| Friday, June 14, 2002 |
13:42 - What Makes a Zealot?
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/02/06/13/1854211.shtml?tid=107
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The other day, the Gartner Group published the results of a study that concluded that from a Total Cost of Ownership standpoint, Macs are significantly cheaper to buy, own, operate, maintain, repair, and upgrade than PCs are. "Up to 36 percent more cost-effective", reads the report, which (like most Gartner studies) costs $95 for a copy (hence no direct link).
Someone posted regarding this story on Slashdot (follow the link), and it may as well have had an icon next to it of a bucket with CHUM printed on it. Slashdot, after all, is the nexus of ultra-budget-conscious Intel-hardware geek opinion; there's no way you can get away with claiming that Macs are cheaper than PCs without all the Linux geeks in the world whipping themselves up into a fervor with hardware price listings intended to prove that they can make a top-end computer, comparable to a $3000 one from Apple, with under $400. That's what they're all about, after all-- right? The whole point of Linux is effectively "free computing", and the lack of any requirement to have to spend any money on software.
There are a whole lot of people in the comments defending Apple, though, and providing real-world examples (from the business and home and education markets) that support the Gartner numbers. These arguments are all very much what we've seen before, nothing new here. But halfway down, you start seeing a different kind of argument being made. To paraphrase:
"I would buy a Mac tomorrow, I really would-- except for one deal-killing thing: the Mac Zealots."
Here we come to what is probably at the crux of the whole Mac-vs-PC debate: the smaller Apple's market share gets, the louder the Zealots get. And the Zealots are counterproductive. They drive away more potential business from Apple than they attract, though their only goal in life appears to be winning Mac converts. How can this be?
It's pretty simple, really. It's nothing new, and it's very human-nature. See, it's never really been about quality, or ease-of-use, or software availability, or DVD burning. It's been about Macs being different. The more the world standardizes on Windows, the more the Mac becomes seen as an outlying "freak" ghetto-- and no matter how many facts and studies the people in that ghetto can quote, and no matter how compelling their demonstrations and their visibly happier lifestyle is, Wintel users are made all the less likely to switch-- purely because of what the Mac world looks like:
A cult.
Let's think about this for a minute. Yes, all the jokes have already been made, about Steve Jobs being the David Koresh of the computer industry, about the legions of followers who dress like him and eat like him and worship the ground on which he walks. Yeah, yeah. But it goes beyond jokes, and I'd like to explore that a little bit. How are Mac Zealots similar to Religious Zealots? Really?
- We believe we have a "better way", and we want to advertise that fact
- We see unhappiness in the world around us (people who hate Windows), and we want them to be happier and live up to their full computing potential
- We want to reward the Company itself for its products, by winning more customers
We even use religious vocabulary: "winning converts", "proselytizing", "evangelism". We look at this in very much the way as an evangelical religious group does: we honestly believe that our way is better, and that other people would thank us in the long term if we could get them to See the Light.
What does this sound like? Mormons, if you ask me. And no matter how happy Mormons look, how compelling they can make their case, how much proof they can show that their way is better-- most of us resent the hell out of it.
It's the same way with the Mac. PC users know, deep down, that the Mac is probably better. (Why else would so many people be so adamant about plumping for it?) But the more their friends pressure them, the more they flaunt the virtues of their platform, the more the PC users are likely to simply dismiss it out of hand. It complicates things. They have a solution; they know it's not ideal, but what is, in this workaday world? Most PC users, even those who grudgingly acknowledge under pressure that the Mac offers an awfully attractive package, simply wish Apple would just hurry up and go out of business, so they can get on with their humdrum lives. At least it won't seem so humdrum if there aren't these freaks rubbing their noses in it all the time.
Again, it's all because Macs are "different". They're simply not what people are used to. Even the most tolerant and open-minded among us will have an aversion reaction to something that's different; it's nothing to be ashamed of, it's in our biology. It's how human societies evolved: we're wired to do pattern-matching on ourselves and our neighbors, and to formulate alliances based on commonalities between us and them. Similarly, we treat those who are different from us with initial distrust, because biologically they're less likely to be family, and more likely to kill you for your food. It's a genetic-survival thing-- we protect our own bloodline and try to drive away others. The Infinite Mind had a great article on that a while ago, read on NPR. We're wired to be racist. It's only in the last couple of hundred years that we've decided to actively override that hard-wiring through social consciousness; now that it's no longer evolutionarily beneficial to stick within our own kind, we may be able to move on and allow miscegenation to take place. ("May", I say, because on an evolutionary time-scale we're in a freakish spike of circumstances that may well pass in the blink of an eye-- a couple of thousand years, that is-- and return us all to a hunter-gatherer state where racism is again evolutionarily important.)
So it is with Apple. Let's look at how Macs have been regarded throughout history:
- 1984: When the Mac is first introduced, PC users dismiss it as a "toy" because of its icon-and-menu-driven interface, its upper-and-lower-case letters, and the fact that it can speak. Everybody knows, after all, that a "real computer" is command-line and can only produce beeps.
