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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Monday, June 10, 2002
17:02 - Wow, this is gutsy stuff.
http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/index2.html

(top) link

Here's a whole section of the "Reasons to Switch" site that had been sort of hidden under a "More Frequently Asked Questions" link.

There's tons of stuff here. Fully illustrated, side-by-side comparisons of the iApps versus their Windows competitors, including subjective cheap-shots about the latter's interfaces and feature sets and licensing terms and so on. Compatibility lists for digital cameras, mice, CD-RW drives, all kinds of peripherals. Application comparisons (like Office).

What gets me most is the iApp pages. This is the most shameless, barefaced attack on Windows at the software level that I've ever seen from Apple (who has formerly relied on vague homilies about how the Apple software is "great" and "easy to use") Finally they're laying out the cards so Windows people can see the comparisons for themselves. There's a lot of editorializing: If you want to do an and/or search [in WMP], an exact search, a string search etc. (great for databasing, but… music?) And If you decide you want to change the order of the buttons on your menu [in MyDVD], it’s easy to do. Start over. There's also a fair amount of marketing-ese on the Apple side. It's like a combination of the hype-packed terminology found on the product pages and direct UI critique of competition like Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker. Whether the comparisons are misleading and biased is not really up for question-- obviously it's tilted toward the Apple products (the Windows software doesn't get screenshots, and the space is used for the aforementioned cheap-shots about things like how you have to pay for an upgrade to WMP in order to import MP3s, and how Windows Movie maker doesn't export video in DV format or do lossless editing). But this is the kind of marketing that sells product. It's dispensing with the fair-play and charging into the brush on the competition's own terms. Bill must not be terribly happy today.

Notably, though, these comparison pages don't seem to say a word about the Mac's performance being better-- presumably because they're comparing Macs (of any speed) to Wintel PCs (of any speed), so speed comparisons are sort of meaningless. Instead, they're letting the user letters do the talking-- and many of them do say they found the Mac to be faster. (Than their two-year-old PCs, no doubt, but still the message is clear.)

This is a big step for Apple. It's bold and audacious, and I hope it doesn't end up backfiring on them somehow. But it's exhilarating to see something like this get off the ground. Twenty Percent Ho!


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© Brian Tiemann