Instead, evangelism should rest upon education; as Mac users, we should explain what one can do with a Mac, what advantages there are in running the Mac OS and using Mac hardware, and how one can integrate a Mac in a primarily Windoze corporate and educational world.  If people realize that support exists for Macintosh owners, it will be easier to make the platform transition.

Hey Jen,

Make sure you stop in at our topic about our PC friends and family who insult our Macs while asking us to help them fix their PCs.

Sounds like it was made for you. 

In my daily business I help people with both PC’s and Mac’s and I never try to put ones platform of choice down. Now if someone asks me for a recommendation get the soapbox out and let the evangelizing begin I bought my mom a pc recently since she needed to access certain pieces of software that will probably never be available for the mac. On the other hand my wife was a PC user when we married and now she uses a Graphite iBook after seeing first hand how much greener the other side was, while I was working she was figuring out conflicts and things, before long it came time to get my TiBook and she asked for the old iBook. I have an almost even mix of customers on the pc and mac sides. the pc guys are the ones i am always working with and the mac guys only call when they need some deep technical stuff. Evangelize only where appropriate and let your actions carry more weight than your words and you will be respected among all camps