I’m a digital photographer and have recently started working in a studio that has 5 PC’s. My PBook is the only machine that’s not Windows. Being here a month now, I can say that with the 1000+ seniors we’ve been photographing, we needed tons of storage and CD burners.

A friend of my boss is a PC/Mac guru and he’s been over here in excess of 20+ hours installing about 6 hard drives and a couple of CD burners. I could have installed them in a couple of hours in a Mac network. I watched him and the gyrations he had to do with the machines recognizing the hardware, running “F disk” and scan disk, using DOS to do something and then partitioning the disks the way my boss wanted them.

I worked with a PC for a year with another job and whenever there was a problem with the three PC’s, we had to have a specialist come in. With the Mac (which I insisted he get before I agreed to take the job), I usually troubleshot it in an hour or two at most.

PC/Mac is the same thing as the old VHS/Beta format. Which was best? Which ended up being the standard?

As long as we Mac users go out and evangilize, we will be able to keep the Mac alive. The day we stop, the PC machines will slowly…..ever so silently…..take over. That will be a fun day. We’ll then turn Gates into the man that will eventually control all of computer commerce….Neat idea, huh?????

I feel I must step in..

I like Apple’s advertisments. My absolute favourite was the Pro Mouse commercial, which actually brought tears to my eyes when the mouse did that gorgeous power slide across the screen. I love that bit!

Advertising is about raising brand awareness. Apple tried the ‘Apple computers are superior to Windows boxes, they can do this, they can do that’ in the early 90’s and where did it get them!? Nowhere. Now look at some of the most sucessful companies in North America that built their entire corporation on the back of advertising. Coke, GAP, Nike, etc ALL sell advertising. Coke is the functional equivalent of Generic Cola X, which costs half as much, but people still happily buy Coke. GAP jeans are just as good as any other brand, yet they cost more and STILL sell better. Nike sells shoes, and anybody who has ever gone to a mall knows that there is no end of choices when buying a new pair of running shoes, but Nike still commands top dollar and people still pay top dollar for their functionally identical (and ugly-ass IMHO) footwear.

The point is that Apple’s advertising isn’t trying to cram numbers and information down the throats of the ‘uneducated’ because that approach simply doesn’t work when you’re selling a commodity good. As computers become more and more like commodities Apple is trying to establish it’s brand as the foremost computer brand in the mind of the consumer. The way to do that is to have eye catching commercials that display the product and most importantly display the BRAND. The actual content is relatively unimportant to the purpose of getting people to stop and look. Then the next time someone thinks “I’m going to go and buy a computer” the hope is that they think “Apple sells computers, I should take a gander at http://www.apple.com and see what those things are all about”.

The natural follow up to raising brand awareness in the mind of the consumer is to give the product high visibility in a location where the consumer can go and casually run into the product. This reinforces the brand awareness and further gives the corporation (in this case, Apple) a chance to offer additionl information about the product. Hence the Apple stores and their placement in exceedingly high volume locations. This ‘one,two’ punch of advertising and visibilty makes it much more likely that people will at the very least consider an Apple computer when they make their next purchase. And once the person opens their mind to the possibility of buying an Apple, then you hit them with the ‘it can do this, it can do that, look at this cool feature, see how powerful it is’ stuff.  You can’t just toss information at people - they tune out - but if you can get someone to come and ASK about your product, then they’re actually listening to what you say, and that’s when you convince people.

In short, don’t slam Apple for their advertising campaigns. Apple isn’t just selling computers, they’re selling an image - and image has nothing to do with MHz or OS or any of that techie stuff that you and I care about. If you disagree with me, just look at some of the most successful corporations in the world that allocate fully half of their annual budgets to advertising - none of their advertisements actually talk about the product, they just show it and make it look cool. That’s what Apple is doing now, and hopefully with the opening of the Apple stores it’ll actually work.

My apologies for the rant, but honestly, give Apple a break. They know what they’re doing.

...I’m off to watch optical mice race across my screen and make tire squealing noises… Ahh… bliss..

I went into a CompUSA today and witnessed something shocking… a PC user trying to talk a total stranger into buying a PC!  He was already looking in the Mac section (the customer) with his daughter who appeared to need a computer for college.  The PC user asked him why he wanted to buy a Mac?  Because she is doing graphics work?  No, the man said, because the college she is going to is basically standardizing on Macs.  The PC user said, well that must be an old mandate.  No one uses those anymore.

