What's so fantastic about Apple?

[Rat]

when that war was hotting up, I was still a ZX Spectrum user. I sure can pick a winner.

If by that you mean "...and the Spectrum is the winner out of the three, specs be damned, and would similarly be better than both Mac and PC today", then I'm right there with you. If you are facetiously denigrating the Spectrum, then you are dead to me.

 

[Lamuella]

If by that you mean "...and the Spectrum is the winner out of the three, specs be damned, and would similarly be better than both Mac and PC today", then I'm right there with you. If you are facetiously denigrating the Spectrum, then you are dead to me.

the spectrum might be the single greatest computer ever created. Clive bless that rubber keyed SOB.

 

[kajata]

so... an exceptionally funny smart personable nice guy... and a hipster jerkbag?

seriously, if you want to show a product in a negative light, why would you get John Hodgman to play the embodiment of the character?

Because people watching it had no idea who these guys were in real life? Anyway, the campaign was wildly successful and AdWeek named it the best campaign of the decade.

(btw, I love Hodgman in anything he does and he was great in those ads)

 

[Darat]

If by that you mean "...and the Spectrum is the winner out of the three, specs be damned, and would similarly be better than both Mac and PC today", then I'm right there with you. If you are facetiously denigrating the Spectrum, then you are dead to me.

How dare you, you presser of dead flesh! (Ex Atari 400 and various models up to STs owner.)

 

[Lamuella]

Because people watching it had no idea who these guys were in real life?

Neither did I when the ads first aired. However, one character was funny, smart, personable and had the best lines, and the other was a hipster jerkbag.

EDIT: this might also be a problem I have with negative ads. Don't tell me your opponent makes a bad product, or is expensive, or (as is increasingly common) is a big fat nerdy dummy. Tell me why your product is GOOD. The Alltel ads of a few years ago were the worst offenders at this with their "look at our competitors, they're fat nerds while our guy is Ty Pennington's body double" ads.

 

[Stray Cat]

iMac...would void warranty.

MacBook...would not void warranty.

Uh, do Macs have warranties?
In my 20 plus years of owning and using them I've never needed the use of a warranty.

 

[Menalitus]

I have a PC, a Google phone and an IPad 2.

I am able to do all that I need to do online on both my PC and my phone. It is only the IPad where I run into useabilty problems (Editing the content of my OpenCart based site and using Auctivia to post EBay items as an example).

The opposite is not true, there are no sites I have come accross (other than possible fanboy ones i guess) where the IPad works and either of the other two don't. I also can't easily print to my Wireless printer from my IPad which is infuriating (I know there are options available to me but Grrrr).

I know the Apple OS is considered more stable blah blah blah but that is probably in part because it is so limited in its compatabilty with other devices, and a side effect of its limitations in which software can actually be loaded onto the hardware in the first place. A PC has to work with uncountable different hardware components and external devices (and mostly will, although pain may of course be involved) so when an Apple can do ALL that a PC can do and work in ALL of the situations where the Windows OS is employed I guess it would be fair to compare them. I suspect that the famously stable OS in an Apple would a tad less perfect if it contained all of the chaff needed by Windows to maintain support for all of the devices both new and old that can be attached.

The IPad is a beautiful thing, lovely to handle and (mostly) a pleasure to use but it most definitely has limitations not present on other similar devices. Oh yeah and another thing, having to press a button before I can type a number makes me cross, why no number keys on the top row - Gah!

 

[TheL8Elvis]

You couldn't be more wrong (especially in the consumer segment), that is exactly what Apple wants and is why it markets its products as it does. It wants everyone to believe that what they want is an Apple device.

Thanks, I think I have been more wrong before.

Apple most certainly doesn't cater to trying to be everything to everybody. They don't tout specs to appeal to people, they don't make 15 models so they can have something for everybody. I guess we're coming at this from very different definitions of what being all things to all people means.

 

[Almo]

It is easy to find a Mac fanatic among Mac users. The same cannot be said about Windows users.

That's for several reasons:

1) Windows had the monopoly; the average Windows user didn't feel he might lose his OS to MSFT disappearing.

2) Apple products are designed well. It's easier to be a fanatic about something good than something mediocre.

Personally, I'm not an Apple-Can-Do-No-Wrong person.

- OS X needs an option to turn off mouse acceleration.
- Apple should have allowed Best Buy to carry only the color of iMacs they wanted. Not doing so was arrogant.
- iMovie has some serious interface design issues.
- OS X has this option: install updates and restart. I want to install updates and shut down, but you can't do that. This is quite annoying.
- Installing a new version of OS X overwrites your Apache config files without telling you. Had it not been for Time Machine keeping backups of them, that would have been another couple hours wasted setting up the SVN server to work with Apache.

