One of my favorite web sites is Low End Mac. Be forewarned that this is truly the Mac fanboy/geek paradise, with articles on what to do with antique Macs, antique Mac of the day, profiles of said antique Macs etc.
The website also has very interesting articles about using the new Macintoshes, stories of folks who have moved from the Windows to the Mac world and various opinion pieces.
Charles Moore runs Low End Mac and he has a recent piece entitled: “That Old Mac Magic Isn’t Gone, but It Is Fading” .
He concludes the article by saying:
The Mac is now close to mainstream, and whatever else it is, the mainstream is not magic.
This is really interesting.
Apple has been using the “Think Different” concept in its advertising for many years. The old “computer for the rest of us” slogan from 1984 was just the beginning of that trend. In a way, it was a David-vs-Goliath, support-the-underdog appeal. It was also an appeal to the rebel in many of us: why be like everyone else when you can be different? Indeed, even the recent PC guy vs Mac guy advertisements imply this: the PC guy is dressed up all conservatively while the Mac guy is casual, hip and progressive (in the non-political sense).
This positioning has been effective. Macintosh sales have been very robust, especially among the don’t-want-to-be-like-my-parents, cool-is-everything college crowd. A recent report(from JPMorgan) went as far as to state that, unlike the other PC manufacturers, Apple sales will not be affected by the currrent period of economic uncertainty.
Unfortunately, the end result is that owning a Mac no longer let you stand out as much as before. Futhermore, with the move to Intel architecture, Macs are now even more like the average Windows PC, with the only difference being that the Macs come with a different operating system.
This reduction in “status” can be seen in resale values. In the past, Macintoshes kept their values very well. Owning a Mac was like owning a Lexus. I sold my two year-old, second-hand 12″ PowerBook for just $100 less than the price I paid for it. In contrast, my fall 2007 MacBook is probably worth less than $800 (almost half its original value). Why? Because Apple sells a refurbished MacBook with slightly more advanced features for less than $900.
The changing perception of Mac ownership and increased market share means that Apple will have to review some aspects of its positioning soon. It will be hard to show that you are “different” if almost everyone else has the same computer.