- 1990: As Windows 3.1 gains popularity, people ridicule the Mac because it's slow and monochrome. Apple jumps straight to 24-bit color while the PC market is using EGA graphics, but it takes them years to notice.
- 1995: Windows 95 is released, making the PC slow. Now people ridicule the Mac because of its one-button mouse, and claim that Macs can't be networked or read PC disks (both untrue). They also rail against how expensive Macs are (which is true). Why buy a Mac? Apple is going out of business.
- 1998: The affordable iMac is released, to widespread derision in the PC world. Everybody knows a "real computer" is a beige box, after all. Yet the entire consumer electronics industry is colorful and translucent within a year, every single computer shown in movies or on ergonomics posters is an iMac, and eMachines makes direct rip-offs of it. Now PC users ridicule the Mac because it doesn't have a floppy drive, even though the only thing they use one for is to reinstall Windows. Meanwhile, the iMac popularizes USB for the first time.
- 1999: The iBook is scorned as looking like a purse or a toilet seat, even though its design (and handle) makes it extremely durable and extremely portable. It also has AirPort, though nobody notices until Dell puts it in their laptops a year later and claims that they were the first to do so. PC users continue to ridicule Macs for not being networkable. (Meanwhile, OS 8-9 can mount drives remotely across the Internet.) The "Megahertz Myth" gains traction, and becomes another easy target for derision.
- 2000: The "Digital Hub" apps appear. iTunes has to be seen to be believed, and iMovie becomes the gold standard for home DV editing. PC users scoff at DV editing: Who would ever want to do THAT? iDVD brings DVD burning to the desktop for the first time ever. Who would ever want to do THAT? Now people ridicule the Mac for its old and unstable and drab-looking OS, now that Microsoft is making noises about moving the desktop OS market onto the NT/2000 line.
- 2001: OS X is released, addressing every complaint anybody has ever had about the Mac OS. But PC users ridicule it for being too colorful and slow. Subsequent releases make it much faster (when has that ever happened in the PC world?), and suddenly the whole UNIX user base is interested. But PC users still find things to complain about. Not enough games. Cutesy-looking hardware. That damn one-button mouse. Still too expensive. Apple is still going out of business (neat trick when they're making a profit). They're in a hardware dead-end with the PPC lineup, so don't buy a Mac-- in two years they'll be standing at the end of an alley, looking around uncertainly for the next PPC chip, which doesn't exist, and they'll be caught completely by surprise! Intel is the only way to go. They obviously have no plan for the future. They should port OS X and the iApps to Intel and make beige boxes! Macs suck! Everybody knows that. They can't be networked! They're monochrome! Windows XP rules, even though we hate it!
No company on Earth has ever been more diligent at addressing the market's complaints and requirements than Apple has. How frequently has Microsoft brought out some new innovative feature that genuinely enhances people's lives and creativity, or taken some decisive action to address a serious and long-standing concern on the part of their consumers? Why isn't that a determining factor in which company a buyer patronizes?
If we were all Vulcans, the above historical breakdown would be ludicrous. Logically speaking, the complaints that people have about Macs are spurious and keep being addressed in a way that never happens on the Wintel side. Unless your sole buying criteria are initial purchasing cost or software availability, it would be a no-brainer to go with a Mac.
But we're not Vulcans, and our subconscious tells us to use Windows. Yes, it sucks-- we all know that. But 95% of the market can't be wrong, can it? It's certainly easier to just go with the flow. Besides, what's the point of complaining about Windows' shortcomings? They won't get fixed-- or maybe they will. Who cares? It's much simpler to just learn to live with them than to fling ourselves into an orgy of oohing and aahing over a platform that takes such pains with its hardware and OS and applications as to make them works of art that are a joy to use. Who has time for that? I mean, look at these Mac people-- they love their Macs so much that their Macs become a way of life. You don't see us Windows users spending so much of our valuable time writing gigantic blog articles about how great Windows is, do you? We know it sucks, and we get on with our lives. You Mac Zealots are doing nothing but proving that having a better platform just makes you less productive.
....Hmm. And I suppose there's a point to be taken there. And that's really what I'm getting at: Mac Zealotry is a weird phenomenon. The true outspoken zealots may make up less than a percent of the computing world at large-- they're actually a small minority even within the Mac community-- but they're visible as all hell. (Notably, Linux Zealots make up a much larger segment of the Linux community-- because Linux is inherently designed to be a rebel's OS.) And when a PC user hears "Macs", he hears the shrieks of people like-- well, me, heh-- telling him that he's an unethical and brainwashed moron who's artificially limiting himself by using an inferior computing platform. And that makes him think, "Well, I don't care how good the Mac is. I ain't sharing a platform with him."
