8 posts tagged “apple”

I am surprised I didn't comment on Net Applications. About two months ago at the start of August, Net Applications announced that its previously reported usage share numbers were erroneous, but without going into further detail publicly. This came after they never published its June report, which would have normally been released at the start of July. I did talk about it elsewhere, but not here. After a couple of comments in various places, I forgot about it just as most others have. I didn't have reason to think about it again.

Not until Josh Marshall brought it back up.

In reporting the statistics for visitors to his website, Talking Points Memo, he repeated that dubious statistic: "about 10% of people [use] Macs". It's not his error, and the statistic is an aside to his actual point. But it shows how the internet can continue to spread questionable information, even after it has been corrected. Though in this case, the correction came eight months later. In fact, this misinformation was compounded by more misinformation for six additional months. Actually, the questionable methodology was driving reporting for years.

These reports could have driven the behavior of others. It might have induced more coverage of Macs in the regular tech press and even the general press. That might have encouraged more people to buy Macs. That might have caused Microsoft to panic and begin to hammer back with advertising. That might have even encouraged hackers and criminals to start to look for ways to attack OS X.

Now, rereading the piece written by Philip Elmer-DeWitt of CNNMoney/Fortune comes an allegation more troubling. According to Net Applications, the problems in its data come simply from sampling errors. It says that they have been undersampling international traffic, thus magnifying American trends, thus the general overreporting of usage of Apple products. Howver, in what is essentially a footnote to the piece not followed upon, a few people commenting at Geek.com allege that NetApplication adjusts the data for the benefit of its clients. This is a far more damning accusation. For rather than misakes being made, NetApplications is accused of essentially cooking the books. This is a question that needs to be looked into.

MacDailyNews: "Apple legal forces Microsoft to stop falsely advertising MacBook Pro price."
Except, no they didn't. As of today, no advertisements were pulled. Just five minutes ago, Lisa and Jackson appeared during a break in Letterman. Never mind that the point of the ads still stand.

Though I guess we should thank Apple for the new Microsoft ad. And the continuation of the campaign until the end of time. . .

Christopher Tozzi writes an interesting piece over the pitfalls of negative advertising. According to Glyn Moody at Computerworld, people who are dissatisfied with Windows Vista are opting to stay with Windows XP. However, he takes this a step too far in asserting that this will lead people to Linux. Partly because Linux has more than its share of problems, but the real reason, as Tozzi points out, is that most of the arguments people use aren't in favor for using Linux. Like with negative political advertising, while it may drive potential voters away from the targeted candidate, it won't necessarily drive them to you. Now, in politics driving down the other guy's turnout can provide you with a win. But in commerce, turnout is immaterial.

This is my issue with the last set of "I'm a Mac" commercials. They existed solely to criticize the opponent. The "Bake Sale" ad, which I linked to in the previous post presented no reason for me to use a Mac. Apple did not try to appeal to me. Rather, it left me with a negative opinion of the company.

I understand John Gruber's disdain of the term "Cult of Mac". It can be used to imply that nobody who buys a Macintosh computer, or any Apple product, does so for pragmatic or rational reasons. However, Apple has most successfully built and harnessed something that can be compared to a cult.

[Mark] Lindstrom, a marketing guru who advises everyone from fast-food companies to drugmakers, partnered with Oxford scientists to conduct a three-year, $7 million study scanning the brains of 2,000 people while they were shown various marketing strategies. What they found surprised them. In one of the most startling examples, the researchers scanned brains while the subjects were exposed to images of popular brands and religious icons.

Lindstrom wrote: "The room went dark and the images began to flicker past: A bottle of Coca-Cola. The Pope. An iPod. A can of Red Bull. Rosary beads. A Ferrari sports car. The eBay logo. Mother Teresa. An American Express card. The BP sign. A photograph of children playing. The Microsoft logo."

When Lindstrom and the researchers analyzed the results, they noted that strong brands fired up activity in parts of the brain controlling memory, emotion and decision-making. That was expected. But then they compared those results with what happened when the subjects looked at religious images. To their surprise, "their brains registered the exact same patterns of activity," Lindstrom wrote. "Bottom line, there was no discernible difference between the way the subjects' brains reacted to powerful brands and the way they reacted to religious icons and figures."

