Owning a PC? That would be as much of a faux pas as owning a large vehicle, working a blue collar job, living in the suburbs, or voting republican. You certainly won't improve your chances of getting invited to the cool parties by doing that.
I do admire Apple for consciously making itself into a subcultural icon. Few brands are as successful as Apple. And as they have hooked themselves up to a subculture that is ascendant, it is a good strategic move.
Edit: It is possible that in the future that Apple will make the jump like Starbucks did to be a universal brand and not just a brand of the hip subculture. I consider Starbucks to be one of the greatest marketing successes of all time; at first a cool urban delicacy, later reaching the other half: the suburbs, the parents that may send their kids to the military but never to grad school, the PC owners, the small business owner (think "Joe the Plumber", not Steve Jobs), people who never worry about "materialism" or "consumerism", the Republicans. Sarah Palin and Bono, investment bankers and environmentalists have their favorite latte. Of course, the cool hip culture tends to lead the rest, so that's a good strategic place to start.
I don't see any signs that Apple has made this jump yet. I certainly don't think my blue collar dad even considered a Mac when he bought a laptop, even though I am certain that he would have had an easier time learning its user interface.
Why...? Well, it is just branding, as far as I can see. It's not 300 dollars, either. It's sometimes 600 dollars for a PC vs. 1299 for an equivilent Mac. To me, that's stupid. If you don't like Windows, well, this will add $0.00 onto your price:
Whatever you think of the mac experience, some people do find it significantly nicer, so for them it's worth buying.
Also, Macs don't necessarily always cost more.
After being fed up with my old Toshiba laptop being crap, and their warranty department refusing to service (apparently bad fan bearings were "wear and tear" items), I splashed out for a top of the line MacBook Pro 2 years ago, and started experiencing problems soon after getting it - first the lid would refuse to close (the latch button got stuck), and then my HDD died. Anyhoo, long story short I sent it in twice, and in total got about 5 major parts replaced.
Rewind to 4 months ago, my machine was really on the fritz, VRAM was shot and would display random colors (textbook memory corruption). Below is everything that happened:
- Called Apple, waited <5 minutes for an agent.
- Gave the agent my info, and she immediately remarked that given my repair history I could qualify for a full replacement, and asked if I would like to proceed.
- Waited <5 minutes for tier 2 support.
- Tier 2 listened to my problem, got me to run some diagnostics to confirm my VRAM was shot, and after a few minutes authorized a full replacement, with a brand spanking new unibody MacBook Pro. I was handed off to a replacement rep via email and the shipping label was sent to me within an hour of hanging up.
- I have some projects in the pipe that I didn't want to put on ice for too long, so I called my rep after I shipped my old laptop off to explain, he sent the new one before even confirming with UPS that my old one was on the way back to Apple.
- That was Friday, it got here Tuesday - across a national border.
On this experience alone, and contrasted with the service I've received from Toshiba and Dell, Apple has basically cemented me as a repeat customer.
I'm all about developing for .NET now; Apple is toxic to developers.
I care. I care about end-user personal computing trends.
They a) amuse me and b) affect my income. That's why I submitted, to see discussion on a topic I am interested in.
Quoting from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."
The more OSX crosses into mainstream consumer territory, the better. I only run Linux myself, but having been a long time developer and troubleshooter for Windows, I am seriously psyched about seeing the OSX market grow and grow. Getting over the stigmas of "coolness" and elitism is a good step in a positive direction. Whether you like it or not, these stigmas are out there (I doubt people frequenting this website were lured into Macs for this particular aspect of them).
Somewhere along the line it got decided that there's a fashion statement being made with Macs. I don't really see that. I think a certain type of person that's obsessed with aesthetic does like Apple, because it's clean, but was there ever a feeling that using Apple products made a person special? Because I've never noticed that, and yet it's brought up and constantly mocked. I don't get it.
OSX users often look down on Windows users, as if they just don't know better. They say things like "OSX is inherently better than Windows" without specifying what it's better at or pausing to consider that there are many reasons to choose an OS, and by a very large number of metrics (compatible programs, compatible hardware, price, variety, ease of finding someone who can help you with problems, etc.) Windows crushes OSX. In fact, by almost any easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better.
Apple's been the hip underdog, ironically largely because of spending billions of marketing bucks to style themselves that way, and I think Steve Jobs's tyranny over the tech-related media.
I'm not saying any of that about you personally, but things like Digg turning into an extension of Apple's PR don't happen to any other brands at all, not even ones like Toyota or Lenovo that consistently make top quality products. The fervor indicates there's a lot more to the fanboyism than just "Apple makes good products." They've struck a chord. Their marketing over the past 5 years may be the best in the entire history of capitalism.
The problem is that Apple users includes everyone who owns an iPod or iPhone, most of whom don't use any other Apple products. You can't keep the underdog luster on the company as a whole when you achieve ubiquity, but they still do with their computers.
While I don't disagree with the author's premise the article probably isn't worth your time reading.
It's great!