Am I saying that Mac evangelism is to blame for Apple's small market share and ever-unclear future? Only partially. Zealots have two effects. On one hand, yes, they tend to unnerve the very people they try to convince and convert, just like the Mormons on the doorstep with their gleaming smiles and their Dapper Dan hair and their smart pressed shirts and ties. (That's unnatural! Begone!) But on the other hand, it's because of the zealots that Apple still exists. That less-than-one-percent is responsible in no small part for buoying Apple's sales through the bleak times, for defending against the ridicule and slander and dismissal from the tech press and the general PC-using public, and (importantly) for creating what's become a very large network of websites committing to electronic permanence some of the foundational precepts that underlie our ideals as Mac users. The Mac community wouldn't be anywhere near as vibrant-- and, I daresay, neither would Apple-- without sites like MacSurfer, As the Apple Turns, MacInTouch, Think Secret, and MacKiDo. Zealotry doesn't entirely backfire-- it does do what it sets out to do, to a certain degree.
Just about everybody who works in technology probably has at least one friend or acquaintance who's a Mac user and is unceasingly "at him" to switch-- or at least to be suitably impressed by the things that the Mac can do. The Mac user might use "shame" tactics, demonstrating how the Mac is the platform that anyone who craves elegance in software design should be using. (Yeah, I know-- sorry.) The PC user is expected to ooh and aah, and being in that position makes people feel manipulated. So for most people, even though they might be impressed by the Mac, and even though they might honestly want to humor their Mac friend (hey, after all, he's a friend), the attitude of evangelism goes into the "con" column rather than the "pro". That's what we have to watch out for. Johnny, one of my co-workers, mentioned the other day how he has a friend who's been "working on him" for years, and is making slow but steady progress-- the friend thinks he's won a major victory by Johnny's recently buying an iPod. (Johnny doesn't think so-- he just really really likes the iPod. But he has slated a TiBook purchase for the near future.) The key to that is slow, steady, and non-confrontational advocacy, not zealotry. Nobody likes to feel preached to. Nobody likes to feel that their decision, their expertise, their entire technological experience is "wrong".
So why do I write all this Mac stuff here? Hey, I don't know-- I just find it interesting to do. I'm still astonished to find that a double-digit number of people are reading this site; I never expected more than myself and a few close friends to ever stumble across it. The purpose of this blog is for me to write down what's in my head so I can save it for later and find out what I was thinking on such-and-such a day. More often than not, I was surprised to discover-- because I never set out to focus on such a thing-- that what's on my mind is Mac stuff. I'm interested in finding out why I think the things I do on the subject, and this helps me organize my opinions. And if it succeeds in pleasing Mac-using readers or in convincing PC users that the Mac is worth a second look, so much the better.
I'm uninterested in being known as a Zealot. Even if I get labeled as one purely because Mac stuff makes up the majority of the content here, I'll fight that epithet. I try to cover as much negative Mac stuff as I do positive, and I try to explore the myriad sides of each given situation. As friends like Paul know, I'm often more of a devil's-advocate in one-on-one discussions than I am here-- I'm the one who has to be reassured by them that Apple isn't making some huge mistake by some move or other. I do have some goals-- I want to defend against slanderous attacks against Apple, like those that are frequently leveled in high-profile web forums, and I enjoy discussing Apple's prospects with people willing to engage in serious debate. I enjoy helping to spread the word about new products and good news. And I also enjoy trying to distill my feelings on Macs into opinion pieces that explain just what it is about their hardware and software that makes people like me willing to lay down our lives in order to see it survive.
Apple needs its zealots-- they've been around long enough that their existence must be factored into Apple's very business plan. But their influence is both a blessing and a curse, and Apple is succeeding today in winning back some market share in spite of them as much as because of them.
I hope this recent "Real People" ad campaign does something to alleviate that pressure. The people in it aren't Zealots for two reasons: 1) They're carefully chosen to be non-threatening and in positions of vulnerability, and they're on TV-- they're not friends that you don't want to risk offending, so what they're saying isn't directly aimed at you; and 2) it's actual advertising by the Company itself. People are leery of advertising that's not done by the actual company. They wonder, what's the company doing wrong if they have to have flunkies and spies infiltrating my circle of friends? Is there some kind of initiation ceremony? Where's the hidden camera? At least if it's coming out of the TV, it's in a familiar tableau, and passive. That may be the biggest stroke of insight in that ad campaign: it's a non-threatening counterpoint to the Zealotry in the real world, something that would-be switchers have a hard time getting past. Without the ads, the act of switching to the Mac seems like an act of joining a cult or buying a copy of Who's Who. With the ads, the act makes the transition to one of buying a product. And if there's anything Americans are comfortable with, it's buying a product.
The pieces are finally in place; Apple is at last in a position where it can begin to appeal to the PC market at large on its own terms, rather than as a kooky alternative underground rebellion. As the ranks swell, the Zealots will become less and less visible, less and less confrontational-- and less and less of an impediment to more people switching than ever before.
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