— How Marketing Tricks You, and How to Beat It.

Of course, at the article shows Apple isn't alone in doing it. They are just one of the most successful at it. In fact, that very Martin Lindstrom has distilled it into nine steps of successful myth making for Ad Age magazine. Looking at the list, Apple succeeds with every single bullet point!

• A Clear Vision: Summarized by Lindstrom's piece as such: "Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them." If you're less a fan of haliography, then just say Steve Job's vision guides Apple in everything it does.
• A Sense of Belonging: Partly cultivated (The MacWorld Expo, helping launch various Mac User Groups, holding events at Apple Stores [see more on the stores below]), and partly organic (think of all of the Mac specific websites and publications that exist), enhanced very much by the crisis of the 90s (see below), Mac users have come to see themselves as belonging to a movement greater than themselves.
• An Enemy: Apple's most famous ad buy was the 1984 Superbowl commercial, where a rebel throws a hammer at the screen of a Big Brother figure. Then, the enemy was IBM. Since 1995, that enemy has been Microsoft whose Windows operating system is seen to have stolen the ease of use GUI concepts from Apple. That so-called theft been punished by an overwhelming marketshare in the computer desktop market. The rise of Windows nearly killed Apple, but it gave the Mac community its sense of embattlement and a enemy to hate.
• Sensory Appeal: This can mean one of several things here. If you think of an Apple Store, the interior is instantly recognisable to the point of being recently parodied by The Simpsons. Though I can extended it to the products itself. Steve Jobs famously described the interface of Mac OS X as lickable. Funny as that is, the point is Apple pays extraordinary amounts of attention to how their products look. You will not mistake an iMac for any other computer.When most people think of MP3 players, they now imagine an iPod. Jonathan Ive can be described as the second most important person at Apple.
• Storytelling: Folklore.org is the Old Testiment to the Apple story, but Apple is great at cultivating new myths for today's believer. Microsoft commentator Paul Thurrott expressed frustration over one particular story. The ad implies Microsoft is spending money on a marketing campaign rather than fixing its OS. Of course, that isn't true, given the release of "Service Pack 1" back in the spring, and continuing work on Service Pack 2. (And of course, bug fixes are released monthly from Microsoft.) And the real truth is that software development for everything but dead products (like WordPerfect) is continuous revision, refinement and repair, punctuated by release. The current version of OS X ("Leopard") is on its fifth revision since its release about 13 months ago. That version of OS X is itself the sixth since it was released in 2001. But, to most folks, Vista is irredeemably broken and is being abandoned in favor for Seven. Nobody describes Apple abandoning Leopard for Snow Leopard. In fact, both are moderate revisions on the current OS.
  
  Apologies. I allowed myself to get sidetracked on a specific detail rather than looking at the overall point. Apple is excellent at storytelling. It's the innovative company that revolutionize markets. It's a story that the company will repeat at every opportunity. (Along with the implication that all other companies are vultures that will steal its innovations.) And they use the standard PR game of granting access to friendly organizations and freezing out others. The judicious use of press releases (like "Thoughts on Music" or the "Open iPhone Letter") have soothed consumer anger. This allows Apple to do things like sell DRM protected media but be seen as being against DRM.
• Grandeur: Apple holds press events for revisions to its product lines. They invite reporters to a hall, where Steve Jobs will appear on stage, recall for the audience how the history of Apple innovation, and then introduce with great fanfare the newest products. The largest such event is "Macworld", where the Steve Jobs keynote serves as the State of the Apple Address. The press eats this up. The community eats this up (see "Sense of Belonging"). Very few companies can get away with this, but Steve Jobs is a rock star in this arena.
  
• Evangelism: Guy Kawasaski! However, much of that evangelism today comes from fellow Mac users. Success in this helps create an even stronger sense of belonging.
• Symbols: From the Lindstrom's article: "Examine an iPod, and you'll have problems finding the Apple logo." I don't know what iPod he uses, but on every one I've seen, the logo is large, right on the back. That said, he is right enough that the iPod itself has become a symbol just as strong as the Apple logo.
• Rituals: "Rituals build brands," he say. This one seems more likely to come from the grassroots than from above. I do not think "Box opening celebrations" came from above, but Apple does its best to make it feel special.

