The Optic White Halo Effect

[nfotxn]

Anecdotally speaking everyone I know who is in the market for a new PC also recently bought an iPod. All of whom (3) have since bought Mac portables on their own accord.

1. Aryka's iPod Mini prompted her to replace an aging eMachines desktop that never worked particularly well thanks in part to shitty UMA architecture and her lack of ability or desire to delouse it of spyware on a daily basis. Her 12" iBook is reliable, small and power efficient which works into her busy lifestyle that includes far too much international travel. Also she works in fashion and wouldn't be caught dead with anything other than perhaps a VAIO.
2. For a long time Josh had a Toshiba Tablet PC and an RCA Lyra. The Lyra had been replaced 3 times and the tablet admittedly "did nothing special" when it came to the practical purpose he'd bought it for: taking notes in a wood shop environment. Most of the time he used the keyboard and the pen was merely a glorified pointing device. The Lyra broke for the 3rd time and had been discontinued. Subsequently the 20gb iPod was the cheapest equivalent player at his place of purchase. The Tablet PC was stolen from his car and soon after replaced with a 15" Powerbook for $1000 less than the purchase price of the tablet.
3. Aaron's HP Pavillion was a lemon. A poor replacement for a stalwart IBM Thinkpad that was stolen replaced under insurance after being stolen. Interestingly enough bough Aaron and Josh bought their Notebooks from the same big box store who no longer sells Apple portables. Way to drive sales away!
   
   The first notebook made under the HP/Compaq merger it seemed to combine the worst of both worlds: uninspired design and shoddy build quality. For instance the heatsink/fan/CPU assembly was mounted surface inverted to the motherboard essentially facing down towards the ground. This would be an acceptable design if it were mechanically fastened however that was not the case. The only thing keeping the fan mounted to the CPU was a piece of thermal tape which soon came undone essentially, for all cooling purposes, negating the cooling all together. Other problems included an LCD backlight ballast and cable that was engineered in such a way as to be essentially defective after an mechanical use of the hinge that attaches the lid to the PC. Any engineer could clearly see that this machine was Built To Spill from the ground up.
   
   After buying a 40GB iPod he was anxious to try an Apple portable. The HP has since been replaced with a 14" iBook.

It's not to say that Apple hardware is necessarily infallible or superior technically to modern PCs, technically speaking they're kinda behind the times. I terms of raw computing performance the PowerPC G4 is pretty clunky compared to modern portable x86 archtectures. But it's power efficient and the OS X architecture leverages GPU performance in a big way.

More so I think the problem with x86 architecture running Windows is clear customer dissatisfaction centring primarily around poor build quality resulting in poor warranty honour at points of purchase and system security for which nobody will take blame. Technically Microsoft should and does take responsibility for Windows security flaws of late and with a little effort will help you to fix and secure your copy of Windows easily, given you own a legitimate license. However their real world presence is so minute that most Normal People don't have that level of communication with the company. All they know is that hackers are in their computer or some such paranoia. This is a PR H-bomb that has gone off a while ago and customers seem to be reacting in an unfavourable way for the company.

The feeling seems to be from these Windows users, all of whom 5 years ago would have openly mocked Macs, is that when their PC breaks they have nobody to turn to. Sure their geeky friends (me and others) used to be there for minor things. But as we get older, wiser and crankier we refuse to sit and watch Ad-aware scan and Windows Update install patches. As far as organizations Microsoft, HP, Dell, Toshiba... all highly disaggregate 'modern' companies, have no real market presence on a retail level. Ephemeral and aloof in a world where lots of people prefer to buy large purchases at retail and in person. To these people I know and have seen come to distrust their PCs Apple represents, realistically or not, a centralized body without these problems. That is of course not the whole truth but outlines how cost cutting measures are losing customers for makers of PC hardware and software.

This is of course an industry wide problem. And I think most manufacturers would be wise to get a proportion of their support people OUT of call centres and into retail environments that cater to customer service. I think the parallels between the adolescent computer industry and more mature auto industry are pretty striking. Back in the day dealerships would turn away repair business to private garages that sometimes did dubious work for much less cost and hassle. Today dealerships go out of their way to provide customer service for repairs and even sales of used vehicles that are reliable and supported. These things strengthen satisfaction with products which is a serious problem with many many many commodity consumer goods.

Comments

[flintlodger.livejournal.com]

The feeling seems to be from these Windows users, all of whom 5 years ago would have openly mocked Macs...

thank you for saying that!

[bookbear.livejournal.com]

Wow, this ws vry helpful. I have an old PC desktop now, and will be buying a laptop in the next couple of months. Many friends pointing me to an Apple.

Thanks for this info.

[durabear]

As you know, I'm heading that way myself....

About 99% certain that I'll end up with the PowerBook...

[bearsgonewild.livejournal.com]

OMGITOTALLYWANNA spell my name Aryk now!

You must introduce me to your fashionfriend.

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Interesting... you're essentially preaching the power of the brand.

This post has really got me thinking about Apple and how Macs really do make things simpler, generally by restricting choice down to a few options of hardware and applications. It is really difficult to make good decisions on what to buy in the PC world, and most buyers aren't aware of what they're buying, relying on the brand reputation. Apple brings a complete system together--hardware and apps, and makes it just all work seamlessly.

I also refuse to sit through endless spyware scans and Windows Updates... so I insist that people I deal with have a later model computer running Windows XP SP2, and if they don't then they should scoot off to Dell and buy a new PC for $400. I'm not saying that I won't support older folks, but Windows 98 and even 2000 (and God forbid Windows ME) are far past their prime.

