It’s official. Apple has sold more macs than ever before in their history, and is making an incredible amount of money doing so. (But yes they are still evil)
Why?
I believe there are three reasons for this: Macs are beautiful, and there is no reason to choose anymore, and the total experience.
Beautiful
There is a portion of the population who will never care if the things they use or own are beautiful, but for the rest of us, we are tempted by macs, ipods, and now iphones. I unwrapped my macbook air in front of my mother-in-law and she said “It’s beautiful…. can you say that about a computer?” YES you can. The way it looks when you actually use it is beautiful as well. The backgrounds, the screensavers that ship with it are amazing to look at. And of course since Apple sells both the hardware and the software there is a tight integration and optimization that happens, making the total package fit together seemlessly and work easily.
No Need to Choose
Yup, with whatever flavor of virtualization your prefer, VMWare, Paralells, or even bootcamp, you still get to have all your Windows apps, should you need or want to. Of course there is MSOffice for the Mac, so really the only thing that people MUST have windows for these days is almost always a niche program, something their work requires, or something that is just indispensable.
Total Experience
From the amazing sense of place that Apple stores have, to the packaging of the equipment, to the thought that goes into details. Of course they will charge you for it, both in the premium of the price (although arguable MacPro is dollar for dollar worth it in terms of processing power) and for the necessity of purchasing MobileMe to really enjoy the complete experiece. Apple understands that the average purchaser of their products is using more than one computer, and has a handheld device or three. We have an increasing amount of digital stuff that is highly valuable (not just emotionally, but financially as well). The ability to get at your stuff anywhere, back it up, keep it safe etc will only become more important, and MobileMe is an attempt (no word yet on whether it is truly) to help us do just that.
While I have no idea if Apple has hired ethnographic researchers to help them produce some of these things or not, it is clear they have some understanding of what many of the privileged ones (me being among them of course) want and think we need.
I agree with you on many points here. I am assuming that your “No Need to Choose” only implies that you can run Windows and OS X natively on the system. This has not been possible until the implementation of the Intel processors. Even with VMware, you were not able to use the full spectrum of Windows, making the Mac a bad choice for people who wanted to run complex native Windows applications, mainly high end non-cross platformed games. This may be one of the larger pushes for Macs being purchased, as the gaming industry is still quite large among younger purchasers. I would even venture forth to say that the aesthetics of the Apple products appeals to the younger crowd in this era.
Something interesting to think about. Thanks for the post
That is a good point about the younger crowds perhaps liking the aesthetics more.
I believe that it is because the younger ones have grown up with computers in a connected world that they have never really seen the computer or cell phone as “something for work” so it follows naturally that a cell phone and a computer can become a fashion item, not something that is serious, and that your employer is paying for (though they may be paying for it now that they are entering the workplace).
Many opeople, yes I would include myself in that crowd, only got cell phones when they started to come out because of work purposes, and even though I am an avid gamer, I also have always done more of my work on the computer, and justified the expense of it for work (though we all know that it was for the games).