The Apple Magic

Apr 12 2008 Published by Ben Chong under Business, Marketing, Product

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.

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Apple: Surprising the user

Apr 10 2008 Published by Ben Chong under Business, Marketing, Product, The Daily Geek

And I am not referring to that blue screen of surprise that earlier versions of Windows are famous for.

Increasing numbers of people are shopping online. Usually, at the end of the shopping process, after you have entered your credit card information, you get a web page that confirms your purchase and includes any additional information to track or use the purchase e.g. order number, software registration code.

Common sense tells you that you should print out the web page and save it “just in case”.

Trouble is, you either end up with yet-another sheet of paper to misplace or you are at the airport with no access to a printer.

Here’s where Apple continues to pleasantly surprise.

OS X has always had the ability to print to PDF files (unlike Windows). This means that you don’t need to fork out mucho $$$$ for a copy of Adobe Acrobat to generate PDF files.  All you need to do is to print the document and then select the option to route the output to a PDF file.

With Leopard, Apple has gone one step further by automating the creation of the PDF file and where to place it. See the screenshot below.

If you just made an online purchase, all you need to do is to print out that last order confirmation page, click on the PDF button and select the “Print PDF to Web Receipts Folder” option. The confirmation web page is automatically converted to a PDF file, and saved to that folder, which is found in your Documents folder.

The screenshot below is of my online registration for the Santa Cruz Wharf-to-Wharf race. The PDF file is saved as “SignMeUp.com – Payment – Wharf to Wharf Race 2008″. How is that for a totally meaningful file name?

Rather than spending years coming up with a whiz-bang Windows Vista equivalent, Apple concentrated on features that actually makes sense to the average user. That is why as I continue to use my MacBook Pro full-time (work, school etc), I continue to be amazed at all the new stuff that I can do.

When Windows tries to be smart, it feels paternalistic: that it knows better than you and you spend time arguing with it.

OS X, on the other hand, makes you feel smart because you can now do all this new stuff!

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