Apple's new "switch to Mac OS" campaign...

[FOBSIDE]

Link

this is hardly the best approach to knowledgable computer users, like 98% of the people in these forums, but 90% of the computer users out there arent that learned when it comes to computers. this might be a good campaign. actually, one of the first things i found out when i bought my first apple a little over a year ago was how simple it could be to use. you can do a lot with it, but if youre content emailing, surfing the web, and listening to music, its so easy. their iPhoto software being able to publish pictures to the web or email photos easily is a big plus. i know my mom is asking how to publish web pages with photo albums.

what do you guys think? i believe its a good OS and a good campaign directed towards people that dont know computers very well.

 

[smp]

The first computers that I ever used were the really old II's ... MacPaint etc.

I now work in a school, where we have both mac and PC labs .. even though I am a "PC guy" .. I do like Macs and I wouldn't mind getting one if they weren't so expensive, I am interested in OSX ... I hate OS9 though, POS as far as i'm concerned. I'm actually posting this off of one of those new imacs, and I like the machine a lot.
I don't know about their campaign though, i hate all forms of advertising and apple is not above my resentment.

 

[c0rv1d43]

Originally posted by: FOBSIDE
Link

...a good campaign directed towards people that dont know computers very well.

and a quote from the linked page:

You can do things on a Mac that PC users only dream about, and do them more easily, without giving up any of the compatibility with the PC world that you need.

Wow! That's laying it on pretty thick. I wonder which of my dreams about computing would be fulfilled if I went out and bought a Mac right now. Hmmmm. I'd probably find some things about it that I liked a lot. (I'm one of those guys who never met a computer he didn't like.) I'd probably also find some neato "creativity apps" to play with on the Mac. But they're applying that word "compatibility" in a pretty danged limited sense, if you ask me. I could agree with the statement IF compatibility simply means being able to move data back and forth in Office apps or being able to connect to PCs on a LAN. If you try to take it much farther than that -- I don't think so. I think that a lot of people would get pretty upset if they took that statement at face value only to find out just how "compatible" a Mac really is. Unsophisticated users have a way of expecting all of their old stuff to just work. Even if it's never worked right before! More sophisticated users know that even an upgrade within the same OS family can lead to all kinds of problems with legacy apps and hardware. The campaign might be targeted to be effective at getting unsophisticated users to switch, but I don't think it's very honest.

But, then again, we're talking about marketers.

- Collin

 

[Daxxax]

Apple's new "switch to crap OS" campaign...

 

[spyordie007]

To be totally honest if every PC was bought from MS and we didnt have the multitude of HW manufacturers that there is for them (only a few differant options like Mac has) than PC's would be as equally good (providing they all run XP and run software that has only met XP compatability tests from MS). If MS took this approch the world would be appauled.

I think this is a great campaign for Mac to take because they cater to 2 differant user groups:
1. Users (the ones that dont know allot about the machine, but do know how to turn it on)
2. Graphics professionals

the "users" group is the largest by far and they are trying to expand it with a marketing plan that targets those people, not ATF posters...

-Spy

 

[bugsysiegel]

I like the way they slam MS with the "blue screen of death" quip, then turn around and go "but look, MS Office runs on our system!" Gee, if MS sucks so bad, why doesn't Apple come out with their own office suite, oh yeah, they did, and MS beat it down like the beeeoch it was.

 

[Nothinman]

Apple's new "switch to crap OS" campaign...

We can tell who hasn't used OS X before...

Gee, if MS sucks so bad, why doesn't Apple come out with their own office suite, oh yeah, they did, and MS beat it down like the beeeoch it was.

As any one of many open source office devlopers will tell you, it's hard to compete when it's impossibe to write filters to import/export the competition's files, even more so when the competition already has 90% of the market.

 

[FOBSIDE]

Originally posted by: bugsysiegel
I like the way they slam MS with the "blue screen of death" quip, then turn around and go "but look, MS Office runs on our system!" Gee, if MS sucks so bad, why doesn't Apple come out with their own office suite, oh yeah, they did, and MS beat it down like the beeeoch it was.

even on Windows, people are afraid of other office suites. its not so much that Microsoft Office is the only thing that can be used. i do personally like it the best, because its what im used to, but there are other alternatives like open office. that "we run ms office" bit is to relieve peoples fears that somehow all their work is down the drain if they switch to mac os, which its not.

 

[spyordie007]

Hey now, let's not slam either MS or Apple to badly, they both have very good products, I run OS X on my Mac (and it rocks). I run Win XP on my PC (and it also rocks).

-Spy

 

[erikistired]

i'm running 602software's office package on my pc quite happily, and i can open excel/word files. so that doesn't really fly that well (this is a free download too).

i like os x tho, i'm nagging my wife to let me buy a loaded out g4 powerbook (yeah just under 4k, ouch) but i don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon.

~erik

 

[Nothinman]

i'm running 602software's office package on my pc quite happily, and i can open excel/word files. so that doesn't really fly that well (this is a free download too).

Sure basic stuff is easy, but once you get into tables and embedded objects it gets tricky. Gnumeric works great for the few Excel sheets I need to use, but for stupidly large ones others use where I work it loses formatting and other little things that just make it not a good replacement.