Again, I don't think people are buying PowerBooks because they suit their needs better. Many commenters are saying "I'm dumping my old PC and getting a PowerBook!", but I bet many of them haven't even done a simple price comparison of (say) a Dell laptop vs that PowerBook, and also factored in how much new applications will cost.
They're buying on the strength of the Apple brand, which also has a social cachet.

One more thing needs to be mentioned--poor build quality *does* seem to be a hallmark of many recent Powerbooks. Anecdotally speaking, I don't have a friend who hasn't had one in for repairs. And for all the posturing about Apple's great customer support, their warranties are by far the worst in the industry, they quickly drop support for older hardware and OS versions, and they impose an OS upgrade fee of $100 US pretty much every year.

[sinnabor.livejournal.com]

I don't have a friend who hasn't had one in for repairs.

[Waves hand.] Neither of my two 15" powerbooks have been in for repairs.

Now, granted, the first one had problems out of the box. But it was one of the first available, shipped from Taiwan, and they replaced it overnight.

My current aluminum 15" has been solid.

[patrock.livejournal.com]

The 12" aluminum Powerbooks are complete lemons. I bought one a year and a half ago, went through 3 hard drives, a broken lid hasp and it warped all to hell from the machines heat. It was still under it's year warranty but they refused to fix it because of the warps. It's dead now.

So now, I'm on #2 12" Powerbook, which I bought really damn cheap from a friend because the hard drive died in it, it was also less than a year old and was refused by Apple. It is also warped. Since I have become the master ninja repair bitch of 12' powerbooks, I put a 7200rpm drive and all the ram I could find...... It seems to be holding up ok ..... but, the lid is not closing properly. And these are two different generations of machines.

Do you know how much fucking tape is in one of these things?.....

Just Say No and hold out for 3 more inches of Mac ..... or a 12" ibook

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Your Powerbook's been in for repair--and the solution was to swap it out for another. And if anything, stuff that's first off the line should get extra quality control scrutiny.

If anything, that response shows even more the Power of Apple brand... deflecting blame from clean pure Apple and blaming the first off the line and their Taiwanese manufacturer. A very powerful Reality Distortion Field.

Other friends problems: bad DVD drives. Bad hinges. Bad backlights. An actual comment from a friend: "Powerbooks are total ass. I wish I had bought a Sony laptop."

[sinnabor.livejournal.com]

If anything, that response shows even more the Power of Apple brand... deflecting blame from clean pure Apple and blaming the first off the line and their Taiwanese manufacturer.

What? No, I wasn't blaming the Taiwan manufacturer, just saying that early revisions of just about anything are more likely to have problems. It also wasn't a reliability problem, it was a quality control problem. It was one of the first 15" TiBooks. I also (conveniently) failed to mention that the DVD drive was failing near the end of its three years with me, before I traded it in on the new AlBook. The new AlBook has been flawless.

But, really, I don't even see that as a brand issue. It's human nature to forgive faults in complex products that endear themselves to us otherwise. The more mediocre and awkward the design of a product is, the more it has to execute the basics perfectly or it will be discarded. The MINI is a great example. Least reliable small car made, extremely high owner satisfaction. It's a new brand, so they're not trading on an existing brand background, mostly just the product itself.

I haven't seen any good stats on how Apple's hardware failures compare to PC manufacturers, so I'm not willing to accept that they're crap based on random anecdotal evidence. I wonder if Apple's implicit "it will all just work" promise actually exaggerates their hardware failures by turning users into louder whiners. (Is there even a community of Toshiba laptop owners to whine to about what a piece of shit your Toshiba laptop is? Or do they just know that when they buy it?)

[sinnabor.livejournal.com]

Huh. Very astute.

I also have two - no, three - friends who recently ditched PC's for Macs. Two PowerBooks, one Mini.

I think one of the things that assists this transition is that most computer usage falls into a small number of categories these days - email, IM, web, photo, music - all of which are handled well enough by Macintoshes. The availability of Random Program X is less relevant, because the utility of computers are well established.

And the Apple Stores are sweet. They've treated me well, even for a warrantee exchange with no receipt or box. The implied promise is that if you buy all Apple stuff, they're responsible for it all working together, and they generally deliver that pretty well.

I should buy Apple stock.

[teljanin.livejournal.com]

Hmm..I switched to Apple about a year and a half ago. I'm pretty pleased. I enjoy my iBook for it's lightweight easy to use features. However, Matt and I both had identical ibooks purchased about the same time. Only one is still working. The one that works has some problems with the thinkpad or whatever it's called. Basically we have to use an attached mouse. The older one has the same problem but much worse. Both of these things happened after the warranty ran out and apple insists that we would have to replace something that would cost 250 bucks. So, it's not worth it. That said, 2 out of 3 ibooks have only last just over a year. Kind of disconcerting when you don't have a ton of cash set aside to buy a new one. I was lucky to have enough to get my updated iBook in november.

The only other problem I have is that I knew sooooo much more about everything with Pc's than I do with macs. I haven't taken the time to learn much of anything (bad user) and in the short time it has been since I stopped with windows based systems I have pretty much forgotten what I knew. Although, I could probably still assemble a system from scratch... I just can't handle too many difficulties.

Oh and another thing. Being the junky WOW gamer I am, I dream of owning a pimped out system and the costs all point to a stupid pc. Macs would cost entirely too much. ugh

[(Anonymous)]

Admittedly All it would have taken me to be satisfied is a small form-factor portable laptop that didn't randomly fail, fall apart, and melt.

However, I have to say the G4 ibook is a *tad* on the slow side compared to other new computers I've seen. Especially if I have P2P or iTunes running it grinds right down. I'm hoping this will be corrected with a memory upgrade, but I have to say apples 256mB ship RAM is unimpressive.

-Aaron

[(Anonymous)]

An upgrade to 512 megs will do wonders. It makes a hell of a difference with OS X.