How many computers do you have in your house? 
Submitted by Foomper.

And segueing from my previous post to the Q of the D, I actually have 5 computers, but only three of them actually work. I am composing this post on a 15" Toshiba Satellite M35X-S111, which alternates between running Windows XP Home and Ubuntu Linux (the only Linux compatible with my PCMCIA wireless card). Memory was upgraded from standard 256 to 768MB. The original 40GB HD failed two months ago, so was replaced with a 60GB model. This computer was bought in an emergency to replace an older Toshiba, whose DVD drive died.

Mentioned in the previous post was the 12" 600MHz G3 iBook, which came as a gift after the original owner replaced it with a G4 iBook. The G3 has been upgraded from 128 to 384MB of RAM. It has a 20GB drive and an internal 802.11b wireless card (Apple brands these things "Airport"). It currently runs OS X 10.4, which may possibly be the last version that will run on it, if the rumors of Leopard requiring at minimum of a G4 processor are true. Both the working Toshiba and the iBook have what Apple would brand a "Combo drive" (reads DVDs, reads and writes CDs).

My desktop is a build-it-yourself project in-progress since 2002. A 1.8GHz AMD Athlon XP+ also with 768MB of RAM connected to a 17" flat panel monitor. It carries a 160GB drive, and a dual-layer DVD writer from HP. A second dual layer DVD writer from Sony awaits unopened in the box. A 256MB AGP Nvidia graphics card was the latest upgrade.

The two non-working machines are older notebooks. The Toshiba with the dead optical drive had earlier been giving me grief. The 1805-S204 was one of the models with the faulty LCD FL inverter that made it subject to a class-action settlement. (Note: The iBook had its own settlement regarding a faulty logic board, but it was repaired before I received it.) The one before that is a WinME era Compaq which "works" if you can balance it just right, since the battery cover is missing, and the battery no longer stays in. And if you wonder why I'm somewhat dismissive about notebooks, this is why.

Although I do think the company has a little too much in common with a petulant child, Apple Computer does make nice looking notebook computers. Today, they finally grant my wish and released 64-bit notebook computers. That said, as of today, it is still two-grand to get in on the ground floor with a 15" 2.16GHz Core 2 with 1GB of RAM. ($1800, with college discount). Over at Dell, I can build a "similar" system (meaning I can dump stuff I don't want, like the webcam and use the savings to get something more worthwhile, like a 256MB NVidia card [vs the 128MB ATI card on Apple's]) and it will only cost me just under $1700. Of course, with Dell, I run the risk of them not shipping the thing at all. Or the later risk of fighting with Dell support. (And with this many consecutive links, we will get to see if Vox is made of the stronger stuff.)

Of course, now you're all probably wondering why I so easily through aside my $1000 soft limit? Well, I figure I can hold out two months and save up the difference. (Shop after Christmas)  Although I do believe notebooks are far too fragile to be paying an premium for (the more fully powered the machine is, the hotter it will run, and with packing it all those hot electronics in a small form factor, the innards will wear out faster), I figure it might be worth it to set my sights up to the 2K limit. Especially since I can hold off on a desktop replacement for a while more.

But, that still leaves the issue of Windows Vista. Ironically, if I choose to buy Apple, it frees me from having to rush buying within a brief frame where Windows XP remains an option for notebooks -- I will have up to two years from release of Vista purchase XP. I've been testing Vista for a while, and I suspect that its overhead will cause quicker drain on battery life, and will leave machines running longer and harder than XP. Of course, the downside will be that if I do need Windows, I will have to purchase it at closer to full price. Not to say I'm uncomfortable with OS X. I have been using a used G3 iBook for over 18 month with it running 10.3 (Panther) and 10.4 (Tiger). Unfortunately, I fear the day I am stuck in Apple-only land will be the day I'm required to run some esoteric modelling program that either comes in a Windows-only format, or is a goofy-assed port from Unix/Linux that requires a beating to get running on OS X. (I really should get back to the land of graphic design.)

Well, I promise to keep you all updated, whether or not y'all want me to.