 

[wjsulliv]

For years I have greatly appreciated the efforts of Apple which drove the computer industry to new standards... USB, Firewire, etc.

However, I find it very funny that Apple appeared to (since the inception of the IMAC and IBOOK) give up on the speed and power war with PC's and focus on looking good and cute. Most of the girls I know think the MAC's are so cute. They would like a little red or blue one for themselves, until they use one and are disapointed that it doesn't function as well as their ugly off-white PC.

The point of why I chose to reply:
That was then, and this is now... OS X, based on UNIX. Bingo, Apple figured it out. When in doubt figure out what somebody else is doing successfully (a.k.a Linux) and see how that can help you. Now the MAC's appear to be impressively faster and have better performance... Unfortunately MAC zinged everybody again by making nothing forward compatable (mostly software) but hey, its not like MAC's are more expensive than PC's (oh... yeah they are... opps)

If I could get it running on an old system (like one that I have been told can't be upgraded beyond OS 8.1 or something like that) I would by OS X and an Apple. Until the prices drop on the new stuff that can run OS X, I'll stick to my PC...

But if anybody knows where to get a cheap MAC that I can install OS X on, please let me know. I would like to play with it.

 

[FOBSIDE]

Apple is able to afford killing off OS 9 and starting over because their user base isnt as large as Microsoft's. if it were as large as Microsoft, there is no way Apple could pull this off. i bet MS would love to rewrite it's OS from scratch but the applications won't let that happen. There's too many applications that run on the current OS code. Heck, there's even programs that only run in Windows 95.

 

[mastertech01]

Why can't they make a MAC OSX that will work on a PC? Why not compete with MS directly for the PC market? I would like to see a REAL alternative to MS, and one which could take away the monopoly of the PC market and bring prices down a bit. I certainly dont hate MS, and am satisfied with XP Pro, but I think MS would come down to earth a bit if like Intel, they had a real competitor to deal with. I dont believe Linux will ever make it.

I dont believe the majority of the PC market even considers benchmarking as a standard for their purchases. Functionality and stability are the primary considerations along with price for most anyone who has owned at least one PC.

 

[Nothinman]

Why can't they make a MAC OSX that will work on a PC? Why not compete with MS directly for the PC market?

Because Apple makes a lot of money off of the hardware.

Functionality and stability are the primary considerations along with price for most anyone who has owned at least one PC

For anyone who owned a previous PC and learned how to use it.

There's a lot of people that bought a PC just for AOL and if/when they go to buy a new one, will buy another 'AOL-Compatible' PC from BestBuy. MS has been able to force the barely functional and unstable Win9X down consumers throats for years and few of them learned how bad they got ripped off.

 

[ultimatebob]

I read their stories, and found most of them to be the garden variety "I didn't have the technical skills or patience to be a Windows user, so I took the easy way out and got a Mac" stories. That's OK for those people, I guess, but personally I like having a large selection of software or being able to purchase affordable hardware upgrades for my system.

You can also tell that many of these people are new to the Mac, because they seem to think that they've left all their computer problems behind. They think that Mac's never crash, need no maintence, and never need to be patched or updated. Guess what, I used to FIX Macs for living, and this mentality allowed Mac users to screw up their systems even worse than they could with a Windows machine. I ran into software conflicts, virus infections, overflowing temp folders and trash cans, badly fragmented hard drives, odd crashes that came out of nowhere, and hardware failures that were VERY expensive to fix. In other words, it was just supporting a PC, but with less useful debugging information and less documentation to help me out when things went wrong.

The only story that I liked was the one about the "Windows LAN Administrator", because it's one that I can relate to. Like him, the LAST thing that I feel like doing is having to screw with virus updates and security patches on my home computers after spending nine hours going the same thing at work. Unlike this guy, however, I know that switching to the Mac is just trading one set of problems for another. This poor fellow will most likely experience this firsthand when Internet Explorer starts "giving him the bomb" or he gets a "sad Mac" when he powers up his computer.

 

[FOBSIDE]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
but personally I like having a large selection of software or being able to purchase affordable hardware upgrades for my system.

They think that Mac's never crash, need no maintence, and never need to be patched or updated.

as for hardware, youre right. apple tend to use high end hardware meaning replacing with lesser hardware isnt really an option but there are lots of choices for hardware still. they just all happen to be high end. as for software, theres not much out there that you can do on a PC that you cant do on an Apple. software is almost identical for normal use. the differences come when you get into specializations. i know a lot of the engineering programs are made to run on Windows only, but at the same time some of the graphics and audio editing programs are special for Mac OS. it goes both ways.

i have never had OSX crash on me. applications will still quit unexpectedly, but very rarely. im not saying things dont go wrong, but much less often than in windows which i still use frequently. Apple has changed quite a bit over the years. much less fixing is needed in my experience. but i do agree that using an Apple computer doesnt solve all the problems out there and youre naive if you think it will. its just an awesome platform that i think people tend to ignore because of a lot of misconceptions and i think Apple is doing a good job of enlightening people to these misconceptions.