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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  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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Wednesday, June 12, 2002
21:10 - Some will say...

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There are hundreds of Mac-related websites out on the Net. Many of them, like MacKiDo in part, are dedicated to debunking myths about the Mac (like "Apple is going out of business" and "Macs can't be networked" and "Apple funds international terrorism" or whatever is the most popular one of the day).

I considered having a page like that on my site, explaining point-for-point why I use Macs. But I decided not to. Why?

Because people have read all of my arguments before. By the fifteenth time you see a page dicussing the Megahertz Myth or Type/Creator codes, your eyes have glazed over-- and if by that point you haven't been convinced that Macs are worth a second look, another such page isn't going to help.

But the urge is still there. We feel compelled to do Apple's secondary marketing, to evangelize Macs to our friends, to wear our iPods as conspicuously as possible (and show them to anybody who will stand still) and to demonstrate Macs in electronics stores to uncertain browsing customers, unwilling to leave that job to the employees of the store.

Some (within the community) will say that that is indicative for absolutely certain of the vitality of the Mac platform and the company behind it, and that we'll sooner see Yamaha go out of business than Apple.

But some will say that the fact that so many people so fervently want to defend the Mac means that deep down, we're deeply insecure and uncertain about Apple's future, and we think that the louder we toot our horns, the longer reality will be kept at bay. As long as we keep patting each other on the back and telling each other how great we are, it won't matter that the world has passed us by and not missed us one bit.

To that I say codswallop-- and not because I think it's not true. I think it is true that there's a whole lot of circle-jerking going on in the Mac community. But the trouble is that zealotry is so hard to tell from genuine well-informed opinion and evangelism.

Want to get snubbed hard? Find a reporter who has written an article that Rails Against Windows, yowling about how hard it is to use and how horrible the Registry is and everything. Drop him an e-mail noting that the Mac has no Registry, and that installing and deinstalling applications is no more difficult than dragging a single icon from one place to another. Then, when he turns out to actually know a good deal about Macs and how they have a number of problems of their own, witness the tone with which he brushes you off with two or three sentences about "Apple zealots who mail him with exhortations to buy a Mac". (Yes, voice of experience.) Be dumbfounded, then ponder writing a much more detailed response-- but then stop, realizing how thin a line that distinction is.

It's one thing to say that "Apple r00lz and WinBl0zw Dr00lz!" all over a website. But it's another to sit and analyze all the pros and cons of the situation, draw detailed conclusions, and then present them in some kind of online context without being lumped in with the preceding group.

Take myths, for example, like the one about Apple going out of business. Amiga people still linger about, claiming that the Amiga will rise again, and that the machines they made in 1991 are still perfectly serviceable today. How do we address the claim that Apple is going the same way, without appearing to be the same kind of people?

Some markets tend naturally toward monopolies. These are usually the really-big-ticket markets, the utilities and public services. Electric power and phone service are natural monopolies. No new companies can get into the market, and once one company turns into a minority and becomes marginalized, it's doomed. But other markets are anything but; with low buy-in for new competition, the next market leader in flashlights or donuts can bubble up from nowhere overnight.

Technology is one of the latter-- especially software, especially today. The "next big thing" is always just as likely to come from some genius in college as it is to come from Microsoft or HP. MP3 players tend to be made by companies that nobody had ever heard of a few years ago, if they even existed (SonicBlue, Archos); video cards are in a market where the leader position is only something that can be held onto for a year or two before someone else comes out of nowhere and kicks the rest into a ditch.

Remember Conn? They were the biggest maker of musical instruments in the country back in the 50s (MST3K fans who with horror remember the "Mister Be Natural" short will recognize the name and shriek.) But once the Japanese companies came on the scene, Conn became relegated to a tiny sliver of the market-- I'm told they still exist, though their products are dirt-cheap and piss-poor quality. Still, musical instruments are a market that can support lots of competition; all it takes to make and sell a trumpet is some know-how and a few pieces of equipment and some raw materials. It isn't like making a car, where you have to be a giant corporation just to enter the market. Besides, Conn was able to revamp its business plan so that it didn't need to be the undisputed market leader in order to make money for its shareholders; it can coexist with Yamaha, make money on a certain segment of the market, and hopefully expand out from there. Southwest Airlines did the same thing, improbably, starting out with three local routes in Texas and expanding beyond all expectation purely through a novel concept: dispensing with amenities and running what amounted to a bus line with mini-skirts, for rock-bottom prices. Now they're a gigantic success story, the only airline that didn't lose money after 9/11.

I don't think computers are a market that tends toward monopoly. There are some mitigating factors (like the requirement for interoperability) to the matter, but there is no reason why the entire world has to be standardized on a single platform. Granted, when it's a near monopoly, software makers have a hard time justifying creating versions of their products for the bit players, and so those bit players get further marginalized in markets like business. And so it's easy to imagine that once a company drops to below, say, 3% market share, the number of companies making software for it will drop below critical mass, and that platform will stagnate and die.

But as it turns out, software doesn't quite work that way-- specifically because of the low-barrier-to-entry nature of the software market. Whole companies, for example, make very healthy business cases making Mac-only software, and all kinds of other companies are perfectly healthy putting out the extra effort to produce Linux and Solaris versions of their products. It's only mismanaged software companies which are unable to maintain a business case for making their products multiplatform. Sometimes it's a necessity to kill off a minority platform version, depending on the company's specific circumstances, and it does help if the minority company makes life easy for the developer by providing a platform which is easy to develop for-- but a well-designed port only takes a few engineers and a few months, and the numbers usually work out such that it's worth the investment.

Besides, software companies are quick to jump when the wind changes direction. Now that the Mac is a hot platform again, software companies left and right are bringing out updated OS X versions of their software, after letting it stagnate under OS 9 for years. And more and more companies are emerging as game-porting houses, bringing more games than ever before onto the Mac side-- when those games aren't made dual-platform from the outset.

But the fact does remain that few Macs exist in the marketplace, and so they're marginalized in the public perception. Advertising is the only way to combat that, and the retail stores in high-traffic, high-income malls-- and now the in-your-face marketing campaign unveiled on Monday-- are two prongs to that attack. Apple is profitable, but they still need to grow that market share in order to stimulate their stock price and lure back more software developers, whose absence is not the kiss of death-- but does make things inconvenient.

So when people assume that just because Apple is small, they're doomed-- there really is more than Amiga-esque raving behind the defense against that assumption. It's very difficult for those of us in the community to see the importance of distinguishing between the two stances, and to understand the perceptions of the opposition and how not to play into their hands. That, I believe, is really at the heart of Apple's problems-- Mac Zealotry, or the perception of Mac Zealotry, drives away more people than it attracts.



Whew... this turned out a lot longer than I thought it would, and all because I had to get that "Mister Be Natural" reference in there.

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© Brian Tiemann