I could go on. The issue for me isn't that Macs are perfect. It's that on average, I find they annoy me less often than Windows does. This is as both a developer and a user.

 

[Almo]

Uh, do Macs have warranties?
In my 20 plus years of owning and using them I've never needed the use of a warranty.

They do. The logic board on my Power Mac 7600 died.

 

[Darat]

That's for several reasons:

1) Windows had the monopoly; the average Windows user didn't feel he might lose his OS to MSFT disappearing.

I would say the "average" windows user never gave it a moments thought!

2) Apple products are designed well. It's easier to be a fanatic about something good than something mediocre.

...snip...

That's pretty much assuming your conclusion which of course is pretty much a subjective opinion anyway.

You've missed the main reason and that is being suckered in by Apple's magnificent marketing that can be traced all the way back to the classic anti-IBM ad. (And I don't mean "suckered in" as an insult - we are all at least to a certain extent suckered in by marketing)

 

[Lamuella]

2) Apple products are designed well. It's easier to be a fanatic about something good than something mediocre.

not in my experience. You get just as many people who are huge berzerk fans of crap things as you do good things. You have a point about a smaller company having more of a cult following, but I've not seen a correlation between quality of product and fanaticism of fans.

Plus, I wouldn't say that Apple's products are "something good" as compared to Microsoft's "something mediocre"

 

[kajata]

I think it's pretty easy to find fanatics from both parties.

Mac fanboys who will defend anything Apple does or buy anything they make.

Windows users who will attack anything Apple does or makes.

Just read any blog like Gizmodo or Engadget. Check out an article on an Apple product. Look at the comments. All the a-holes come out from both sides.

 

[El Greco]

I think it's pretty easy to find fanatics from both parties.

Mac fanboys who will defend anything Apple does or buy anything they make.

Windows users who will attack anything Apple does or makes.

What about Windows fanboys who will defend anything Microsoft does or buy anything they make ?

 

[kajata]

What about Windows fanboys who will defend anything Microsoft does or buy anything they make ?

That's my point. You don't see them do that. Instead they attack Apple.

One thing you do see...Android (phone, not tablet) fanboys. People really like talking about their smartphones (Android and iPhone) for some reason. Maybe because it's something people whip out in public on a daily basis.

 

[Lamuella]

That's my point. You don't see them do that. Instead they attack Apple.

that doesn't automatically make them "windows users", though. They could be Linux users, or other less popular operating sytems, or use a mixture on different things.

Even if they do happen to use Windows, they're not Windows Users in the same way that some people who use Apple products are Apple Users. They don't have the same brand loyalty I'm building a laptop at the moment (well, repairing one), and once I get the new hard drive in, I may stick Ubuntu on it just to see if I like it. I don't have any special loyalty to Windows, it's just what comes pre-installed and works well enough.

And this comes back to the central point of the thread. There's something about Apple. Something polarizing and interesting. There are more people who have a strong opinion one way or another about Apple than about Android or Windows or Dell or Samsung. There's got to be a reason for that, and I suspect the reason is related to Apple's attempts to link a product to a lifestyle.

 

[El Greco]

That's my point. You don't see them do that. Instead they attack Apple.

So what you are saying is that there is a difference between the average Windows user and the average Mac user. And the war is being fed mostly by the average Windows user. Right ?

 

[kajata]

So what you are saying is that there is a difference between the average Windows user and the average Mac user.

I'm not sure I said that earlier, but yes, there is.

And the war is being fed mostly by the average Windows user. Right ?

No. What I'm saying is some Windows users care way too much what Apple users are using and some Apple users care way too much about what they're using. I don't know who's feeding it more. But who started this "war" we're participating in right now?

 

[Lamuella]

I don't know who's feeding it more. But who started this "war" we're participating in right now?

well, how far are you going back? There are any number of moments that could be picked as the start, from the posting of this thread back to the "1984" ad.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

I'm not sure I said that earlier, but yes, there is.



No. What I'm saying is some Windows users care way too much what Apple users are using and some Apple users care way too much about what they're using. I don't know who's feeding it more. But who started this "war" we're participating in right now?

As I posted above, I care about what Apple is doing because, unfortunately, their less-feature-rich phones are driving the smartphone market. Hell yeah I'm going to throw out a bit of criticism toward Apple when people start trying to argue that iOS and the iPhone are "great" products. It's not great products. It's great marketing.