The question is, if we don’t evangelize Macs, who will?  Some ignorant PC users are going to evangelize their platform.  There aren’t many rubes like this guy, but if you take a percentage of market share, there are at least as many PC rubes as there are Mac users who evangelize, probably more.  Whether we like it or not, this is a platform war, and the only way to win is to maintain market share.  I believe that Mac people have to evangelize or at least fight FUD so that we can maintain our market share and keep our platform alive.

“Wanna finish early today?”

Lotus did this once back when Microsoft came out with “Where do you want to go today?”

They started running ads that said:

Where do you want to go today?
Home.

Goes on to talk about doing stuff faster than Office.

What Photodan says is probably the most sense that I have read on these forums for some time.

I used to sell Macs (mostly) and PCs and the single thing that put people off either of the platforms (especially the Mac) was if I or one of my colleagues came on too strong for our preference.

Many times I sold a PC to someone and they cited the zealotry of Mac users as one of the reasons they wouldn’t switch.  They just did not want to be preached to, or feel as if they were joining some cult.

However, some were willing to switch if provided with the correct information, in a rational manner.  This type of promotion is one reason that Apple must let some PC retailers continue to sell their hardware, and not retreat into Apple only stores.  People were especially happy to make the change once reassured that Mac MS Office was file compatible with the Windows version, many zealots go too far by attacking all things MS - but the truth is that Apple and the Mac still need their support (whether we like it or not).

The last comment will probably get them ranting again.

So thank you Photodan for introducing some sanity to these pages.

I’ve said it before, cut me and I bleed in 5 rainbow colors and my has a distinct aroma of Mom’s apple pies.

But here’s the thing; if you want a PC, so be it. I won’t try to talk you out of it. PCs have a place on this earth, like slugs and mosquitos have a place .

I’m kidding, kinda.

I did Demo Days, and the one thing I noticed is how PC salespeople push product. I mean they PUSH it.
“Here’s a sweet little number. It’s a P3 with 256 and 40 gigs under the hood…”

On the other hand, I NEVER tried to convince anyone that Macs are superior. All I had to do was explain and let the product sell itself. I got gobsof questions, many about PCs and some asking me to explain the differences betwen PCs and Macs. hose were the fun questions because I could climb into my pulpit ad let loose a inspiring sermon about the virtures of Mac ownership. Ever so often I’d get an ‘Amen’ from a passing Mac fan, or some Mac guru will stop and testify.

Few Mac fan brow beat people, I believe.

I agree that we shouldn’t be zealots when supporting the Mac platform, since this does tend to turn people off.  But when it comes to dispelling the many myths about the platform that still seem to go around (no software, proprietary hardware, totally incompatible with PCs) I can’t help speaking up.

Ideally, I’d like everyone to select their platform based on the factual merits of each system.  And I don’t see this happen often enough.  From having to deal with clueless IT departments, to uninformed salespeople at computer stores, there’s still a need to “spread the word.”

I am very much of the opinion that Apple would have gone out of business a while ago were it not for Macevangelism. The problem, of course, is that the average PC user never uses a Mac, whereas the average Mac user often uses a PC. his means that the PC guy is not qualified to talk about Macs, but the Mac guy IS qualified to talk PCs. I guesstimate that I’ve directly influenced the purchase of five to ten private Macs over the last few years, and that’s just personal systems - at work, it’s WAY more. And the best part is that NOBODY has ever come back to me and said it was a bad choice.

“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?”

  You hit the nail RIGHT on the head. Apple needs a new marketing company, their advertising flat out sucks and is almost non existant. They preach mostly to the choir. As you said, they need to TELL & SHOW people that “yes, you CAN do that on a Mac”. They need MANY MORE newspaper ads, TV ads, mainstream magazine ads, etc or they will remain at the 5% market share point. They also need to get the prices down as well but that’s another thread I suppose. 

Sadly you do have to evangelise at some point.  As mentioned earlier a fanatic is one who follows without reason and most Windows-based computer users fall into that category.  To quote a famous movie “You can change an idea, but a belief, that’s much harder.  People die for their beliefs”  (Dogma - Rufus the Apostle)  And believe me when I say Windows users will spout Winmark test specs until they are blue in the face to try and prove their superiority.
Normally those specs don’t have anything to say except that this guy has studied his bible and the Mac user had better have read his.

I recently went into a local retailer and just for kicks cause a menial problem with an iMac to see the reaction of the people working there (some friends of mine).  My friend with me asked “why not mess with the pcs - you don’t know anything about them?”  “No”, I replied so that the locals could hear, “they have Windows Millenium - Bill Gates took care of those for me.”